Steve Halle: January 2007

BLACKBIRD #4

styrofoam packaging
w/ meat bloodstain discarded

a five of diamonds,
corners nicked off

the bud light can crushed, throw away

fuck sounds, a metal door
squeaks shut, silence, more moans

a half bag of mild winter’s salt waits unused

keyed up accord, she smokes
to trim her newly unpregnant body

she shows it

flower garden scuttled
a hip repair, metal-metal
an argument

snow falls one day,
melts next, murky
shoe run-off on white linoleum

market meet

in winter, potholes grow

a coffee can full of butts
sits off stoop right

crackpop wood burning,
whoosh of gas,
a scalding whirlpool
ups the buzz
and sleep, curtain.


BLACKBIRD #5

half-splashed in war paint
machete on canvas,

vomit is our Diaspora,
“yes, but”

idyllic in Germantown,
a depressed ex-model
tea for two by four
rots, or nails rust
from lack of proper
installation manual.

sip and taste misgiven weather.
rocks continue in bucket
love among the crushed coral

puzzle make hair, half-sip
or swallow before six.

a grubby denim hairline
inching spineward,
the paint taken off,

and soon.

emulsion in pomegranate juice,

non-proper, a defense of investment,
a denial of technique,
still-life withered grape above climate,
vin de glaciere tethered to tongue

hand swung and hamfisted

vision blurred by blood,

a nest, it ties it. a test
of flight in feathers of fancy.

© 2006 Steve Halle