POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Going Broke

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

[Zoetrope with Particulates in it and a Newborn]

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

things they won’t tell you but should:

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

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.

Drowning in sky

I have observed, the theorist
I am

The Kotel in Jerusalem is Filled with Cracks

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

Dis Place Ment

People have always coped with flooding, and they learned to cope with death.

Making Israeli Salad

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

Aging Punks

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

Fallout Shelter

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

Hollywood Hills
the remarkable thing

I am still waiting for the lion

Electric Eels, Finishing School, Teeth

Millions of Americans have been affected by identity theft. It’s probably the greenhouse gases.

There is an alternative universe

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

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.

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.

Babylon

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

The River

I myself should never have been born

Willpower

Live the rest of your life
from one worst case to another.

Condolences

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

appetites

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