was in high dudgeon the colonel yelled

lying flat your pug-rasps in
in petering
juxtaposition of stuttered blasts
out get out

You are this
which is not
that,
that
which is not
this.
You owe such and such
to whoever and whom,

I stop walking,
and contemplate
the way the thin
arm of this tree
once bent upward,
before stretching
out over the river.

I wait for a sign that you need me:

a wilting arm, dry soil,
but you give me nothing

so I trickle water into your mouth.

Just enough to tame my own thirst.

We take our color from the mines;
A frost of ash atop our coarse dark hair.

With brimstone flecks in the linarite of our
eyes, We see what lies in darkness—

Black holes to hell.

A declaration from the district office
we will not be teaching cursive this year
no pens will be required, no extra paper
we will not be teaching cursive this year.

In 1979 or so
Soviet-French
interplanetary
cooperation
(which boasted,
inter alia,
French scientific
tackle lugged
to Mars by the
USSR in 1971)
nearly hit
a new high
with an idea;

As a species, humans
live their lives in degrees
of alarm. Mostly, for most
of us, there isn’t much.
The world spins exactly
as we have come to expect it,
and caught wherever
we are,

a wobbling chin and her deserted glance hit the floor
in agony where we stood together while we chanted
misery: “you’re an ordinary man.” her mouth wrenched
an unforgettable sound cataclysmic eruption of scattered
emotions, broken speeches, tired and beaten hope
we were once before and not anymore but why

My mother’s pots of rosemary were tall, manicured
cones, broom swept earthy smelling evergreen,
flecked with lavender drops of blossoms
the shape of small hearts or lips,
she’d send me outside to retrieve a stem each time
she baked a chicken

I was a tourist from honey-milk land,
and Sister heard my question underneath.
She had her own.
“Are you packing?”
That kind of place.
The nun hugged her wizened chest.
She was old then,
dead now, I’m sure, thirty years on.

It’s strange how often
All these years later
I hear this guy
Sprawled big in that way certain
Italian men can be
Cater-corned across from
My solo table in the Boylston St eatery

Who were you before ships
became your shoes? Now you sway

on mesozoic legs wondering why
there’s no stability inside. I heard you pierced

ears with knives and severed free thinking
on every continent before.

At the gallery is The Kiss
– you know the one –
Those two marble lovers, oblivious, entwined,
Stealing a moment never meant to be seen.
Did they know what would come, I wonder.
Do you know they had names?

traveling through lightning is
disorienting
I am here
I am not
all this living is more electrifying
when the sky trembles
with light

A picturesque day
in Newtown: scattering
clouds danced joyfully,
making playful shapes,
monkeys and rhinos
followed the children
from car to classroom.
Sun rays shone warmly
above, soon to reveal
the twenty-six halos of
innocent souls.

There you are Dad
on our cobbled deck
splayed out in my favorite chair,
our nearly feral cat
content to be on your lap.
You hold up the perfect tomato
so round and red-ripe—
I can almost smell it.

whispers the woman sitting next to me.
I’ve seen her here before–drinking alone,
her skin heavy with loss.
This close, the taste of her regret is pungent,
and is swallowed with each sip of my vodka-tonic.

I was nine. My parents came home hollow from the hospital.
My mother sobbed in wild animal cries, violent splotches
of purple spread from under her skin, her chest
her cheekbones tainted; my father silent
slumped in his easy chair, his neck gray-yellow
half of his face buried in clenched raw knuckles.

Teachers pat me like a loaf
especially the chalk-dusted
I learn early who has authority

Behaving is more important
than the Theory of Relativity
The length of my hems a critical topic

When I was your age
the subway cost fifteen cents
gas cost thirty-two cents a gallon
television was free
& so was Saturday confession
in preparation for Sunday communion
when I was your age…

Commuting, standing
in a half-empty
subway car, reading news
on my phone, an article

on two competing
theories of consciousness,
triggers a memory…

I remember being told to soak
myself in unreason—that words
fall to pieces because the wind

needs her role; not everything
must be a weight to grunt over.

Once we followed the others on all fours,
contributing trails through grass and brush
to favorite trees and watering holes
before our spines thrust us up on two feet…