POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Letter To a Young Poet

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

beach
On Undressing a Color / On Undressing a Girl

I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.

Welcome To The House of Static

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

Mom, in Her Dementia, Steals Oranges

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

Clotheslines

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

I could, even now, go down to the water

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

Ode To the Dove Pt. VI (Avrom Sutzkever)

Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then.
Bring the dancer back to the stalks.

REVENGE SCENE

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.

Dear Deer in the Compost Pile

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

Back Suplex

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

close up of sun
Mercury in Retrograde

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

Drowning in sky

I have observed, the theorist
I am

Making Israeli Salad

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

3:17 AM as Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.

Like dirt

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

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

Hollywood Hills
the remarkable thing

I am still waiting for the lion

Aging Punks

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.