Poetry

Since I forget the namesof my lovers, my favorite dog,the flowers and constellationsI walk on earth like a spy from silence. In Walmart I forget my change.In sex I forget to cry out.In a dream I don’t know when to wake. I read endlessly, underlining every third word,but it is only the book of night…

Keep swallowing. You’re being poisoned,but you have the upper hand,so choke it down your torched throat.You know what it meansto be on the banks of the Scioto Riverwith Josh and Nick and a plastic bottle,the kind cyclists tuck onto their bikeframes, filled with every kind of liquoryour parents kept. Who would notice a shot or…

Day one of Marketing 101 is Don’t sell a product.Sell an experience. Benjamin Moore’s mostpopular nursery shades are forest floorand polar bear and furthermore,                    for lingering before heronand muslin and lichen, which falllike snow in the paint display, I mustowe and owe. I know my time is money.My home loan looms, laps its bowlof sweat equity….

In what was probably an interview with Krista Tippett,or maybe it was Rachel Zucker’s conversation with Carl Phillips,the question arose if we are the same personwe once were (always are) or if something changes to a pointof no return. I made it my mission to returnto Prospect Park after four years away. I want to…

A lone snow tire rests twelve feet up a tree.Ten years of negativesscattered a mile down the riverbank. The leather sofa where we’d first kissedspotted in someone’s yard.It’s just stuff, he kept saying. I wanted to believe him.We were still getting to know each other then,learning how to handle something heavy. Stay positive? Be quiet?…

Neither pained by blameor seduced by praise, I kept my soul taut as a drawnbowstring, the last of ten children tithed to the church.At nine, buried alive  for the rest of my long lifein service to Christ. I was his  bride forever in bloom, braidsunbound, white lace veil grazing the floor, whisperingwives scandalized—dry husks unsuited…

                              We open Madlibs again,the ferry late the third hour,               and you choose “xiphoid,”how you did twice before. I’m pretty sure                              we are never getting on the boat, I said,We could play again, you said. Along the breakwaters                              seagulls land like tourists, at this time of day,                                             bloated with complaint—                              how silent must I learn to be? I askedand you said,…

If you think of it, everyopportunity is last minute.You aren’t great—just the bestlast. Handed a brink, most maybes diein the back of a throat beforelips can dawn. Folk like answers;they want their coupons clipped.Maybe my neck isn’t straightas a ladder—each breath is stillits own rung. The holes betweencarry me along, and this may bethe first…

At the Musée Gustave MoreauI looked at all the surfaces whileyou explained the stories. At the base of the spiral stairswe bared our eyes at Les Chimères,a painting pale and unfinished. What a heavy task he set himselfto finish with color and formall the empty limbs, I thought. Agitated by outlines, you read:He stopped working…