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

My grandmother asked, “Does it feel like being widowed?”

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

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

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

It recommended
soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent
to parent might calm and soothe the kid.

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble

I have observed, the theorist
I am

this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.

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.

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

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