At three in the morning, / the mind becomes a house / where all the doors have been left unlatched. / It doesn’t think of grand things. / It doesn’t solve the equations of the stars / or settle the ancient debts of the heart. / Instead, it watches a single curtain move. / It counts the seconds between the refrigerator’s hums. / It remembers a gray sweater lost in 1994and wonders where it is keeping warm tonight.
In the cave beneath the waterfall, / he takes off his shirt and runs / straight into the jets of hard mineral / water funneling down the rock, / all dark except for his shining back / twisted with muscle. He throws water at me / and I scream, droplets spattering / my plastic poncho. This is the same boy / who, across the table at the restaurant, / confided in me the inner workings of miracles.
I caught him in his bathroom dumping live fish / on account of he was moving house. If he loved me / he’d set the fish down right this instant! / He didn’t love me but he liked me well enough / to stop, to drive across town, over speed bumps, / to his new place, me with that half-filled tank . . .
The crisper drawers / are the refrigerator’s calves. / The backsides of tires / are the calves of cars. / As high as the mist rises up / from where the white cords of falling water / plunge into the blue lagoon / is how high the calves / of a waterfall are. / A campfire’s calves / are comparatively low / for they’re its glowing embers. / Why can’t we see / the Statue of Liberty’s calves?
I was a great collaborator with / wartime cigarettes, an artist / with the conical scream-sighs / of life under bombardment. / I trust you more under / a broken street lamp, under / a shattered sky space, / where time stills / Than I ever did at dinner / tables pushed together on / sidewalks where some grand / conspiracy was hatched beneath . . .
Between her forefinger and thumb / my grandmother holds a needle threader— / a loop of wire on a tin coin / stamped with a lady’s cameo / so thin it must be valuable, the way / a dime is worth more than a nickel / She’d smudge her things with nail polish / to identify them as her own. What do you / call that color? Salmon? Dusty rose? / The cameo wears rose blush, scissors / with a dab of salmon above the hinge— / this when a pair of scissors was priceless . . .
Don't Talk to Me in a Cab / The man driving my Uber / apologizes to me / for being on the phone / as we speed through the Tudor / towers of Forest Hills after / midnight and past / a glowing LaGuardia / Airport and there’s no way / for me to adequately explain / to him / that if he weren’t on the / phone, I’d rather walk / myself / in the dark / through four neighborhoods / all the way home.
1. God invented strawberry [sic] / 2. God invented the lie I told my grandpa right before he died / 3. God invented the letter ‘m’ / 4. God invented my bed sheets being dotted with weird yellow crust that never sleeps / and slowly appears wherever it pleases / 5. God invented static electricity / 6. God invented marrow to fill up my otherwise empty bones / 7. God invented slaps to the face . . .
The Diner / The waiter asks, "What would you like?" The man says, "What I had yesterday." The waiter / pauses, looks out the window, and replies, "You cannot have it." / The Park / An old man sits on the park bench watching pigeons. "What are you doing?" I ask. "Waiting," he / says. "For what?" I ask. "For them to get tired of it," he replies. / The Museum / The sign says, "Do Not Touch." A child touches it anyway. The child is not punished. The sign, / having been touched, is no longer the same sign.
Once the summer night fell over the sky like a dark cloth, / or a black evening dress thrown across heaven's starry bed. / The hoo-hoot of an owl's complaint echoed from the branches / of a maple tree in the front yard. All else was silence. / The neighbor's unruly dog lay hushed beneath the porch. And a gentle wind, so unlike the fierce winds of winter, combed the leaves of the maple like so much hair. / We had solace for our grief inside talk about love. / You do not understand: my life always has been a puzzle, / a rune, a card player holding an unlucky hand.
Tried controlling my life— / One poem at a time— / And it seemed to work. / But then a random stanza / Came to me in distress. / Said for sanity’s sake / It needed more blank space— / Something about conformity, / And that was that. / Soon I found trouble / Everywhere I turned. / Caesura came calling in a cab. / Scared the dickens out of me. / I was a metonymical mess— / Alliteratively speaking, of course. / Chaos closed the door / Before I could even warn / The couplet kissing in the dark. / So I gave up verse entirely. / Never wrote another word again. / Not any worse for it— / Give or take an ode or two.
The hour overripe, promising sweetness / that stings the tongue, / God split the moon in two. / Miraculous how cleanly / these cleaved halves / dimpled disbelief. / And what was there to prove? / What window was shuttered? What violence / had I not suffered? / Once sundered, we cannot mend it. / I am half-lit. Half-witted. / Don’t say I didn’t warn you. / Hand me a knife: I’ll slice / and you choose the bigger or the brighter. / Love, let’s split the moon.
Just her and me: she sits with her legs / twined ankle to knee, her hand / hiding the bruises / on her cheek. She dangles car keys as if thinking / about escape to some otherwhere without these islands / of formica tabletops afloat in the neon Sargasso Sea / of two a.m. where I eat as quietly as I can, / not wanting to disturb her privacy / after she set down gently my cherry pie / and retreated back to the farthest table. / The jut of her jaw multiplied in every pane / sets night’s teeth on edge / in the doppler whine / of truck tires fading far away.
Jet-black lager like domino on swan / Toddler thoughts on the moon’s face / I wrote a novel during the year I knew you / Your casino watch and birthmark / We curved evenings out of rigid anger / You reminded me of a dead world / which is to say my childhood / I knew our time was baby time but I gave / it away anyway, spewing dollars / from buildings. As if no one could touch me / if I closed my eyes
Shut the window to the garden! / When the paper blinds you had / crinkled just so, not enough to keep light / out or us— / When the blinds folded as accordions / were replaced— / Not the cold room, chill in summer from / constant air… / Not the empty apartment sans couch, / us long on the rug your mother mailed / by the cardboard table you painstakingly / constructed when you looked at me / and whispered / my middle name… / We’re czars, you said, Nicholas and Katherine.