Almost all of my poems
I’ve been keeping these since 2018—no particular order. I paste where I see fit.
Maybe we’re all going to heaven
63rd street and I stare down February.
The car rocking me as my mother did in the old green chair in the old green room
The train screeches and into the darkness we go
I keep my headphones in and large yawns trigger tears
After a few minutes
57th has not come
We are chugging along. Everyone is calm
It occurs to me that maybe we are not going to 57th
Maybe we are all on our way to Heaven
The woman to my left on her iPad
The man across from me, foot tapping, wondering when the best time of day to pick up flowers for his woman is
As to ensure that they will not wilt
I look around searching for panic that matches my own
They stay calm
A woman scrolls
Why should they be afraid?
They are going to Heaven.
Maybe we are all going to Heaven.
Pleasant Breeze
From a snowy base in the mountains
A balloon carrying a package takes flight--
In recess from an icy grass,
The package summersaults in the wind
As it flies
It gathers frost and loses fibers
Beyond the peaks,
Hills and snow dissipate
In mere hours it lowers itself
The balloon gives
In the backyard,
The old man against a background of blue
His hair slicked back
Smokes a cigar and smiles
A gift for him.
Ink spots
my pen to the paper in august.
my mouth tasted quite inky, actually.
the pen splintered.
my hands are blackened and my paper with prints.
And now
now it is closing in on me.
The ink is.
I’m not claustrophobic.
My words are flying off the paper.
Yours are too!
The ceiling is crowded with nouns and adjectives.
They hang above me.
I take a deep breath, with my pen to the paper
my palms, arches of my feet ache
but I tip my toes.
I look up
Dinner Party
Carving knife out, this table would be our commonwealth
A site for mercy, the wine glasses would ensure as much
this was fragile, what I was trying to orchestrate, a bowl instead of a soup bowl may have been the end of it.
But this year, I have learned to keep faith, and now I am laying out forks for all beloved guests, just so
In chaos there is rhythm, said an old man ordering a coffee from me as I burnt his milk. I set down the butter dish
I sink the butter knife into the butter, and hope that I may find grace embedded somewhere in my gawky body.
I have learned how to fold napkins like flowers and project pleasure
I have learned that warmth is hard for people in New York and that that is okay because love is a malleable thing
A salad bowl is dropped onto the table, in my excitement I forgot I hated salad
Something about this ladle brings me comfort. Spoon me up, ladle. It will be okay
It will be comedy and frustration and goodness and information and it will be okay.
a ring saturates the tablecloth
In search of sticks
CA to OR to WA! Cows, corn, luck. I am happy and it is august and there is a bandana on my head. I feel like I am On the Road
It is Sunday on sixty-six and Al Green is playing and my car is one year from crashing. The AC is blasting even though the top is down and I have faith in the sky.I get it all on film.
I run out of gas. poor, young sailor.
Our bowls are plastic, I stole them from summer camp. Thank you, Camp Orkila. They absorb grease. They will have to be pitched.
Station to station, town to town. heart of the country as I roll through iowa. Go Hawkeyes!
I put my mask on and The Sinclair Dinosaur swallows me whole. I am going to new york city, where I guess the lord must be.
Paul and i stand by the train tracks in Nebraska and it feels like an earthquake. we will not sleep here.
I think of all the people. Harrison is a child. Sofia in limbo. Poppy is flying. Jamie will get rich. I have forgotten mom and dad. We are in Indiana, PA and I think about making enough friends to constitute a real-life dinner party.
We set up camp.
I look forward to sleeping on the floor. soon I will reach The Bronx and I will forget that once, I thought understood quite a bit.
Damp is my home
And forgiving
Poke a needle and it springs out from under your finger
Step into the earth
Moss
The clay is making a mold of your foot
Nothing here is cast for long
How kind
The Bunny who Made Good
A sight to behold I am, a bunny sitting in the rainbow room, king of the world
A Walldorf salad I was consuming where once were walnuts and stolen basil
But I’m a bunny who made it good
Roman Scandals—you seen it? Eddie Cantor film, Lucille ball got her start in this one, saved off her eyebrows too
Some bunny from Peoria and here I am, king of the world.
I take my calls from goliath conch; I weekend on schooners under cirrus clouds blissfully ignorant of the kelp below
Where once my life was bound by harvest, I harvest now.
I sip chamomile teas, people stop by my table, send me drinks, thank you, rear admiral bunny, they say
Yes sir, I am king of the world and I did it all myself
Heatwaves don’t bother me, I have a home Air Conditioning system, I can’t feel a thing from the penthouse
And I used to be friends with June bugs
Now I lunch with the best of ‘em, a man named john and a sweet little song sparrow I met at Birdland
I have a garden and I do not eat from it, I admire it
I have rabbit skin glue and I don’t even flinch
I smoke lucky strikes and I slick my ears back; it feels good to be head honcho, and I did it on my own and I didn’t screw a soul.
