Poem for my new boyfriend who collects old records

My new boyfriend who collects old records
drives far and wide to find them.
He digs around other people’s basements.
He sifts through crates in old ladies’ garages.
Lots of times, he finds nothing.
He’s polite, anyway. 
When he sees something he likes, he buys it.
He pays a fair price. 
He takes the old record home and cleans it up.
He is gentle. He uses only the softest cloth.
He runs it through a little water bath designed especially for this purpose. 
He lets it dry slowly, in the sun.
He places it with care onto a vintage record player with vintage speakers
which, everyone knows, sound much better than newer ones.
Something about the old wood.
The needle fits the groove on the vinyl once again.
All the nuance that digital music misses, it finds.
A low cracking behind the bass tells the story of its provenance,
reminds the listener that this is the real deal.
Music drenches the room. Music touches every long-silent corner. 
He sits, and listens, and enjoys it.
And I’ll tell you,
the record likes very much to be enjoyed again, too. 

---

Federal Case II

Ode to Julie O’Callaghan and Redd Foxx

Not every goddamn thing I put in my goddamn mouth has to be
epicurean, artisanal, vegan, locally-sourced, $14.99-an-ounce
bullshit. 

Honestly, 
sometimes I want a gummy worm, neon-colored, or more like
a whole bag, eaten standing at a counter
while listening to reality TV blaring from the next room.
I want my candy radioactive, wrapped in three layers of plastic.
I want scientists ten thousand years from now to find it, intact, still edible,
bright purple as the day God made it.

Sometimes 
I want a chalupa, I mean from Taco Bell, not some 
scrappy, up-and-coming, salt-of-the-earth, mom-and-pop, 
authentic, farm-to-table bistro, with artfully mis-matched flatware,
and I want to eat it in my car,
with my hands,
dripping sauce over my chin,
while I merge onto the Southern State,
flipping the bird to a Tesla who won’t let me in.

So what? 
Is it such a federal case that I’d choose Kraft macaroni and cheese, comic-book orange,
ready in 3 minutes in the microwave,
powder congealing in satisfying flavor-bundles due to lazy stirring 
over a playful, contemporary take on a comfort-food classic, 
a deconstructed version-of, essence-of mac-and-cheese, with cheese from France, or some goddamn place?
And honestly, do I really need fucking avocado everywhere?

Bite me, I say. 
I say, the Whole Foods people,
the homemade, gluten-free, meal-planning
wellness nazis who’ve never had a day of fun in their whole life
are going to feel stupid someday, perfectly stupid,
lying in hospitals,
dying of nothing.

---

Maggots

Her face is regal as I clean her wound,
which has become a nest, if that’s the word,
for new life, of a sort: Maggots.
That’s not fair.
life is life,
love is love,
all that shit.
Her leg teems with them.
Tiny worms, pale pink.
They’re only babies. 
I pick them out with a tweezer,
place them on a paper towel. Five, ten, twenty. More.
She regards me down her nose as if
I was the one who put them there. 
I smile up at her anyway, 
that old nurse’s trick.
“Almost done, Mrs. B!” I say,
though I’m not. 

Life is life.
When I was a child,
I wanted to be a stand-up comedian.
Also a scientist. Also a writer.
Today I wear clogs and 
pick worms from a demented lady’s wound
at three a.m. in an emergency room.
In the civil war,
wounded soldiers with maggoty wounds
often survived where others did not.
The worms ate dead tissue, keeping the wound clean.
Mrs. B’s wound is clean, alright. Thanks to me.
All around us other lives swarm,
beginning, ending,
writhing blindly in the muck of this place,
feeding on whatever the Earth has to offer,
shitting all over her, infesting her. 
Maybe also cleansing her.
Maybe also cleansing me.

---

Not a Warning

Driving to Pigeon Hill Road
to buy a fish tank from a guy on Craigslist
to turn into a hamster tank for my kid’s hamster
is not a metaphor.
It’s not a metaphor for change.
It’s not a metaphor for the lonely, mixed-up, pinpoint-ache of childhood.
It’s nothing.

And when that John Prine song comes on the radio,
it’s not a sign.
It’s not a sign that the future has come, 
It’s not a sign that the child will be alright, 
It’s not a sign to keep driving south, to never stop, go over the island, into the ocean.

The empty parking lot where the seller of the fish tank
(soon-to-be hamster tank)
is supposed to meet me 
is not an omen. 

And the crack in the top of the fish tank, 
which I notice immediately when he finally shows up,
and would definitely be bad for a fish,
but isn’t very consequential for a hamster,
is not a lesson. 

But: 
the way the man speaks to me, the catch in his voice, 
“I remember when my boys were that age…”
that is something. 
What, I do not know. 
And as he drives away and I drive away I whisper to the car,
empty save for myself and the cracked tank,
I’m Sorry. 
And the empty car whispers back
nothing.