Mills’ poems online:
The Pedestal Magazine
_______
David Mills
IWant H all of you but I ( )Ateyour Guts
On your tongue the letter “H”sleeps when it should
be awake and sashays when it shouldsit
still. It’s then that you offer meweather
that you don’t want: windows ofrain that are
flung open; a sky of suede cementdozing
on its navel. Here, I am sandwichedbetween
butterbeans and moonlight. Florida:
this country unbuttoning the sun.Soon,
you will be four cities of memory.Soon,
there will be a triangle of quiet;soon
my tongue will wonder whychocolate eyes
two eyes that blink and sizzle. Two nights
ago we passed a manhole coverpainted
like bistecca florentina with tapioca bubbles.
The smoke that twined from thiscity’s
skillet seemed to gallop oversupper’s room
temperature antipasto. I hope so. I so hope that life
can tell the difference betweenvanilla and hell.
And if love is an investigation letme suggest
a detective: then one day myinsecurities
will wait in a queue so long that they
will eventually about face, knowhome.
life is a line
no one
should cut.
We cold, we cold. Sorry
we cannot
accept thoughts
of 17
dinars or less because beyond
the emporium, English
literature is a movie ticket
that should be defenestrated. Mycondolences
to all the furniture in the third
world and the bikini
Philistines. How cold ridge
of you. Please do not
irk a plus-sized Happy
Meal because
Santa Claus is coming to Town
Hall: Police Navidad.Police
Navidad… With a dose of opium,
Kubla conned
the age
of reason into thinking
it would think forever. If youcan,
toggle your bottom
lip to some sheet music. . .
where whole
notes
stand-infor eye
sockets
their gaze pong-pings
between Porlock
and Linton: over yonder, onethousand
300
(and)twenty
feats
from Culbone.
(after Terrance Hayes)
On a word tour, a quintet of “es” bops up & down streets 3-letters long. In Rome
they wanted more,even formed a line as long asthe Nile.
A real panein the nape some dame made us late,made our ride
to the club dire.
The car’s FM dialso laid-
back the music hovers five feet in front of this coupede chill. Made-
moiselle werehearse backwords and forwords. And although I’m a linguistic drop-
out, do you Parlez vous bebop, its lemon lime-
light? Do you ever let your eyelashes sweep some line
-r notes? Damn, it’s already 8, which is 3 eyeing itselfin a mirror more
and more.
Late for the gig, my fallen cymbal: the sun KO’d, flat onits back. Dixieland.
