Portrait of Boy Refusing His Father's Music

The kids talk about Posh Spice. 
They sing Top 40 hits.                Mother drops me off.  

High volume on, the ballads sung by her 
are

By the time the keys were in my eager teenaged hand, this car had been through some shit. Even ignoring the holes burned into the driver’s-side door, the missing half of the left side mirror, and the warped, discolored metal down the rest of the vehicle, the car was 13 years old already, and it looked it.

The cherry and strawberry seasons have passed; the apples are reddening. Only a few games remain. A Pit Spitter lays down a bunt, and the runner on third crashes in: a perfect suicide squeeze.

All that whimpers isn’t want.

One spring, I pulled
a reed from an oboe.
I planted it by a pond. 
Instantly, it grew 

dense at the water’s edge. 
The wind told lie after lie—

black

Morning gets angry and destroys a city
not New York, too obvious, but suppose
it’s on the coast. Suppose we’re the first to go

I picture Goya’s Colossus and my empathy
runs threadbare. Suppose

There is snow that falls like a snake. It comes from the sky hissing and finds a bush to hide beneath. The leaves on the branches of the River Birch are alive, again, vibrating. They are brown and

He’s soaked in sweat already and all he’s done is drive. He must know what they are here to find.

“Well, just be careful you don’t get caught with your pants down at the wrong kinda toilet.”

Sometimes I want to take the industrial strength green Korean loofah, my sandpapery mitten, and just scrub at my face until huge chunks of flesh tear away and roll into brown fleshy noodles and fall to the floor. Afterwards, I won’t be bloody and flayed, all raw nerve endings and hamburger meat, I’ll be smooth as a peeled egg, soft and firm and pliant to the touch.

                             in response to a student evaluation for a science fiction class, Fall 2018

Student, it’s true—I prefer women
to lentils, to crossfit classes,
to retirement plan

this poem starts on a tuesday in Kansas

a twister settles in. there is a twister dancing 
in the night like a blight on the sky’s eye & 
the people are afraid. someone yells: there is a

My heart is open. I can feel it. It’s never open. This can’t be a coincidence. This—

My father’s disjointed rage has shocked him—I’ve seen that look before. He no longer draws from his beer even as Dad tilts his own way up.

Goats and cows’ dreams have little pull yet. Cheese
is still cheese, piston driven milkers likely painful. The future
of sirloin strips it of skin, legs, bones, grown without 

the cortex of

                                                           
                                                           {All I Wanted Was Everything}

You say you know the reason why Archimedes

Her head is hung in anguish. She has opened the window. She is telling Satan to leave our house. She is upset with us.

I am no longer youthful, but not quite middle aged either. Traces of a younger me are present, though fading.

Read Kevin Mahler's Introduction to his ongoing 6-part "Portrait Series Paralleling Characters in HBO’s Deadwood with Contemporaneous Pop Country Musicians," and check out previous parts 1 and 2 and

I always knew I would wash up on an island.

When I was thirty I found my birth mom. I’d written her letters but never sent them.

This is a frontier town. Means it’s small. 

Now, if the frontier was moving forward, like they do sometimes, our town might get bigger, but that ain’t happened for nigh on eighty years and I don’t

I had no brothers or sisters, so I received a single white envelope. I took my time opening it. I watched as those around me opened theirs. One of my friends started crying. Breathing deeply, I read mine.

It Worked Out a Way to Survive

The Venus he gave me ate another daddy
longlegs. They were still wiggling when I
watered it this afternoon. It's a cruel world
he texted me last month but it's

They gather in the basement to weep together like the boys they are.

We ate dinner with our heads down masticated silence Mom slathered hot sauce on everything including Dad’s words and the ones he didn’t say lips spraying consonants vowels dribbling down his chin i

I’ve started to clench my teeth before falling asleep.