PERICARDIUM (belated Valentines Prayer)

• In my old age let me study
• the great vessels 
• the Venus drainage
• the functions which prevent 
• the heart from overflowing 
• the wise tension of that
• which is flexible 
• but does not stretch beyond 
• let me eat barley, scallions
• take bruises as signals 
• and impact as impacting 
• tally the events which sent 
• my heart blood to 
• my face, stomach
• pounding at receipt 
• even grocery store roses 
• wrapped in loud plastic
• eyes and skin changing color 
• to prove the 
• world

Hearts & Minds

 The doctor doesn't even need my clothes

It's a hernia

Get surgery

You'll be fine in 6 months

I was thinking last September if

I'd be fine six months hence

unrelated 

look,

my mind is still willing.

forgetting the sabbath prayers

what is trust

between a cockroach

& the harbor of a rotten vanity

between beds of a bunk

between dust & a mistuned piano

between boca burgers & a toaster oven

between Jeopardy & 7

between faith & a glass of grape juice

between turtles & ninja

between pillows & erections

& shame & local access television

& pee & porcelain

& grey scale tiles of a bathroom floor

between trust & brothers

is love ideally

if not resentment

condemnation

an apartment of grievances

to tow around in a storage locker

for the rest of a life

like childhood somehow betrayed gravity

& punishment is between

trust & forgiveness

Still thinking about it

I wish you had met me at low tide

On that limestone poppy ridge 

In the autumn when the lifeguards

Go back to college

Tossed my windswept seastrewn heart

Into an oyster bucket

Swam to the sprinting moon with me

Fearless of drowning

throwing bushes of berries over prison walls
and always the audacity to ask another question
to want more and more and more
until the highway comes to a short stop
the narrative of unfurling myself

as rug to be walked on

serves neither of us

COURTESY + COMMON SENSE

• pale gold castle school
• it was so special, that time 
• everything mattered
• what we got at the corner store
• what kind of muffin, dense chocolate 
• or oily poppyseed 
• chocolate milk or Martinelli’s
• diet coke with lemon 
• I wish I smoked then
• so I could return to it now
• stand in a corner and put on a song
• close my eyes and hold the ember 
• out like a lantern
• airplane arms rigid drifting 
• in a controlled 
• glide

NEW KIND OF FIGHT

how could you budge
how could I 
both so chiseled
but it’s cute to be shy 
cute to be alive
cute to be too much 
blinking bright eyes 
in the hot pink landscape 
clapping telephone game 
where you pass along desires 

lap to lap figure eight 
until someone ends up 
closer to what 

they want 

IMPRINT (pear poem 4)

I can’t write it
right 

I am only just learning
to treasure everything  

I wish you could see the mountain today
I wish we could meet
in closeness

some chaotic street
some sour smell

you holding yourself in 
me letting myself out 

Pear Poem 3 (reading about the moon)

picture of you crouched on a rock 
calling the tides, sending strings out 
from your fingers 

hot palms you bought our 
movie tickets, too slippery to hold 
in the butter dark 

the moon, a coin, and our bodies
churning along 

crawling onto the couch,
one paw down my pants 

they say the moon is a stranger,
a case of faces

dark brown mole on your 
shining chin, as kids we teased 
it had its own population

shy islands 
we locked into each other, 
neither of us knowing 
what do with pain 

you learned so much 

eating and spitting yourself 
out again 

aged on the porch, young in the wind 
reading about Zen, making altars 
with garbage, cooking Poppy tea

living with your mother, your father, 

and then yourself, 
dying 

you were her moon, and mine 

dignified in the dark

eager and kind 

moon always looking for 
the sun of total
warmth 

dozing in the promise 

of a shadow 

lifting  

 ever the orange laced with garlic

the pungent and the floral 

in tandem 

in opposition, the burnt milk

forgotten on the stove

harkens back to a cup of milk

left in my childhood bedroom for weeks

when it spilled 

i wiped up the curdled clumps with a sweatshirt

and, for fear,

closed it in my unicorn trunk

hoping it could somehow disappear

the key is in the resolution

--did i reveal the sweatshirt, 

dragging it down the stairs in two fingers,

hoping for forgiveness?

