Oct 9, 2014 | Uncategorized
3.
Everlasting maze.
For you, my friend,
you went through it
and out her other side
but you were there
abaft the barnacled bottoms of old books,
sleek traffic, sand in your Nikes
everything was yours. She drove.
No need for caution, kept your thoughts
to yourself,
you always do,
the
night
was like a crucifix
on
the wall over somebody’s bed.
What does that mean?
You know,
you always know,
just
stop thinking
and start talking.
Oct 7, 2014 | Uncategorized
2.
that’s why we chose
to be in body in the first place
or be in her
in
grace of union,
and no word said,
I
am the hum of whom
she has chosen,
small trout
busy in her stream,
broken kayaks litter her backyard,
capisce?
I didn’t, I thought he wrote capsize
and laughed,
he
slugged me
the way they do, men,
and
I was only ten
or something, who knows
how old anybody really is.
Oct 6, 2014 | Uncategorized
for Tamas in Brooklyn
1.
Luxurious antidotes,
phasellus ille,
the sea
you
mean to float on is
coterminous
with her affections
(Coney Island, minuit)
midnight, I see it already, the car
she’s driving
down
Ocean,
the stately Jewish houses,
then shining
boardwalk full of maybes
and far away the curl of moonlight
on the tenth-night wave
cresting way out there
the way they do,
where
sharks calve and play,
happy hunting, lover,
the
stick-shift
never felt so good, staggered green lights,
a car knows how to go,
Oct 4, 2014 | Uncategorized
Betty Reid Mandell (Charlotte’s mother, my mother-in-law), 1924-2014
Oct 2, 2014 | Uncategorized
17.
But Hammerklavier
is what he wrote
music defined by its instrument,
the womb that bore it
brass and wood and steel
as if I were to call these words
men or women walking in a peculiar land
because you are my music too
I heard you with my hands.
FIN
Oct 1, 2014 | Uncategorized
16.
And down it sinks
the thing you mean—
no names please
we’re all lovers here—
don’t you think pronouns are beside the point?
Sep 30, 2014 | Uncategorized
15.
Not sure how to spell that
would you repeat please
(engine running driver asleep
hedgerows full of gorse and fuchsia
how the rain brings the blossoms on)
not sure if it was wheel or wither
was it wheat or west or mill,
truckload of apples, Avalon?
Are you sure?
Does it bite?
Take off your house and wear the sky,
I know you’re shy,
keep talking fast, they won’t see your eyes.
Sep 28, 2014 | Uncategorized
14.
So something has changed—
the wave curled in at Brighton Beach
minutes after Rockaway—
we intercept our fates
traveling perpendicular
between Jupiter —that tyro star—
and where we are.
A line of fate
runs down the palm—
my head anyhow is full of Gypsies,
I am the tower of Babel
I am in heaven
you are angels
staggering around—
or is fate somehow
different from what happens?
A secret elsewhere buried deep in here?
Sep 25, 2014 | Uncategorized
13.
Her body
changed while she was away from it.
When she came home
the legs were longer, the floor
seemed a long way down,
thinner, less interesting.
She bought a book
to tell her what to do
but all it said was I love you,
a useless sentiment at the best of times—
She dreamed she was a chandelier
and streamed light down to fill an empty room
by then the ground was really far away.
Sep 25, 2014 | Uncategorized
A VOICE FULL OF CITIES
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