poems

 

When My Anxiety Speaks

This is the thing, I know, that will expose me. To all the folks who openly chose me, all the friends who caught me and rose me, all the blood that thinks that it knows me, all the eyes whose openness froze me— my stillness unclothes me; it taunts and erodes me. My curtains have […]

Read more...

From the Fountain at the MET

Like pennies, I’ve caught and cradled promises tossed in handfuls between tourist passersby hailing taxis curbside,  their soon, soon pledges ring of goodbye as yellow doors swing— Winds are strong near my waters,  and so I hold stray vows in my fountain bed.  My limbs glisten  with giggles of children  who play near my dancing;  proposals […]

Read more...

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 […]

Read more...

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 […]

Read more...

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.  […]

Read more...

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, […]

Read more...

“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,  […]

Read more...

Cobblestone Mornings

I can breathe in pebbles  and breathe out powder,  dust ground from my 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,  […]

Read more...

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 […]

Read more...

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 […]

Read more...