peter schwartz

from LOOKING, WATCHING

I noticed your shirt, your chest tattoo.

I'm looking for something similar on the skull of my first-born child.

*

I hide cash in my socks.

Everywhere there are groups of people with cash

hidden in their socks.

I'm a fragment of a fragment of a fragmented group of people

with cash hidden in their socks.

My father decaying.

My mother working a job.

They drink the water in Mexico just because.

It's hard to get into other people's tattoos before they exist.

*

They barely sleep together,

it's been years and that still feels good to hear.

I watch them, holding hands.

Its's been years and but looking away would be worse.

*

My crisis of attractiveness lasts

hours, in the shower.

In the shower there are things and the things there matter.

Our fingernails in the shower,

our faces. The cracks leaking water

for you. It ends

outside and the outside begins to cloud.

Ink across a chest.

Our palms flat against the concrete floor.

It's knocking and the knocking

grows louder.

*

The light never works, the light

comes in the morning.

Like you come in the morning.

And walking down the street we stare and staring

we keep each other away.

You dance alone in the corner, arms flailing.

It feels right, watching you flail.

And when your face comes close

there is nothing.

Quiet walls,

long sharp fingers.

THE AMBIGUOUS NATURE OF ALLIGATORS

I'm whisking up some new ideas

about the neighbor's hallway window

and the bodies inside.

You're on an express train to Long Island.

I'm cleaning flies

from the inside of my mouth.

You have a different taste in the morning.

The sun comes, colors form.

We're pulling doors

from their hinges and building hot-air

balloons in our backyard.

I fall in love every day with new

inanimate objects,

better teeth

and rain collected in an ear canal.

What's the harm in waiting.

The windows open.

This is where we discuss alligators.

Their muzzles and your jeans.

Their uvulas dangling like lightbulbs.

If we're walking too fast you may begin to run.

If we're running too fast you may stop and go back.

The current changes

every day and moves paper boats

around in little circles. We watch with

enthusiasm unlike anything else.

People throw stones at the little boats and when they sink

we take off our pants.

People do crazy things for their pets.

The alligators in a frenzy.

Walking in front of bikes out along a river.

I throw trash into the river.

Sometimes you swim in the river and sometimes

the river borrows your shower.

Sometimes you question

the ambiguous nature of alligators,

and that's OK too.