Bulimia

By Len Kuntz

I am reaching inside myself,
elbow cocked toward a ceiling,
fist and fingers fitted in my mouth,
down the throat
trying to find the key
that unclogs the valve near my esophagus.
But there is no air
and no You,
so I dredge all day,
my fingers as unreliable as ever,
but the nails sharp and jagged,
scratching code into the lining of my larynx
the way prisoners mark days.

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My Girl

By Len Kuntz

She has a ticker tape tongue,
confetti white irises
that loom and brood over a bridge of lash
taking me in strides and stretches,
stitching me into a new suit of clothes,
cheese cloth or something as sheer.
She wants me light and vulnerable
and my girl,
she might be possessive and wicked but
she gets what she wants.
Always has,
always will.

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Some of the Things That Frighten Me

By Len Kuntz

Satan and dentists and clowns.
My mother’s cat claw fingernails and the grime beneath Father’s.
Snakes and rats and old people’s blue-veined hands.

Now it is
mornings and Wallingford, our calico, staring at me
as if I’m an axe murderer.
The unmade bed, warm on one side,
the sheets tangled up with nothing.
The bed.
The bed.
The big unmade bed.

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First Fruits

By Len Kuntz

She picked me an early summer peach and held it out like a crystal ball and said to eat from her hand like a little lamb and she laughed, the wind lilting around her, the wild lawns hazy-green shimmering gray-streaked with grace.  She asked me if we would always be this happy, so dependent, innocent, when about to answer a crooked trickle of juice jagged off my chin and onto the bed of my chest where it caught fuzzy white pinwheels, and she said, “Like that dandelion seed there?”

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Wallet

By Len Kuntz

It was there on the bus when he got off
so I took it, cradled the still-warm leather which was
crookedly curled and molded from his shape.
I breathed in the musk and sweat smell, absorbing its dull mystery.
I took my time examining the contents, pleased to learn his wife was
not that pretty after all.
When the bus pulled over at my stop
I skipped down the steps and kept skipping down the street
thinking, “There’s room for me.”

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