BY ADDISON BALE / JANUARY 2020
POETRY
On Coney Island (Amnesia or July)
Could be summer in New York now. Little atoms come to mind and burst black
liquid pavement but doesn’t run
I may not
recall my body old with distance
and home falls from my mouth
like I ate too much:
It’s endlessly fun to watch the sword-swallower
swallow his sword
and pull it out again horrifically pristine
And to be here, is also endless
just by virtue of being
/
Summer is a cotton candy gun
remind me back to plastic bags dead like
horseshoe crabs in the sand
read my mind into what we do
doing nothing in the angelic sky
just as your company is a lemon icey trite with
gooey sundrops, puckered lips, and a perfect
playlist
to soften that sharp edge of pleasure
when the sun is so hot with ammunition in the USA
/
Everybody steps into the focus
of their own indelible mission
finally visible to their own eyes
and gorgeous all across the beach
gleaming with incandescent curves
, voluminous brown and pinkish and
reddening flesh
partly interrupted by all those shocking
patterns we like to hide-and-seek with
They seem to know this place well
and They seem to know how to stand
like sun-plated legionaries waiting
for a challenge
baiting our various eyeballs in those bathing
suits that seem more human than all the
humans!
Dislodged from its dune, a cold
Corona spills into the sand
I return to our towel stiff
with salty skin
/ you slip into the hot mercury
of a daytime dream
The foam approaches nigh
It’s a funnel of love and we love it all!
And we love growing up but Jeez!
We don’t like changes
*
Food Words
Mouth-watering
spoonful rose petal
Butter from the corner store yeast and bitter chocolate
whisking yokes sugar
window pane
garden hose loose teeth hard dick fried chicken
mouth-watering
pork belly candle light ground beef
tendon gristle blue cheese
blending soup saffron sweet peas
Something to die for (flower) (to overeat)
Cream of broccoli
Mushroom cap
mouth-watering fingerling recipe finger lakes fingering
darling, Eve more amber
pass the pepper, please
A rose is a scallop is a petal is a cat hungry
castle gusher stalagmite
scatter light shelter vinegar in oil
(coagulating) salt in the grain
Where do you come from? We met naked
then floating. Yellow squash
dollops soufflé money meringue bottles
of wine bottles begin
clogged drain grapes and potatoes
knife glass crystal tomato
greasy vein
Mouth-watering
decent cut new growth
canopy table spread
Turkey turkey lovely lamb-chops
Eat again grow old (roll sleeves)
It’s christmas I’m Jewish!
Eat again petite compote welcome to the table
Welcome to the table all of our eggs explode like this
sex is always the soup spoon lobsters screaming waves
of gelato stracciatella. Frostbitten
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Addison Bale is a good egg that doesn't eat eggs (or chickens for that matter). Keeping things sunny side up in New York City since 1994. More poetry here: Addison Bale