Reb Livingston


When the Moment Turned

Keep your eye on the shovel
not the rats humping in the bushes,
my uncle Seymour always used to say.
Don’t be in such a rush.
Little girls who have babies
want to exchange them for fur coats
during the Christmas season.
Little boys who spend their paper route tips
end up trading their dicks for stick shifts.


Uncle Seymour preferred terse
to lecherous, avoided dewy flesh,
fast women, fast cars, fast food, all very bad.
Many Sunday bath nights after several rounds of
I see your heiny, it’s white and shiny,
If you don’t hide it, I’m going to bite it,
the moment turned serious,
and we were warned: Waste your youth
reap your wrinkles.


Sink the Girl

Water not only can keep a ship afloat
     but can also sink it.
     -- Chinese Fortune Cookie


1.
Underwater I see dolls without feet.
I chopped them off so the dolls

cannot paddle away while I sleep.
Remember the water and the ship.

There is salvation in transportation.
Parakeets play hopscotch and rats shoot marbles

while children are inside chatting online.
Don’t blame their parents they were overcome by television

and the grandparents were penetrated
by undetectable radio waves.

Everyone has an excuse and a solution.
I drink water with high lead content

like fish it makes me smart.
Scientists make studies say whatever they want.

I cannot really say what I want, but I do know destitute women
who live together are destined to sling bacon.

2.
An escaped convict hides underneath my bed
and all the pistols are locked away from my reach.

Someday I will have big boobs to distract him
and finally get in a good shot or two.

My destiny is to collect guns of all sizes and power
as many as I can fit in my purse.

The girl with the knife should do hard time
because if she can get away with making a man a little girl

he can get away with making her a creature without a soul.
Big cities are not suitable places for little girls.

All the rats in New York learn to swim
so they can paddle upstairs when basements flood.

3.
I am thankful for ambulances
honor electricity

worship glass and wary of anything I can see through.
Sometimes creeks are just open sewers.

Sometimes pornography hides
in bushes next to creeks.

Whatever we find we put in the Convent’s mailbox.
The Sisters know what to do.

This is a confession
about water

and where we travel
and what we believe.

And some people
do not understand that.

I am told that there is a seat
in hell for me which is fine

because I hate to stand
and I have forgotten how to swim.