But I do miss my hole in the ground. I do miss my warren
Late into his night
It is nine o clock
I get out of bed.
Quietly. Quietly.
to the bathroom for a Ricola
It is always covid I’m afraid
I turn off the light.
Stumble through my 300 square ft
On the way
Hands reaching out flailing in the nightness before me
Trying to craft
A New Way to tell him—
If I am in a bar come January 30th
I will walk into the bar
Like john Wayne
I will pull up a stool
I will take a breath, make a sigh
and the bartender will say what can I get you
And I will say just a whiskey with gingerale, as I had promised myself
if I got to celebrate my 21st birthday
in a bar
He will ask for my ID
He will say you are one of those people who looks 32 and also 17
And He will say happy birthday, on the house
He will say I can’t believe that the blizzard last night didn’t shut us down today
I can’t believe you’re here on a Sunday you have school tomorrow
And he will say, “I see your face
revealed by the light of my Miller Girl and I’m no mystic but I think from this point forward you might get a chance to move as I, a barkeep, can move.”
I hold a cube on my tongue until it is water again. This sounds okay.
A group of old friends argue and I am jealous
A woman sings along to the R.E.M song, quietly
neon winks at me.
I have entered this scene.
Lordy
before me stands a lilac bush and it smells like a very nice ghost
I add ginger to my coffee because it’s what the man at Kizira does when I go there. He watched me try the drink for the first time and proclaimed “My god! She’s awake!” and held his own mug up to heaven
Cabin in the sky is on. Lena Horne can really walk
Hope finally springs eternal when that goddamned epistle (uh-pi-sl) ceases
I have this fantasy where I am Zelda Fitzgerald, I show up to a party and I hold my whiskey and a man turns to me and says- “Good God woman” and I cannot tell if he is in love with me or begging for me to stop embarrassing myself but either way, I am whole
I sheepishly search for a god, the god, my god and sometimes I think I am the only one and I think that that is the scariest part
I tell this to Paul and he laughs. Paul, I say, sometimes chains fall off and you know that better than I. You went to Fordham and I did not.
The Tormenting Bee is dancing to flight of the bumble and it feels magnificent just to breathe in the air he has danced through
between the smoke in the sky and Prince one asking me to “do me baby” I cannot decide if you have left or not but I am beginning to enjoy the very special privilege of living in limbo
Golden retriever
there is an egg in my hands and
I hold it out for you
an offering
my elbows resting on my hips
my forearms hinged forward
I hold it out for you
please remember
in this egg
rests The Yolk
Grace
Conan O’Brien is allowed to be sad
Conan O’Brien is allowed to be angry
Conan O’Brien is allowed to say “shut that fucking door”
Conan O’Brien is allowed to hate some things sometime
Conan O’Brien deserves grace
I am also Conan O’Brien
Friends from High School
I come back from the bathroom
Hand on Paul’s chest
His breath begins to stutter
and I shake him before snores erupt—god!
Hand onto hand
Sofia on the futon
Silence
Silence pregnant
Window open all through the night
Air
Dewy air
We weave through space and time
And then we all go to bed at the end of the day
And four years have passed
So much runway
And our little legs are tired
Mounting evidence of divine love
A snore escapes
I’m just giddy
And if I step out one day to find that really
Really
It was only happenstance
And cinema paradiso was true only I never knew alfredo
And so it was just me, alone in the piazza
And so I sit here
A tomato in hand
But the seeds give me gastritis and the juices
Red and lifegiving and of Etna
Are juices my stomach refuses
And the sun my eyes refuse
And the soul reaches out
Grasps for her
But hands stay by hip
Squeeze until my hand is glistening and shiny
Brilliant in that sun
Once I was in High School
The eight of them sitting around a fire
It crackles, they crackle too,
Lights hanging above, dancing below
A night that never ends!
Picture frames
Gathering dust, by the looks of it.
Love amidst Droplets.
A BEAU GESTE this is! You, the forbidden grapes, and I. Mouths purple as I wrote letters to be read aloud each evening, I would watch your big head tilt, your glasses slide. You recite to me your proverbs, your almanacs, your indulgent words. What did prägnanz mean? I choose to live in ignorance. Tides have changed, breathing has grown harder, we live now in a small room, millions of widows cry around us, there is one in particular I hear each night. Nothing lasts. Knowing this, I still choose to summon you closer. Purple mouths wagging.
