My heart may be something... (previously recorded)

My heart may be something that lies cradled in the soft crook of the Indiana dunes
Outside the flashlight circle of the Door County woods at night
Hiding with the gray faceless men in the birchwood trees,

Or between my toes stuck on a wet Bermuda grass blade
Pressed by the crumbling street into the soles of my wrinkled feet,
Or clinging to my thighs, matted under sandy swim trunks;

Could be in the plastic yellow wings of a hook-skewered grasshopper
Or on the flit of a feather-soft mosquito blown from my nose
Fizzing between my eyes at the dry end of a palm frond string.

My self confidence, I know, is daisy green
Slipping with a squeak off the hard edge of my desk
Splashing across my new black shoes and dripping down my thin socks
Spreading me out into the world,

But my heart, I know, swims in the thick air of a hot Floridian night
And you can't go there just by missing.

Citric Acid (previously recorded)

One end of me held in your teeth
Split and sliding over your buck smirk;
The other pinched in your dirty fingers
Nonchalantly bruised.

A twisted orange peel:
With sticky juices dripping down your chin;
Down your wrist,

Your mouth always makes me cockeyed,
Looking two ways at once

Then I drop
Inertly uncurling
My soft white flesh left touching itself.

La Tempête Commence

I rest my hand on the cold cash drawer, some touchstone to keep me alive. No matter how I try, I cannot see the lure of tennis. If anything, I'm fascinated by the design of the red clay court. The illustration on the wall of a cross-section of the courts looks to me like a hunk of cake dusted with red sweetness, so I pull out a buck and slip it in the drawer. I breathe in realizing that all of the parts of the moment can't be caught and that before things are seen they are gone. Oh, and I'm now eating a candy bar. See I didn't even realize.

Over the everglades a sprawling nimbus rolls forth, yard by yard pummeling through the sky. The ground is so flat I can see it from here, an hour or two before it arrives. I know when it's here the world will flip dark, the wonderland creatures will crawl from the earth. They take on the rain like they drink with their skin: sandpaper scales, exoskeletons, slimy worm hides.

I whip a grain of sugar from the corner of my mouth and lick it down. The storm is here; la tempête commence. I'll be risking my life with every fence I lock while I close down the grounds of this tennis club. The lightning here cracks every ten seconds or so.