Renshi: Version Two

purple, pimple, nipple rolled off her tongue

lifting barbells of crabapples and chamomiles

tongue red in licorice paste

mother picks up the phone and talks to herself


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no one doubted it was left on a chair

a practice which complies with dance


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eating chocolate-dipped strawberries

they bewailed imperialism

position defines the movement:

knees bend with both hands

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"it's her birthday" so we all chew pig lard

tires screech dancers freeze automatically

speak no more about the leaves

and my skin prompted by female criminals

goose bumps into a lampshade overnight

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distorted percussion loops

table surface: coffee simplified by crushed ice

rumbles stomach through thought petals

spilling across sky of broken bottle dreamscape

ice-cream parlor waitress, autopsy photographer

kiss me says the girl with pink hair

under the brambles, knees knock cheeks

rambunctious wind licked from deer's ear

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transvestite photographed with cleavage

"I'm really sorry for what I didn't show"

you needed more than less" she snickered


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daughter clutches her mother's hospital hair

acrobat in slippers yawns yams

why bother not to kill space time?

children encourage their parents to clap louder

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corpse accessories purchased by phone

includes a disposable camera

disposed unseen like the line

you suggested I discard in velvet

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the plaintiff concludes in static referents

the spiral staircase of process

must be climbed backwards upside down

people with an authoritarian mindset

won't change even when commanded

pigeons sleep in daylight

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adrift between earth and sky

she itches everywhere but never scratches

amulets acquire a peculiar pause

surface disappears: gallery performance with turntables

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modern girl quick to concur with pop gravity

aging mother in emergency room halts poem


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John Solt and Ray Craig