--- D A V I D   K O P P I S C H

The perpetrator licked his fingers. 
The weatherman staving off winter
with humorous hand gestures. 
The hologram of sex in the back seat of your parents' car. 
The geopolitical compromise lost its costume
and quickly disbursed sedatives
though less effective now that gas prices were dropping
in the sad pages of your evening illness. 
The perpetual gloating of the spokespersons, 
though drunk, trying to sing like lemons. 
Your brave orifice, though contractual, 
arrives like flavored lawyers. 
Jellied and enormous bottles of curvature, 
she said, stoking the tension of the moment, 
hitchhiking along the jaundiced highway. 
Can you break a twenty? 
Contrived, yes, though not quite ready for prime time. 
Giant sized and singing like lemons. 

Does this constitute a fat wallet or a foreclosure
or a needle to prick your annual report? 
The people remove their clothes. 
Which of these stock options are crazed, purple, automatic? 
The distance is unthinkable but the coffee tastes like clouds. 
The highway is prickly but the candy smells like the moon. 
Show me a sentence without a trap door
and I'll show you a house without windows. 
Too many problematic glimpses on the blue train tonight. 
I feel it's too late to raise certain questions with relatives. 
Underneath the city some of the people wearing tight pants.
The stores were closed without reason. 
In the darkness the women selling flowers
and vulturous eyes of the men on the sidewalk
trying to include me in their violence.

The sun set on the broccoli
and the Cambodian fingers
that stood in the cold
ask if you'd like to know the reason for the night
as it tip-toed like spray paint on some bushes
or the outline of a body in the street. 
Yeah, wouldn't it be nice
if the high-heeled downtown distraction
could furiously sprout justice? 
But the disease, the disease
is only around the corner, 
or over the hill if you prefer
or just beyond the crater
if that's your thing. 
The disease will not stop for red lights. 
Men bark at street corners. 

These sideburns, 
all this talk of shoes and getting drunk. 
Your free-market solutions leave me limp
while those parallelograms of dawn
slide across my kitchen wall
toward green happiness on the windowsill. 
You dress to impress those who have power over you. 
The tired heavy books. 
Electric sizzle of the morning
and you too are heavy like the tired plants by the door
or the skinny legs at the corner
but those pictographs of the morning 
incise the kitchen wall, saying: 
	the glimpse of control
	a whiff of lips
	a deep throated howl: 
saying, if you could remember
the moon was an onion 
and the sun was a grapefruit
stinging the eyes of the faithful, 
the coffee in the village was sweet
and we were cold and giddy among the massive Catholic stones
and lesbian smiles like flames in the snow, 
singing like lemons.