You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

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

I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.

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

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

The sin is existing.

If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray

Mostly he ate what was put on his plate
snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack
Once a zipper Unzipped

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

I am still waiting for the lion

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

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

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

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.

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

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

There is so little left of the tomato plants.