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

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.

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

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

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

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

If my life was the size of my arm, I would stretch it out for you.

I myself should never have been born

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

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

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

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

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

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

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