swishing the toilets,
cleaning the house, readying
the mind to write

game show's lone female
hopeful buzzes in the answer
first: what is the glass ceiling

this weather can't
make up it's mind - fleece tights
one day, bare legs the next

cursing the worm in
my storebought basil, those black
specks unhatched eggs or poops?

Yesterday's haiku

staying silent towards
the woman crowding my space
about the cream cheese on her beak

*

no. 17, morning commute:
watching a woman apply her eyes
lips skin and cheeks

A new poem on the Tadao Ando Gallery in the Art Institute of Chicago to accompany my ongoing "Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion series"...

Installation No. 16

jomon jars replaced by plastic
mannequins, wanting definition
vacant body forms, scaffolding

to bear the float of haute
couture, Japanese fashion
Rei Kawakubo’s slip:

“lumps & bumps” – a garment
of transposable parts, butt pads
shift to chest or hips

bee-stung knees, or a weight-
lifter’s muscular back; shoulders
like Tilda Swinton

the site-specific video install
lights up Ando’s towers like
a fashion expo, visitors

careening down a catwalk
of columns, the space between
pillars, a stage for self-portraits

in silhouette, geometric slants
echo frames of denuded
posts, a scroll of light

unfurled against a wall
the artist’s projection
a measured pattern

of movable parts

after the clash, seeing
him gaze out the window as if
waiting for me to return home

*

flowering bush w/
half its petals on the ground
like a haircut gone amok

April haiku

eyeing the leftovers
in the kitchen, after a bout
w/ food poisoning

*

driving past a pool of blood
spreading across the sidewalk,
the bus driver twitches

*

runaway roll of gauze
left behind at the stabbing
scene yellow police tape