Ore-clusters in the lad’s hands
glow under the fluvial sun
as he scatters their uneven
facets within the mesh perforated
like a tulle veil sieving
the lad’s momentum.

Sing, muse, where immortal tides embrace,
As Thetis leads her son beyond the mortal race;
No plea to Zeus, the ancient pact of gods holds sure,
In their sacred kinship ages pass but hearts endure.

In the flaming foliage of words:
brilliant colors and undergrowth,
the hedges and briers,
the gorse, the furze of it,
the scratch and tear of it,
the brief flowering amid thorns

I walk along hollow road,
rabid raccoons to the west
in delirium tremens one dies at
our barn door
twitching and grimacing,
black bears starve to the south
on age-old migratory trails
ravage neighbors’ kitchens

He declares he will fly
with such certainty
I do not believe
he is being metaphorical.

Who am I to say perhaps,
maybe? Isn’t shaping possibilities
why I am sitting in this office?

I wish I had antlers.
They’d stop the small talk.
Nothing too fancy, maybe 30 pounds,
four or five points per side.
Every spring they’d grow,
soft and velvety.
I’d rub them against
the sides of buildings and lamposts.

One last trip
on the New Lots Line
that trundles up
from its tunnel

just as the Brooklyn neighborhoods
turn to Brownsville,
turn to near ruin.
The train takes the 90 degree

Centre Stage
The leader
Hooked on your every pluck, every strum, every bow,
Blocked out the rest of the symphony
Enthralled by you completely,
The thoughtfulness moves me

It looks near the peak like wind has rubbed alpine grass
from the clean-edged boulders like paint from the head
of a statue of a child. You take a photo of Hank and me
in which we are invisible against a mountain of ankle-
breaking gaps.

But it won’t be;
gravis, gravis, gravis,
be sure of that.

The good books tell us
feed the hungry
be kind and loving
to kith and kin

Today, I begin as a hollow “O”:
a ceramic lung waiting for the steaming pour,
the sensation of an honest heat.
Mostly, I am grateful for the hands:
the way they cradle my frame.
Not to own. Never to own.

We need love
When there’s nothing
Left to share.
We need love
When all is
Hardening cement.
We need love

The mind must break through the chains
Of enslavement and petty property owners.
Emancipate the mind
The heart will follow
The truth, always in turmoil,
Will not fall between the cracks

born on Woodridge lane
love nurtures connection
try so hard in a toddler’s arms
first steps first words first school day
first dance first driving lesson

A heart lacking good sense,
chasing after its yearn
like a bull to its treacherous
slaughter, praying
for its plans to see the
light of success

The night—quiet but full of hushed bickering—
returned. I put on headphones, but in vain.
The moon was bright yet restlessly flickering.

Looking at the photos on the wall—once sweet—
I could feel the lies and yelling

At thirteen, she wanders
fields near razed homes in Bucha,
hears echoes of cries eerie
in shattered walls. She shelters
in hollows of a hospital turned home.
Once upon a time, she was a child
with eager eyes in search
of trinkets in a greenhouse—

in this poem i will assess all the winding routes to betterment

examine my inner workings
and optimize them
make another list
a financial report
break down my existence into simple word problems

if the world continues on
long enough, past
you and me and everyone
we know, will every
house be a house
where someone famous once
lived, every home a museum, except maybe ours

The waitress didn’t call me honey when she set down my bowl of clam chowder
but said she liked my cheap sunglasses,
and looked at me strangely when I made some graceless joke about them,
utterly unprepared for a compliment

My hanging basket of geraniums dies
on my front porch, soil in a pot
surrounded by three sides of bricks.
I leave for work, come home every day,
thinking I should clean this thing out,
put something new in its place.

In a low-slung stone building
commas return like monks, slightly
drunk after sipping Trappist Ale.
They have taken a vow of silence
and do not hum between titles of hymns,
films, foreign phrases and blessings.

Conjure a faun in the middle of field.

There’s a cabin in the distance, homespun
& brown, & the thick-torso’d wild turkeys
march a few feet away, leaving dinosaur
tracks in their wake.

Don’t let any of this stop you.

The smoke runs thin
by mid-morning

The river is once again
worth waking for

I approach the water,
spread my arms,

wade,
then rise