the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

You said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet

He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.

we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts

I am still waiting for the lion

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.