B.K. Poetry

The ice is white as molars. Men in parkas plant aluminum poles into permafrost, breath freezing mid-air into crystals falling on Gore-Tex. The Federal man’s coffee has gone cold in paper cup. Lipstick ring at the rim. His reflection in the window shows nothing. Steel groans. Rust blooms orange as poppies where salt water kissed it. A longshoreman spits tobacco juice onto concrete. The nurse’s hands are cracked at the knuckles. Fifteen thousand pairs of them, still as corpses in hallways that smell of bleach and something rotting underneath. An IV bag drips clear liquid. Drip. Drip. Drip. The bedpan is stainless steel, cold. The doll has almond eyes and a flat face. Plastic, smooth as soap, painted pink at the cheeks. Glass on asphalt. The U-Haul’s orange paint scraped down to primer, down to metal. A shoe without a foot. Someone’s blood is darker than you’d think, almost black in the afternoon light, pooling in the gutter with motor oil and yesterday’s rain. Champagne in crystal flutes. The women’s dresses are silk, the men’s shoes are Italian leather. Gold-plated statues heavy as babies. Camera flashes are lightning. The lawsuit is three hundred pages, the paper so white it hurts to look at. His signature at the bottom, blue ink, the ‘J’ looping back on itself like a noose.