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

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

I myself should never have been born

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

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

We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.

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

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

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

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

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

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

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

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

the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…

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