Kyle Hemmings-

City of Love #1

I'm scouring my pots and pans so hard my reflections

 are turning steel wool. In a few weeks I'll be as thin

 as my finger nails, stuck in a cave of sticky memory.

 She left me for a 40 yr. old kid who lives under a bomb factory.

 Muttonchops didn't even say Good bye, just emailed:

You and I have always been on the fence, but I have

 always loved the smell of dandelions. They even grow

 in the back lots of the city. Dandelions are tough.

You can't be soft here. You can't be like spoonbread.

Why does love hit like an artillery punch? I worry about

sleeping alone, about my ambient snores, the white stereo

 of my sonic dreams, what the cat will think of my pajamas.

 I'll live on lobster colored crumbs and bones minus flesh.

At the bedroom door, my feet stutter. I wonder if there

 is a planet that quivers like Jell-O. I sense an alien presence

 in my bed. Snoring just like me.

Bartleby

His wife discovered he had hung himself,

 swinging from the last full-hunger moon of winter.

 She carefully cut the celestial rope, a brand

he had purchased online, a site called Hitch_A_Comet.com.

 With his limp body freed, stars crashed around her.

 She dragged him back to the house, cursing both him

and her tight-fitting shoes. She removed his best Sunday suit,

an imported tweed from Hungary, his suede soft-sole shoes

and searched his pockets. They were not empty, were full of night,

the distant voices of women, laughing, spilling from unmanned satellites.

Mean Streets #5

She has you strung on orange wang tang
and psychological orgasms. You'll die
for artificial sweeteners but she loves
getting kinky with a top hat just when

 you're hung upside down, internal clocks blind.
 Again, she leaves you feeling trapped
inside  your own urine samples.
You've always been addicted to the rain.
On the streets, a ratty girl is spreading
rumors that you're already dead.

Kyle Hemmings is the author of several chapbooks of poems: Avenue C (Scars Publications), Cat People (Scars), Fuzzy Logic (Punkin Press), and

Tokyo Girls in Science Fiction (NAP). His latest ebook is Moon Down Girl from Trestle Press. He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/