poems

 

The Maps We Made

When my feet touched ground again  after you,  my toes and heels landed in separate hemispheres; my arches caressed the equator.  Ahead: Giving soil, spring rain-soaked pasture parts for me–its welcome soothes my toes  into submergence amid pebbles and worms,  their sliver of Earth, they offer for my roots to grow, for my grounding as […]

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Phases of Heartbreak

My first city breath without you brought drafts of soot and sharp pebbles.  I remember how  my throat burned parched and bloody,  how muddy my mouth turned,  lips parting subway tracks,  carving out a nest and exhaling a corner of your absence, leaving a piece of it there. I held my breath the rest of […]

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Love Letter to Yesterday

I wonder if your pinpricks  peak when mine do– In the almost-waking morning,  when our love would come  in rustling sheets,  a left-arm reaching,  pollen coats the top layer of a dream  we were both in,  a sigh into your shoulder  like an exhale into Sunday,  the hours we have  before your train back home.  […]

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Show Must Go On

Sometimes, the ammonium smell of the curtains closing in comforts me in a way only chronic panic can. From a distance— peace with a hairline fracture— the hour turns from morning to too bright. My tasks are acrobats; they balance on tall shoulders, somersaulting through unchecked boxes, tightroping between tight timelines, and as I watch, […]

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“Compressed Borders” or “Social Anxiety” or “Evolution in Small Spaces”

1 I thought,  it’s a wonder  how quickly those eyes  can render your borders translucent under certain light– Your ecosystem of 25 years,  disorder and triumph,  dimpled peaks and valleyed base made opaque by a scan and then avert– a calculated refocus  relocation to a smoother landscape.  And suddenly, you’re an outline,  minimized and blurred,  […]

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Cobblestone Mornings

I can breathe in pebbles  and breathe out powder,  fine dust ground from inner churning,  excavating, grating ruminations— I’ve done it all my life.  Wake before sunrise with granite under my tongue,  still under covers,  I feel its course coat,  how these years have shaped you,  taste its metals,  how your bitterness works with you,  […]

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Lines of Communication

Between us,  words drill their tummies with a needle  and crochet themselves  over the threads that connect  our morning breath.    Shallow words,  but ours. Our concave sounds,  bellybuttons bounce on our sleepy string,  beads reading happy morning  and good Monday  and I dreamt my leg  traced your inner thigh in your sleep,  that I […]

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Sound Sleep”

They ask: In what language do you dream?  In poetry, propped up with proper punctuation; pointed and poised, periods and pauses  in their perfect places? Do you build moon castles  with well-fashioned brick fabrications,  cinder blocks stacked between slabs of sleepy cement,  stone peaks place kisses on a star-grazed night sky,  do you see in […]

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25

The art of tracking breaths before a year’s clock strikes: boxed inhales and exhales, even oxygenation,  in one— fresh out of studies, a future grows hips two— early twenties, a crisp December sunrise three— a kindling candle, a new job in Manhattan  four— a nest at a turning corner, retrospect, almost recycled hiccups, cough, halt, […]

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You Shaded Me, a Month Ago

My favorite tree dyed itself amber overnight— where it found its overtone,  from muddy roots or sooty sky,  I couldn’t know— Its covert shift, so unforeseen, morphing in the span between  my early rest to groggy rise,  its yellow struck me paralyzed,  its vibrancy sunkissed my eyes   like it sponged daylight into its hand— […]

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