Catfish McDaris: Three Poems

Thanksgiving Can Be a Real Motherfucker

My lady was withdrawing
$60 from the drive-up ATM
I was tuning in Steely Dan

A Nixon masked person
with a revved chainsaw
cut off her extended arm
and grabbed it and the money

Ripping my belt from my
trousers, I made a tourniquet
next thing I knew I was on
the floor in a store

A circle of frozen turkeys
were shooting dice with tiny
hands, several had cigars
puffing from their neck hole

They were cursing in Turkish,
sounding pissed off and flipping
each other the bird, looking
around I noticed I was naked

I had a cell phone, I dialed 911
the operator asked, “What is
your emergency?” all I said
was gobble gobble gobble

Waking in a pool of sweat
I saw a full bottle of 101
proof whiskey, reaching

To scratch my testicles
I trotted for the bathroom
to discover two tiny plucked
butter balls, I thought this
is worse than Naked Lunch.

*

Frida’s Gold

The color of rage, anger, love, hemorrhaging of the sun
on the ox gore face, velvet cocoon eyebrows ready to
fly away, you can live your life in a birdcage or soar
over oceans, mountains, jungles, swamps, and deserts

The bus and trolley accident broke Frida’s spinal column,
collarbone, ribs and pelvis, fractured her right leg in 11
places, and dislocated her shoulder. Frida had polio and
one leg was shorter and the bone thinner than the other

She underwent 35 operations because of the accident, Arias
her boyfriend was with her in the crash, he described the bus
as “bursting into a thousand pieces,” with a metal handrail
ripping through Kahlo’s torso, many were injured, two died

Something strange had happened. Frida was totally nude. The
collision had unfastened her clothes. Someone in the bus,
probably a house painter, had been carrying a packet of powdered
gold. This package broke, and the gold fell all over the bleeding

Body of Frida, when people saw her, they cried, ‘La bailarina, la
bailarina!’ With the gold on her red, bloody body, they thought she
was a dancer, Kahlo’s path to painting began with the collision,
the greedy are selfish fools choking on a gluttony for gold.

*

Mexican Black

I see ears in the swirling starry night.
the sky is drunk, the sun puking lemon
juice, the moon has a toothache, the lady
asked the dope fiend to come to talk to
Jesus, he stinks of absinthe and funk.

Sometimes at night I meet
myself when I was young,
I disgust myself now

What color is the wind?
What color is an orgasm?
What color is death?

There is no sea of tranquility
There’s no such thing as a small miracle

Drinking Mexican coffee as black as death
Lady Gaga drives up in a dirty Mercury
they head to the Valley of Rhinoceroses

Listening to Swordfish Trombone and
Bitches Brew overlooking Mexico City.

What are you looking for?