POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Finding My Fix

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

Tea

my father holds
his favorite drink

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

Lavandula

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

Unerased | Steep Steps

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

Hollywood Hills
the remarkable thing

I am still waiting for the lion

[Zoetrope with Particulates in it and a Newborn]

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

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…

Good Driver

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

The Body is a Sin

The sin is existing.

books
Ode To the Dove Pt. V (Avrom Sutzkever)

I am still waiting for the lion

oh Manifesto

The collective
failure
of ethical standards

Making Israeli Salad

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

heavy rain
The Plot

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

melting ice cap
blue is the color of surrender

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

Drowning in sky

I have observed, the theorist
I am

The River

I myself should never have been born

I Garden at the Edge of Autumn

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

Willpower

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

The Kotel in Jerusalem is Filled with Cracks

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