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

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

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

Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

I myself should never have been born

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

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

I am still waiting for the lion

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

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

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

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

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

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