Poetry

  • Reruns

    I search online for causes and find that most are tied to loss.A child, a parent, a friend, regret. For me, the I is lost. The most awful things happen hours after a session, not anotherfor a week or two. The Therapy Curse, I call it, covering the years I’ve lost. Sometimes I see angels,…

  • Two Watches

    He’s wearing two watches,one set to the local time in New York,the other in Gaza. In a café with friends,waiting for his tea at the round table,and whenever his eyes fallon the dial of the Gaza watch, he can see the kidsof his Gaza neighborhood running in the alleys,girls playing hopscotch, boysplaying soccer. At night,…

  • History Class

    At my first history class,the only students attendingare the future, the present, and the past.As I step in, the future gets ready to leave,while the past straddles the present,handcuffing it,severing its hamstrings,and dyeing its clothes gray.

  • Traffic Stop Prayer as Wish

    Don’t let me end up a mural on Bryant St.Sound of a cheap lighter heating a joint. Hiss like deep inhale from a fresh joint,large worries can be made small with a mouth. Large worries made small in Sunday’s mouth:aunties’ lips while they sing, victory is mine I dream and sing, victory, today, is mine,eye…

  • Ode to All My Late-Night Great Ideas

    The Germans have a word for you—schnappsidee—an idea                    fueled by margaritas or shots of tequila or bottles of vinobianco or rosso, you know the ideas that maybe involve a road trip                    to Miami or California and you wake up in a parking lotin Mississippi or Delray Beach with a dead french fry stuck                    to the side of your…

  • I, Mediterranean

    As a child, I hid to read your waves,nothing can lie in water.I wanted to peek throughyour wreckages, wrap your windaround my breath,I wanted to keep your sand,shells, and all your shores.The water’s reflection slowlypeeled fear from my skin,women sang to the shipsas if the world was breaking outto carry the cloudsto the other side…

  • The Forest

    A mast year for acorns, so like marbles and so manywe’re afraid of falling. I walk sideways down the hill, holding a long stick; Kate goes before mewearing her orange knit cap. Everything alive is changing. Everythingun-alive is changing. What did we think to stop? The broken trees lean on the unbroken trees,which will one…