Jeff Grimshaw

Looking for ant traps in the junk drawer,
It is a wonderland of broken scissor blades,
Flashlight parts, dried electrical tape,
Corroded batteries, washers, stray
Crayons, dead pens. But no ant traps
& the ants are running amok. I get

Lost in here. Forgotten Polaroids, decrepit
Relatives bleaching into the ghosts they will
Soon become. Candles tucked away in case of
Emergency and snapped into pieces, never
To be retrieved. Did I mention that the ants
Are running amok? & yet here I am,

Rummaging through loose gears and rubber
Bands, searching for cheap hollow metal
Discs stuffed with chunks of poison the ants
Find irresistible. There is not one in the
Junk drawer, not one.
The ants are running amok &
The only one who ever gets trapped is me.

What are you grinning at? she said to the married man on the bridge
Who was contemplating Instant Divorce Via River but
‘Maybe not this river’ as there were yellow & violet highlights
On the surface he could not account for. Am I
Grinning (blink!) he replied (blink!) tracing his upper

Lip with his thumb and then there were floodlights
Turning the stars and the river black, not even different
Blacks, sweeping over the water and finding (but losing
Immediately) the toe of his brown Oxford just before
It & he vanished forever. I guess if you don’t make

A decision, a decision will be made for you? he said
Oh honey, she said you made a decision & took him
In her arms, they rose into the diamond sky, & you’ve
Got more decisions ahead so hang on, up through green
Vapor & violet & and eventually the stars one by one went unblack.

He only paints her burning eyes
She only paints his frozen smile
The only smell is chamomile
And only ginger casts a shadow

The window glass is blurred with paint
Every song ends with a crack
He paints her glaring at the sky
She paints him staring through his wine

She scrapes away the cobalt blue
He wipes her eyes with turpentine
Tomorrow he will paint her face
Around the curving bottle glass

Tomorrow she will leave her hands
Sinking in the tangerine
Until the kettle shrieks and rocks
Till burning metal fills her nose

He will paint her layers deep
On a perfect sheet of glass
She will stencil most of him
(In profile) on fields of brick

They spill their bowls into the sink
They change their pants, invest in sleep
And in the morning start again.

The dead haunt me because they think
No one loved them when they were
Alive. “I have some bad news for you,”
I say, plugging in the toaster
They unplugged last night,
“Nobody loves you now either.
Stop hiding my razor. Stop appearing
In my closet. Stop doing whatever it is
You do to the 1% milk that makes it
Go bad in two days. And you know
How they say hair and fingernails
Continue to grow after death? Well,
Apparently it’s true. You’re a mess.
Never mind my razor, take my toenail
Clippers. I’ll get a new pair. Too bad
You died wearing those polyester pants,
Huh? I don’t know what the hell
You were thinking. All the rest of Eternity
In a Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt. And you
Didn’t even sign an endorsement deal. I
Don’t suppose at this late date there’s
Anything you can do about that breath?”
There is a sudden sense of cold air
Vacating the premises, and I go back
To my NY Post and morning coffee.
Tonight another restless spirit will try
To haunt me, another restless spirit
With undead armpits and K Mart sneakers
I’m ready.
When I’m finished with you
You’ll be sorry you ever died.

A brief dance across smashed vacuum tubes announcing ‘Spring!’
From cardboard speakers damp & broken, wandering
From one abandoned shed
To another, this mattress still infested
By teenage wildlife till late morning & a network of Christmas lights spread
Over the kitchen table blinking green blinking red—

The garden hose kinked and re-kinked around the hose-cozy,
A massive drop of warm water suspended from the rusty nozzle for (can it be??)
Hours while we faux-eclipse the sun
Through the blue & red gels in our 3-D specs (also cardboard), un-
Earthed from storage boxes.
‘Also dig my fez,
Out of the same box in the attic,’
Said I, ‘like sick!’

Twilight: combing glass out of the sneaker treads,
Enormous plastic banners unfurled on the lawn (actually ruined water beds),
You preserving on pixels some shiny fragments of the day,
Me stuffing others into metal cans, and rolling them away.

She said, I’ll pull over here by
This diner shaped like a bulldog,
You stand by that KIDS UNDER 10
EAT FREE sign & wave, wait a
Second, put on this space helmet
& kind of jump into the frame
From behind the dumpster like
You are beaming down from space,
Okay now duck down & wait till I say ‘Go!’

I waited & waited but she never said ‘go’
Or anything else, she just drove away
Till my car was two dim red lights
Way down the mountain road. After a while
I took off the space helmet & went inside
The diner, I swore I was under
10. I didn’t really expect
To eat for free, I was closing in on
47, but they didn’t have to be
So damn nasty about it.

Just a little bit drunk
I left, first, a hand print on the wall
Rusty from tomato sauce
And then, after an argument I can not retrieve
With someone I can not recall,
A flower of blood (?) on the bed sheet;
Mistook it, upon awakening, for another hand
But there were seven fingers,
All too thin for me.
While I was rinsing the taste of
Dirty metal from my mouth
My sweet angel outlined that stain
With a magic marker (black)
I thought you would want to keep this she said
(Me staring at her, the ends of my belt
Dangling stupidly)
It is exactly the shape of your soul.

Would have thrown away
Or certainly washed
The sheet right then and there, soul
Or no soul, but that night
I learned the very sight
Perhaps also the smell
Of it got her going but good
Me and the angel
Banging away like a screen door in a hurricane
On top of my seven-fingered soul

If it is my soul
Frankly it looks more like
Texas to me
With a couple extra
Panhandles.

The street terminates
In ‘The Tapioca Stairs’
25 granite steps dividing
Or connecting two neighborhoods
Tuesday morning pale blue sheets
Rise on the breeze
& French Reggae flavors
The tepid coffee until
It is more than tolerable
I think I can taste
Cinnamon, meanwhile the bird
Droppings promise to change
This dismal cul-de-sac
Into a garden (perhaps
Less dismal) eventually.

The dog at the bottom of the steps
Has worked a distant paw
Under her flea collar
The angle is impossible but
I predict success sometime
Before the first neon letters
Quicken tonight, I predict
So many lovely things, Oh well
There are store fronts and
Cafés with doorways it is
Always a pleasure to loiter
Within, exchanging a quip
Or flared nostril with this
Japanese detective (say) or
That Belgian photographer

’s model & later lounging
On the steps, dim violet light
Spreading across the bricks,
Deciding in which of these possible
Cities we will spend the night,
Deciding whether our window
Will open on the emerging sun or
The sun-kissed reservoir, and
What music will be streaming
Through the walls when
We kick off the blue sheets. Once
I thought I would wake
Every morning in a world where
The doors dilate and red shifts drop
Coyly to the bedroom floor

But most of the time
I wake up
In this one.

Half the world we hauled into the sky,
Rocks rising in fishing nets,
Dirt & stone ramps spiraling up,
Carts jammed with ash and
Black maple to frame the windows

We broke for lunch
Pointing with our sandwiches
At a cracked window frame
Well, that won’t do at—

For a second the windows framed a flying boy

A trick of the light! We laughed
And barked, warm beer shot
Out of someone’s nostrils,
All right, enough, we need to plane the door again
So let’s get back to—

Then burning feathers,
Burning wax, the far-off scream,
We filled the windows
And watched him pump and flail
All the way down
To the diamond hard water

The world stopped making sense
And so did we. All words failed.

We cobbled our own alphabets together,
New letters no one could read.