was it discovered from the growing smell

and i hunted down for answers?

was there a tender hug

conveying a gentle understanding

on how hard it is to remember 

anything in this world?--

my memory only holds 

the isolating shame

having done wrong, 

and in so, being wrong.

and at this moment

my child spills his milk

while watching tv in the living room

and leaves it to drip off the side table

my voice wells just slightly 

for a moment at his inaction

it being hard to remember

how unsettling 

those shifts in tone can feel

just the very unsturdiness 

of moving through the world

only longing to be swathed

in a sweet and unconditional love

Autobiography

I was born in the endless mountains

And from there developed an endless

Need to be held between valleys

Lehigh, Lehigh, lama sabachtani ?

Teenage Mary Magdalene, seduced

By the Lutheran lighting tech, I

Still sing the passion play songs 

And feel wild enough to get to heaven

Julianne and I paced the overflow pond

In halter tops and platform sandals

I always picture her nose deep in sick lit

Perched in an apple tree, one leg swinging

Before Applewood sold the orchard

shop my moms yard sale

you left me to bargain

in the bric a brac bin

with a rocking horse disposition

and crocheted mittens

despite the gnomes 

their lacquers

the ducks-in-a-rows

i won the day

found treasure antiqued in

a sorry bucket

i switched the stickers

you'd say

i knew the lucky colors

you'd say

whats the price

of a music box to a deaf heart

its worth the tickling ridges

and the teeth of the harp

say this spinning can last 

only so long

as wooden fruit can grow

so you left me to the bottom of the binners

with a receipt book

and a roll of belgian francs

and the ziploc idiom

that all jewelry is costume

jewelry beneath a certain standard

of goldness

 

 

 

In Ten Years

I think the curse of our self-awareness

is the vanity that comes from forever

situating ourselves within our arcs,

it's relentless, it's not total life ruining

addiction, but it needs a group, or we

need witnesses to witness us all 

just witnessing ourselves. It's what

basically has our barons rewriting 

history by downgrading the space

race for the sake of four minutes

of weightlessness and four minutes

of breathless commentary. We are

all our agents in real time and honestly

it's exhausting, most of the universe is 

a vacuum but then it also fills a 

vacuum and we're so unprepared for 

when it does that, when we're just 

wondering about optics all the time instead 

of singing songs about ourselves that 

might just land on someone else so

that they may continue the song

or just make a subtle amendment

because they want someone else

to get the reference they chose

to help make the reference to 

themself. When we sing and when

we return to the same song ten

years after, it is with the hope that

in the years between we quietly went

about our way finding comfort when

we could, adjusting our circumstances,

just doing the things that needed to be

done, instead of hovering in place,

in fear of losing the words, or their

cadence and expecting that if the

song no longer remains the same

then neither does the audience. 

SHARING A BED

fire dampens 

little submissive archetype 

bearing resentful sweets

I will contain, not move

I will press you and 

never be satisfied with 

the pressing 

think of the sweet pizza 

I lived on in Queens 

roll my body out

give it a chance 

to deflate

were the stars more

when we were young, 

or were our brains just 

better at falling?

brains like leaking lakes

spring-green grass

shaking in low wind 

and a chanted whisper

daring no-one 

to love you

to honor it all

i had a dream that i called

this guy over to my house 

to sleep with me, and then

when my queer femme 

friends were over i got

terrified they’d see him,

he’d out me, he came into 

the kitchen where we were

hangin’ from the bedroom

where i’d stashed him, he

was topless wearing blue

jeans and a bandana head

band and i gave him dagger

stares like “get back in the

room!” subtly as i could 

(when you hide someone

else, you’re hiding part of

yourself, duh!) today i re-

watch a sex scene from 

“normal people” to self-

pleasure before going to

meet up with him (express

my sexual energy— at least

that roiling surface level)

i want to be clear about

what i am feeling for whom

not to confuse general desire

for intimacy and eros with a

longing for the individual 

sitting in front of me, i want 

to see what is actually there, 

connell asks marianne if she 

would pretend not to know 

him if they saw each other 

on trinity campus in dublin 

the following year, and she 

says, “i would never pretend 

not to know you," Goddess 

please let me not hide a thing