The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

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The Archipelago Of Kisses by Jeffrey McDaniel

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't
grow on trees, like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy,
like being unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss.
The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we
shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss.
The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get
older, kisses become scarce. You'll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,
with its purple thumb out. If you
were younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's
red door just to see how it fits. Oh where
does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.
Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.
Now what? Don't invite the kiss over
and answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspicious
and stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whiskey.
It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of
your body without saying good-bye,
and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it
illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest
and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a
special beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow,
then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath
a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.
But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss.
Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

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Dear America by Jeffrey McDaniel
I am but a riverboat- hopelessly in touch
with my inner canoe. On the first day of nursery

school, I cried in mother's arms. It wasn't
separation anxiety. I was scared she would

come back. In high school, I was voted most likely
to secede. In college, I took so many drugs

the professors looked at samples of my urine
just to know what books I'd been reading.

I'm a narcissist trapped in the third person.
The sound of my own head being shaved

is my all-time favourite song. I stop people
on the street, show them pictures of myself

as a child, ask have you seen this boy?
He's been missing for a long time.His eyes

are the last swig of whisky before stumbling
out of a bar on a sunny afternoon. His cheeks

are twirling ballerinas. His cheeks are revolving
doors. I'm all out of cheeks to turn. I'm all

out of cheeks. My ego is a spiral staircase
inside a tornado. My eyebrows are that furry

feeling you get in your gut when you're about
to tell a lie. My tongue is a dolphin

passed out in an elevator. My tongue is a red carpet
I only roll out for you. My penis is a wise ass

in the back of the classroom who doesn't know
the answer, but sticks his hand up anyway.

My hearts hangs in my chest like a Salem witch.
My heart is a turtle ripped from its shell.

My heart is a street so dark nymphomaniacs
are afraid to kiss. My heart, America, my heart.

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