Oldest Daughter
A quiet moment: me, sitting in the morning, peeling a tangerine
pliant, fragrant, generous. I breathe
in citrus groves and pry soft segments apart, release a torrent with my tongue.
Perched in the captain seat, I rolled down the window of the old minivan stuck my head out caress of oran…
World Trade the Past for a Nickel
September 13, 2021, 9/11 Memorial and Oculus Transportation Hub, NY, NY Oculus, show me what I seek. For me it was never about the heights Real New Yorkers(™) seldom look up I was too young to be anything but real not even myself, who looks up now. But tunnels are an endless maze in recollection…
Villanelle Origin Story
for Cameron
A wooden sword and candy red hair, whirling, twirling lioness on a summer’s day, of harm and harming, there is no care.
Grown men have fled the field and stare “I fear I’d hurt her if I tried to play!” A wooden sword and candy red hair,
A goblin grin, her nostrils flare. “Be…
Launder
Scentless lotions on cellulite thighs— inherited habit. Customed other mothers and learned movie motions don’t smell, like him, becoming sterile, sweaty, and writhing; his fume’s religious. Formaldehyde. Pickled mementos stored on a hinge, clutching a fistful of her when and why. He could not be…
The Seat Next To Me
Nobody sits next to me on the bus. Boarding passengers of slender girth or impressive heft—even those of an enviable and unbounded sexuality—ignore, overlook, or simply slide by the apparent barrenness of my soul. Today I’m in no mood. I’m nearly forty, and I have a date for the first time in mo…
Luxury Jail
I’m glad I had a top bunk. It was my island of half-safety. And yet I must acknowledge the threat may not have existed at all, because the way some tell it, the Catawanee County jail is the Park Hyatt of Tennessee jailhouses. Two days ago, it was a hot June Friday, and men of various ages, ethni…
Alone w/ Some Grackle, Starling or Crow
mimicking tongue, parodying / the world – Edwards
A bird strange within the walls of my chest is caught, who being hurt takes cruel delight in humiliating me. Having learned a few words, scant and hurtful, it mutters these, mutters from the stone it sits upon in the deep trap of my sinew-boun…
A Notebook Lost Near Tuscarora
Out where they scuttled the tracks of the Erie Railroad at Keshequa Creek crossing, you’ll find the county mapped with roads named for backsliders and saints, for one archangel, and a lone Redemption Street — its lawns littered with toys, locks changed or missing, and a woman of indeterminate ag…
Disambiguation With Finger Lakes and Riesling
This Riesling carries the terroir of the Lake Seneca coast, the wine label says. Somebody has to review these products. I hope you don’t wonder who I am when I talk like this, that you can trust this guano ethos attuned to mineral and stone. The birds are mostly gone. I don’t question owls and b…
27 Bones
The air on the plane is dry I sip stale coffee from a paper cup Your hands look old my daughter says.
Abuela left Cuba in a plane to marry her love in New Orleans. These hands will never wash or dust or cook, he told her.
Years of bleach and Palmolive left delicate lines and folds papere…
From the Back Bar
Twenty so odd stools crowd round a half-wood bar, filled with patrons in revelry, strangers bound by nothing more than an ache to quench their thirsts. At day’s end, we all share some deep recurring innate dryness, and these guests all have flocked here to take some rest before they gradually dr…
After Camonghne Felix’s “Lost Poem RX”
The stranger across the street Asks me if I want to die, and I say Only if it is a happy death If I were to die now
I’m not worried about missing out on my first drink being able to rent cars owning my first house or waiting to turn 65 for the chance to retire
Yes, my heart yearns …
Oswego River Silence
Summer goes abandoned. The October-strewn ditchbank runnels beside my path, sparing my footfalls any echoes. Nothing glows but late asters and goldenrods.
The only words I’d speak would be unwise counsel to no one, certainly not the cardinal or hawk who refuse all autumnal vectors south.
I…
Yelping Bar 342
If you leave a message that means anything, I promise I’ll call you. Here’s proof: It was imperative that I return Ren’s purse that she left looped to the chairback at the bar last night when she got blackout drunk. I texted her three times before realizing the phone that I was texting was in th…
Near Hunts Point
Tangent to constellations now surfacing in the dusk there’s a square of mottled light from a gateshack along the Bronx River, a candle lit by a widow, and the runaway girl, missing all these summers, searching with a lighter for an unlocked door down a road that leads away from the city.
The Stars and Tides
“I can see the stars,” I told my Dad the first night we stayed at our new home in Tennessee. My dad smiled, “it’s so much prettier here than that shithole we came from.” Then before he went inside, he squeezed my shoulder and said, “I have a good feeling about this place, kid. I just know…
My Papa’s Hands
I remember your hands The most Labor-worn and never smooth They were large hands Fit for a lumberjack Yet old and wise Never withered Strength within each Groove and wrinkle Though gentle when you’d Lead me through Your colorful spring garden Blues Pinks Purples All bright in …
Rio Grande
This ground has always been cruel:
the way plate collided with plate 36 million years ago, the way heat then bubbled up. The result? Volcanoes, hot springs, minerals, the Rio Grande.
Or the way Luis Carvajal raided the Rio Grande in 1582, capturing hundreds of Indians, selling them as sl…
The Time I Flew
My Dad worked atop a hill that loomed over another hill.
“Mommy, I was so worried for you.”
Five-year-old me didn’t understand the concept of death, not really. Mom says she tried to stop the car. She clung onto the back and waited for her superhuman strength to kick in. I used to roll dow…
Let the Girl Dance
Macrame would have made the most sense. Anyone would agree. Crafts were the longtime hammock for my hummingbird heart, the only cat’s cradle where my breathing slowed.
Russian Literature Discussion Group was a muscular option. My spleen would soften in Rose Parlor chairs. My Grand Inquisitor …
By Pity Undeterred
This old ugly contest of who’s on first, whose prize. I feel ready for tit-and-bum journalism, finally, ready to invent new commonplaces, to allow myself to imagine how it would feel to believe what I report. But, wary, I stick to reading. The invitation writ on the wall of the restroom beckons:…
Standard Changes
After “Nature Boy”
For lousy pay, I drove a van between Detroit and Wapakoneta, Ohio, spinning it once in a white-out storm and sliding up the Luna Pier exit
to stamp and thaw among lost souls in the moon’s damp firehouse. Later, I shot weddings, shingled roofs, herded
children and…
The day you died I thought-
I want to move around unseen whisper my breath over your brow brush my fingertips along your jaw slack
I’d like to draw your breath in  …
Azul Cielo
I Raise My Eyes To The Skies
