this poem is the story of us/
written
between two pieces of paper/
he talked about us as though
he is not one amongst us/
as far
as i’m telling the story, the talk is
about us, ie, you and me and him/

of mass shootings and love and chopsticks and bridges and warmth and cherry blossoms and expectations and acrostic poems and
m Maybe it’s naïve for me to expect the world to scream
a and shoot just because another human is shot.
s Silence is not the absence of a gunshot.
s Silence is the presence of a bulletstorm.

She walks in, seventeen and agate-pale,
to view the Difference Engine No. 1
with her maman—blue taffeta, white veil,
herself a fearsome intellect and bastion
of social justice. Great gold instrument,
steam engine structure and pipe organ height,
exquisitely bewitching. Ada, intent
on further knowledge,

My hair is wet and drips. Water collects
breeze-chilled
in the small of my back.

The time is half-past
bittersweet. The day ends simply
and begins. Exhausted, refreshed,

Mostly brown fields salted with white patches of snow—
moist from winter’s thaw and the coming green of spring.
It’s there in the going and coming of seasons, the earth
swallows your fading white form as you walk away.
I follow to the blue horizon wishing you would not depart.

I hate shaving.
Thinking enlists in its war.
The two dimensions of reflection
summarize me.
Foam licks my temporal chin,
I confess to the razor how
I’m leaving immortality behind
for someone else to believe in like a dolt.