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

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

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

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.

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.

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…

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to

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

my father holds
his favorite drink

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

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

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