Category: Poetry

Ours was the blue house on Donnelly. We weren’t the kind for cucumber & dill. It was takeout, with Ann’s hours, or fish sticks. We tried to be good, responsible married folk, but more nights than not I would drive home the crinkly bag from Joy Luck and salivate through the yellow lights to the…

Bursts of tissue paper and nerves, I lean over and hope you will stay awhile in the moments.  I want to be close, if not attached,  while the party goes on outside: popcorn on the floor, a tin mug crying with cool, a booth dark with body oil. Here relief tightens,  and Gold Dust Woman…

Are we cooking? Let’s do the bread with pepper flakes and thyme and light candles whose shrinkage  tell of prior nights at a foldup table by the TV,  off. Our shapes engorge on the curved screen.  When will you fly to Indiana?  You’ve printed the ticket and folded it  many times, paper to leather,  transfiguration…

No need to be first, no care for right, I ask  the privilege of knowing you  unlike anyone has.  Your sanctum for mine.  Your thoughts in real time,  and a necklace of blue grapes  to make bitter wine as dusk bleeds over Zurich  and dogs’ ears dial to slow taxis— I take the ziggy lane, …

Good intentions left unspoken, stale before they’re tasted— What’s the use of all this virtue? Your eyes are glazing over for well wishes  unfelt, unmeant, scentless.  No one stays for coffee as the March draft whines through the cathedral of our thoughts.  Let the cups tip and ring. Let the altarcloth snap. Let the walls…

We braced for the fall into blue majesty, dive-bombing and splinters,  but were left sunning our backs over the ozone layer. Before we felt the burn we turned to vapor. No telling leaves or auguries could save us  from piecing apart like monkey bread. Cinnamon mist and sticky fingers. There is no pain in oblivion…