Poems

Let us stitch ourselves together slowly

Let us stitch ourselves together slowly
My right thumbnail to yours
Plane to plane, arch to arch,
Knuckle to hard knuckle.
 
It is morning and
Sun brings the purple cloves into relief
The black of my mug reflects, a beating kidney heart on camel coffee
Its smooth outline interrupted by a puddle of melted cream, Saturn in some brown universe.
You have  a strong nose and blue eyes.
 
He closes the window
And the churn of the city becomes the muffled idling of trucks and children
 
And now it is night,
I imagine.
We watch the city lights: the electric plant, the school,
The sign at the bodega where you bought a sandwich
Spins red and green, promising us cappuccinos in the morning and cigarettes whenever
And we know, I imagine, that
It is time to close the curtains,
The blue weight of the fabric on the city lights and the bricks folds
Us into ourselves and we lay on our backs and I take the inside of your elbow, that soft whiteness I’ve touched before in disbelief and stitch it, slowly,
needle and thread, to my own

2015

The Philharmonic in Prospect Park

I lay on my back,
like last year,
in shorts and summer legs looking at the purple black sky, at the stars and planets that had inked their way through the city lights. in manhattan, my home, only fragments appear to exist: an elbow, an eye, the point of a sword.
But here, casseopia fights her way through the weft of night, appearing whole she finds her home, dropping some form of grace.
 
Walking home from the philharmonic in prospect park we four were the bruised pillared shadows on the rough pavement, still warm from the day. The cool wide black fields, lagoons presided over by pools of street lights, beetle black tree trunks. Bags filled with the empty bodies of wine bottles and packaged crackers. The night could have echoed our voices in infinity.
 
We bruises moved north.
 
There was no point
To that milky night except that we were young
Enough and dressed in the cool air
After the molasses of day
A little brighter for the music and the wine, for the
notes strewn across the black grass
And picnic blankets. 

2015

Zypria

You mend fishing nets
and paint our house - white to blue - 
for the summer
I cook fish that mended nets have caught
In paper
In ovens
In pans
And we eat these fish
at our table.
And we sleep in our bed.

Our country says it's not divided, 
But,
Please.
There is a wall.

2010

Paper Cranes                                                                         

A single string of birds hang
impaled on a red ribbon from the reddened maple by our deck
suspended over greenery, the brilliant colors now whitened to blue
proud necks shrinking by water and sun

Perfect squares
perfectly square squares
perfect square squares taken from packages, cut from magazines
square colors promising luck and loyalty: psychedelic paisleys, Payne's Greys, reverse leopards
(good luck squares)
carefully vomited across a lichened table.

her agitated motions and half-conscious invitation to join the folding.
her gold hair pulled back in haste.
lost inside and blinded by her colors.
huddled aggressively forward
nimble nimble fingers dictating blunted creases and dulled points,
fighting for elegance

squares
opening and closing at the hands of an abandoned Zealot
opening and closing creases begetting wings, necks and faces
to be impaled on strings and hung together from sills

how many
how many
what sizes
what colors
what ribbons
no good
no good
no good
no good

fingers working at folding and folding
good luck charms

fighting for presence and sanity and nothing
fighting for nothing

no good
no good
no good
no good

2010