Roost
When you see your mother on the floor, tears flooding splintered cracks, ¿what do you tell her? ¿What do you tell your mother when she says quiero volar de aqui like birds? Jumping nest before their wings flesh out. Crash on asphalt. Waxy beaks open then close. Open close. ¿What …
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She
when the air cools at dusk, scent of primrose on chiffon. I press my face to her shawl, inhale remnants of warmth. She is music floating up from the dining room, where melody dwindles to absence. I recoil against the fire-glow end of her cigarette. She, the honeyed hall light …
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The apple tree
in my childhood yard was felled. The fruit would rot, attracting wasps and yellow jackets. Open mouths tore at the pulp. I stepped in the mushy mounds. I don’t notice the hollowed tunnels in my own apple heart that you burrowed through. Your entry and your exit. I have forgotten …
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YMCA
The man who sells us pizza moonlights here, lambasting women on stationary bikes up imaginary hills. His class, my friend says, always fills. There is something touching about this: a man’s unwanted flair for browbeating transformed into an asset at last. I know some misery finds the Y, too. A …
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September
and what is this quality of duration, this resolution, or the way resolve turns itself over stone fruit, strong coffee, sorting sense from sense turning the oven on and off, running the laundry, opening and closing windows tending the garden (winged things) a repetition of something basically present or maybe …
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Dear John Ashbery
You seem to understand the need to think things through all the while never getting up from the breakfast table. A plate of parmigiano-reggiano drizzled with honey—delish. The make-it-new-again poets wound up in the newspaper on the same page as murderers. My morning routine has flowering clovers and juggernauts in …
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How it Burned
In the photo of Notre Dame, three ravens swim in the churn of smoke and flame. In stories, ravens live close to the end of the world. They are hungry, and the cathedral is consumed already. They are ready. They like it this way. On that façade stands the carving …
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