C h r i s H o s e a









Lithe Brunette, Twenty-Three Years of Age








In my hand walks Kansas called
bodies mostly cloudy, white in flash.
Powders blurs skins what was once
a comfy couch. Spectacles not brittle
not funny, we're in agreement to
radiate the cell of you and me.
Crowded moving emotions on film
so the crowd nods or doesn't go, and
each bit player makes mordant comment.
What is today that was eleven hours since
horror and the blank page became
an ironic pose a thrill sportif graffiti.
Oh you know, everyone, just all of them
that weren't us. She learns to drift
the testament toward shoppers and ice.
You could be embarrassed pouring milk
in a mixed drink under a bridge
but such is your vocation. Right on her
dancing dress you never touched too
just drown the mighty wedges, a way
to get away. Drop fingertips in selected woods.


































Thoughtful, Fashionable Blonde, Late-Twenties








To murder time, one last dime 
drops poison in social media pages.
Reach out and bend the covers back
to break the spine for once that day
a sweet ramble someone you'd not dreamed
of peeling apples for the administrator.
And only partly clad ambling up an oak
calling it the routing anger of a jag.
Split-second glances meaning comment later
warm us to strangers as if arrows small
as needles popped the barks. We are wanting
and find slow slow pulses hardly known
to catalogue a far-off nerd with a warm hand.
This is too close to the bone so fade to white.
Outlets reach peak flow the last plastic
organizers tumble from roof racks.
Nourishment wrapped in cellophane rots.
Grateful eyes live longer in welcome hosts.
And penned and passed over again
for an unseen throng an everyman extra
gets credit for doing the sensible thing
and putting the trained cat out, changing the mood,
and the house lights, gas, come up.