Poetry

May you never bear fruit again. The disciplesheard Him say it. I’ve been hungry too, toldthe car door to fuck off when I bumped my head.Kicked the dog, and shoved my son into his room.Woe unto. Poor tree. Whose fault, its fruit is bornbefore its leaves. Then He overturnedthe money tables, knocked down the dovesinside…

By 1970, 33 states had bannedshoe-store x-ray machines. Mr. Levitz sits on a stoolmeasuring feet with a steelslide that feels cool when itnudges the tip of my toe.Future and past mean lessthan the ash on his cigarette,which will fall on the floor,because the plate in hishead makes him forgetwhat happened beforethe war. But these shoeswill…

Perhaps with a desk between,some chaste space, the recruiter leaningforward, warm bodies on the other side. Of the teenagers presentone will lie about her age,one will eat bananas to make weight, one pull herself from small-town quicksand.Lace the hands behind the head,look good in a uniform, look nonchalant. Army doesn’t take everyone,maybe you, maybe not,…

The sky so whitethere is no sky.The water,a tarnished plate of silver. The dog sits dutifully.No, sits like a kingwho says nothing,who looks aroundunmoved, his golden robeshedding.

I think of the man in the V for Vendetta maskdangling his legs off the roof of a drugstoreon Franklin Street. No one else seemed to see.My friends kept walking toward the restaurant,talking about tax breaks and single payers,and I told myself, advertising stunt, Halloween prankster, my imagination, and then moved oninto the monochrome safety…

Because the blinds stay open, I see birds. I watchmen watch those birds. Men monitoring flight pathsand a soaring hunger for the crumbs they shouldn’t’ve pocketed from chow. The indifferent birds ask for nothing,yearn for nothing, except perhaps the sky, which is nothingto them but magnetic blue wind—their one great war of journey. I’ve been…

Who is nothing, now, but a few fistfuls of ash. Not even that, since ashdissolves and is taken into the bodies of plants, or swept into the airon the wind. He’s so very fine he slips undetectedthrough a whale’s baleen, or a beetle’s gullet. He can even risethrough a stalk of grass with the upward…

If you forget me, remember the Italian icewe shared in Venice, leaning over a parapet.I believe it was sour apple. Now, you plucka single tulip from the pixelated blizzard,expecting from me, a Pavlovian response.In the absence of stimulus, my mind returnsto a paradisiacal state, where I am continuallypiqued, but not obligated to produce, or respond.There…

I remember the lure of seed, the outstretched hand          begging me to nest beside him in bed during those first nights, the pecks, the treats, the ecstasy          of new love swelling inside my breast right before everything changed. Some nights, it’s just once, a soft blow          that stings for an instant, but doesn’t leave a mark. Some nights,…