On the night of the party, looking out from the 8th floor, someone asked, Do you feel you’ve made it? Do you look at all this and know you’ve made it? The inside of me said, No, said, Where? (The inside, like bluish tar, talks fastest, longest.) After, when I hadn’t left the apartment in a week,Continue reading “New Year”
Category Archives: Poetry
In Preparation
When we walk at night with the ghosts of New York, we float above grates and glass; we have hit our heads on concrete before— we have jumped from buildings, sank. We spent a year wrapped in blankets, emerged drunk, slightly shrunken; we had films for expression, books for quotations, but no banners for ourContinue reading “In Preparation”
May Flowers
I took the W on my way downtown to Battery Park and a homeless man was cleaning himself methodically in the seats diagonal to mine. Take off shoe, take off sock, wipe, clean. Somewhere around City Hall, he took out an air freshener and sprayed the air above, around, and underneath him, and I thought,Continue reading “May Flowers”
Weather Channel
Your back turned, a broken compassvibrating faulty,stays shadowed despitethe moonlight-in-the-window. The ghosts living betweenour clothes, the dinner talksof porch lights.The apple-picking offorgotten thought,and allotted time fortouching fingers.I keep my front to your back,my knees closed, jointly pointing. The rain stays south,but not forever. Findwest-bound with your compass.Walk there gently,new figure in the window.I will neverContinue reading “Weather Channel”
10 Years
Sitting in a tub, behind the curtain, with fingers lightly thumping porcelain: after thirty-three hours of praying, she came down from the ceiling. It’s the big blue chair that my mother loved, with upholstery maintained and bottom scuffs, that followed me to Brooklyn. Massive, it didn’t come apart in the middle like lounges made afterContinue reading “10 Years”
In Rockefeller
I can’t see the ground around me justumbrellas overlapping in the raineverywhere as people stand.(I don’t own one—with which to overlap or to be overlapped.The wet always comes in anyway.Not with two?But, surely, the wind…) The rain falls in sheetslike summer lined-laundryand I can only think of ruinedpicnics; Cental Park certainly deserted—sinking ground, soaked benches.TheContinue reading “In Rockefeller”
Engaged
When I dreamed of screaming, your eyes were a dizzy kaleidoscope. On my bed. The ceiling was our future, wet with paint and silver like lost fog. (Said much prior: I finger in your name on the dust of dressers, on the windowpanes of outdoor shops— I read it on the wrinkles of clothes duringContinue reading “Engaged”
Saving Lives
Make sleep be drunk under lemonpeel stars, beneath the canopied bed I am moon-sunk. Stuck to the bed by the weight of the dark, I dream: My mother is old, not buried, her hair wound in a bun. Carnival spun cotton candy blue pink wisps. She says In the morning your ribcage pulls apart easily.Continue reading “Saving Lives”
Of the Past
It’s sitting in your car one winter in Rotterdam that I tell you your future. It’s quiet except for my voice like a radio buzz shaking the car slightly, and the streets are dreams with edges that fall off. We drive into the headlights, past the field that makes us feel rural, so unmoving andContinue reading “Of the Past”
Sestina
i. In the Polaroid from ’81, her dress was lemon yellow. With sandaled feet, she stood like Mary, bowing her head to morning. I search her grin for veiled discontent, and find instead, a joy pooled at her mouth, sitting between the cherry lips and waiting. ii. The thick waterbeads licked my face and IContinue reading “Sestina”
{WAYY} 