Poetry

Raccoon

A man with CRCK on his snapback. A man in a BLDBTH hoodie [what happened to the affable vowels?]. I stay shy of the men on the bus because we know who we are. We are propelled by kimchi and cologne that smells of diesel fuel and demon. Five hours of trance and hard consonants….

First Encounter

Make a drawing of it, I was told My world of simple sun, bare land She was raised in that kennel on the hill An old trailer, I draw it vertical, tipped up on its rear end There’s plenty light but little shade I add some frenchified shadow around the trailer A loud squeak, ka-pow!…

The Conductor

Breezing easily between exotic Chinoiserie and hometown hoedown, whisking lightly between woodwind delicacy and jazzy trombone, he must have the widest and oddest repertoire of gestures, which allows him a stylistic and dynamic range unusual even among today’s most highly regarded conductors. The way he slipped from the grandiose opening Adagio maestoso to the suddenly…

Three Days Flu No Shower

My armpits smell like Campbell’s soup and my hair feels like the welcome mat beneath the sign to wipe your feet between the showroom and the shop. Who’s the new guy sweeping up? Six bucks an hour, off the books. Outside the showroom and the shop, he sleeps in cabs of junkyard trucks, eats at…

Note to Self

Why are you so hard on the suicide like self-love is his only problem not getting the position of his body right in front of the train? Full sun. The mirror in the hotel actually a television set, no one here to make a commentary to, last night, you sat next to the brother in…

That Year

I meet Margaret Mead that year— “that old lady, what a pain in the ass she is!”— or so her helper says, a dreadlocked Dominican from Yonkers; but outside her suite at the Museum of Natural History in the corner turret high above 77th & Columbus after she’s pottered off I take photos of the…

Feet

We were sitting in the restaurant window when I heard myself saying Seamus is here– though there was no greeting, and our view was blocked by a brewery lorry pulled up on the kerb. I’d no sight of him, but it was nothing spooky either. What I had seen under the lorry were two feet…