Scantily Clad Press, 2008
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to the editors of the following journals, where the poems in this collection first appeared: absent, alice blue, Free Verse, Shampoo, word for/word, zafusy.
ASTRID I heard Astrid’s steps on the aluminum diamond-stud tread. The district manager opened a red envelope. Don’t forget the opaque dividers: wavelet, trampoline fix, hoodwinked worm, inquisition fluid. And time-lapse nude photography. Affogato. The time clock is not an incense clock, or a water thief. Oxidized clover-clamps from the fulfillment center.
LIGHTER My lighter flame in the wind, your blue-gold hair. Cherry helmet guy is claiming his faulty lighter is flirty if a woman bums a flame. I'm hearing a lot of bizarre claims here, while a Zippo burns butane from tables. I learn from a film to light yours with mine.
PARANYMPH We idle in blue dusk. You let each ringtone go, and I’ve (three times we’ve said goodbye, kissed goodbye that many times) a smoky look for the spherical punk and his paranymph in the parking deck, violations of your windshield.
WINE Drunk on periscope wine, he passed his hand through the asexual fireball. Not a substitute for sleep. He said that he wanted to be chastised with a white cane or else with a vegan horsewhip in the synthetic thunderstorm. The slow applause of packing cigarettes.
CORSETRY, YOUR DISCIPLINE Corsetry, your discipline along with the whistling implements. Your voice travels the beige corridor, trebuchet honey. Hot Hallowe’en librarian, self-locking biology office embrace, or fantasy “desk lay.” Cubicle seeds, clavilux visions, spiritual splice, saliva sleeves.
PLANETARIUM UNHAPPINESS VIGIL Planetarium unhappiness vigil, by the teak gallows, his platinum limit follows illicit links to silicone corn silk. Misogyny binge and bondage .mpeg morgue of his defiling cabinet. In the citrine side stream, glissando, a loop glistens his interrobang fingers.
RUST Kept your grenadine litter, tuft of rust. Woke to veiled foliage and sleep-learning. A pack of Eve ultra-lights. Blood vespiary sculpture splutter. When I return your liturgy, apologies, your tellurian narrative and the opera-hose ligotage.
NECTARINE Her piercings, as we sleep, soak in brine. Her coral circumference. Steel cart, nectarine halves. New ladies sign linen. Swivel, ribbons of your separation. More diversions for dystopians. Frothy thongs. The staff have vodka headaches. A vocoder. Roughened sphere heavy with eye campers. He searched in the prototype, and found her.
CHANNEL Near the guillotine crew, the wax aristocrat, thumbscrews, and gull of spikes, my voice in this channel, yours in the other. Through a sordid hallway, the mouth of a wooden pig, piled with wergild, I’ll stroke your stories.
GROTTO Cenotaph charlatan. Film strips and candle flames and leaves judder. The rowboat enters the grotto, and I may as well write porno. I brought her sauvignon, water crackers, and cheese aged in a cave. She says, "What did you do to my hair, to my whereabouts. You're bad..."
Tim Botta's work has appeared in absent, alice blue, Free Verse, GutCult, MiPOesias, Shampoo, wordfor/word, and zafusy. His blog is Nice Guy Syndrome (http://www.giuseppeblog.blogspot. com).