Vinegar and Tonya Harding

 

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My sister cleans the bathroom with

vinegar

 

I leave to buy some snacks at the

corner store in Ridgefield,

a store so famous that no one calls it

by its actual name

 

The vinegar lingers in the a/c vents

salty chips wet the summer with

chubby yellow

 

the highway that spines the entire west

coast runs right through me

I work at a bank on the banks

of the tar artery

 

boat loans, RV loans, summer home

loans, people filling up the city and the

surrounding cities with big new houses

to stuff their money into

 

Tonya Harding becomes re-famous

post infamous

vinegar tongue pressed up against

Battle Ground yellow cigarette teeth

 

Vinegar wine growing in the traffic circles

I chase each day

round-a-bout red

restless riesling

vinegar rotting in the grey exhaust

 

grapes day dreaming of Tesla motorists

so they can have a reprieve from

all their heavy carbon dioxide breaths

 

too much respiration, too much photosynthesis

too much juice that the skein is

bursting

 

Tonya Harding’s rosé lips

Tonya Harding’s cabernet apple cheeks

pale vinegar sky

cooking me through fermentation

 

the ore mining smell, the vodkadic potatoes

the volcanic desire for another bag of chips

 

I invite myself to Pride because I crave

commonality but alone walking the Ester Short

loops I realize the crowd is vinegar

and although I am craving something

sour, my body really needs tenderness

 

or detoxification, a lake to drink,

a charcoal mask, a charcoal shampoo,

a close friend telling the truth, a close

friend wizening, a heavy velvet

curtain stained with cat piss

ammonia begets itself

vinegar can’t fix this