POETRY

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

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

The Body is a Sin

The sin is existing.

First

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

Clotheslines

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

The River

I myself should never have been born

The State School 1984 His Given Name Was Wilbur  We Called Him Magpie

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

All In

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

Welcome To The House of Static

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

Making Israeli Salad

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

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

The Man

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…

Ode To the Dove Pt. VI (Avrom Sutzkever)

Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then.
Bring the dancer back to the stalks.

Condolences

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

The Kotel in Jerusalem is Filled with Cracks

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

if detritus is all i’m made up of

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

Snow Falls from Branches

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

woman at bar
After She Told Me You Pushed Her Down the Stairs

Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.

Finding My Fix

I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.

Lavandula

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