Your Hair the Crown           You Never Take Off

1.   a green velvet dress                 Harlow’s halo autosum
            she said your poems                hit all the buttons
     like gun appetizers                   beauty box twins
            I know you play alone             won’t you see him again?

2.   Beach burlesque theatre                 the sharks eat
            a white whale Hudson carcass
     Yiddish snakeology                   the black-hatted video girls
            nights are the happiest             always blowing kisses
     nights the most limited                   nights with less grass
           but once you start drinking      from the lead-painted glass
           you’ll think there’s a light                    midtown midnight
     beneath your umbrella.

3.   I'm your pre-war fantasy                 cloisonné boxes on the loveseat
            she deliver me a scene.                The mannequins are eyelashed
     window-licking heat                   hollowed out or freakish
            licking me and caring             a slightly distant gleam.

4.   I wanted to be home then         weather catching up
            thunder we lose power                spraypaint on the crows
     the corpse flowers blooming            all at once seemed more ominous

                                                than the orange ombré van
                                                they called the stabbing cabin
                                                where they found the muddy sneakers
                                                bloody underpants in Queens.