THE JO-TEL … wishes it could remember how to change the banner picture.

“My Car Turns Over When I Crash”

The slick of removed viscera
underfoot, while
all around
clay from the plain grows
into the air

My spear pierces above the left nipple
and
through the breast plate; the force of it
lifts him

The hoards, before the evening
take on red
sunset tones

My car turns over when I crash
one hand to the sky and
one hand to your flowering hair, Kate

At highway speeds, I turn into the weekend
like the aperture
on a gas nozzle, like
air

“Ogygia”

Cove of nymphs closed over
for plumbing
repairs
as if turned to
sea

Fire hydrants couldn’t put out the feeling of
having a wife
in the afternoon
falling into night
old age

I had several orgies and
then I died

“Ithaka, Or Whatever”

Before I, slumped
on the floor next to the couch, crying
I thought back to, you know
when the wind, grey eyed
had to say to Odysseus that the shore– the
rock under his feet– was
actually his home: Ithaka

Now there is land; now
a better order to my home, my
sea cove where nymphs dance past, white
feet on the rock, soft
lips in my mouth, Kate

-Shark