my friends’ fathers are dropping I mean dying like flies
I am still waiting for the lion
Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night; should have boiled old coffee before noon.
It recommended soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent to parent might calm and soothe the kid.
Even as the sun warms the concrete the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.
We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…
Her brown eyes, how a fig considers itself.
I suffer visions and many indignities while looking for the Lobster
you quit wearing pants loaf around your yard in hole-nipped panties
Even from this distance I could go out the door it would bang shut and crumble
this is what I want you to to see: leaves falling because it is too late for them not to
We stop doing dishes while a mile unwinds from the tree outside.
you know that baby swallows make silver ripples in wild rivers to court reeds?
and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub at the Assisted Living Place
my father holds his favorite drink
Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then. Bring the dancer back to the stalks.
my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight, and there are already way too many fragments in this house
I myself should never have been born
The two of us toast to a man we both love, to whatever degree, clink our glasses and laugh…
If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray