The Refrigerator Poems

Marketing

I’ll tell you what I do for a living:
Tropical flowering gardens, all expenses paid.
You’ll find my work
only in the moldy dungeons of cyberspace.
(Never believe
anyone trying to sell you something.)
After work I come home to the third floor and I
dance in soft slippers, trying not to make a ruckus.

The best training for life
is the US Naval Academy. It was there I learned
the ABCs of love. They made a man of me
on the warm, sandy beaches of the Pacific Ocean
whose balmy breezes were like hot breath in my eyes.

Somewhere in your memory, did you ever hit the deck for twenty? I imagine you burly, darker than life,
carrying the world like an oxcart
on your shoulders.

This is not the first dream
I’ve had about you, my sweet muffin, my classic burrito.
We were traipsing through tropical flowering gardens
with your hand on the small of my back. Now, I don’t even buy organic anymore. I don’t even
wash my fruit.

You never believe anyone trying to tell you something, but this is not the first
poem I’ve written about you. In the coldest offices of the Atlantic Coast, you wrapped yourself around me like a stole.