Verisimilitude

the harmony of your vermilion balaclava
And the ketchup&mustard puffy coat
Of your crush at the park
And the way her wiry little dog’s
Sharp jaw
Cups his shy smile,
Tail arrow straight
And aimed skyward
As if to guide groundward
The fat flakes sneezed down
By the plush gray sky
And how when you’d walked too far for her to distinguish
Your creeping blush from
Your balaclava
She’d shouted after you
‘I LOVE THAT COLOR’

I think they were calling it a done deal (Jan. 2)

 

I think they were calling it a done deal

but I was calling it generally

the scarcity of sanctity — I mean

if ever a recollection it’d be seeded

 

in the off-season but lo, and again

you find all these nuded apparition

(was it one minute moment they did

their dance or is it all melt together)

 

around as always; and this eating

itself more, the capital the bogey men  

the right to a hopeless vociferousness

about: do you isolate

 

these very contagious vibes, is it

“health care” if you are drowned again

and in different realms, can you

believe what only destroys us is

 

a centerpiece of a beautiful day

Coq Au Vin

There is only one thing

more decadent than

your tender flesh made rosy

after a bottle of burgundy,

and that one thing

is you, the day after

keeping clean

Tell me:

Why is the pouring out

always more defining

than the filling in,

The washing clean 

more finite

than the mess-making —

If I could, I'd leave it tidy

but I forget what it was like before.

Commute

The arc of the Manhattan bridge is long and it bends toward Manhattan. 

At an hour before the sun has risen, tracing the arc with my bicycle, 

the same person bikes by in the other direction with a mask on, I keep time by them, they are my metronome.

the same garbage train rumbles out of the tunnel carrying a day’s worth of garbage briefly from tunnel to open air and back again,

the same one light in a whole luxury building illuminates a quiet-looking living room with a red couch,

and the East River is at peace with itself, if not completely still then at least unhurried by the day ahead. 

These things are given. 

It’s the unusual touches that double take. 

An unreturned wave to the biker.

A worker standing at the front of the garbage train like that scene in Titanic.

A person meditating cross-legged before the red couch.

Seagulls circling below me in white shapes against the dark water.

A beaver moon gnawing away at the night.

you could be not sour

you could find a hall filled by 

a comedy troupe, striving

or the sweet rounds of language

wrapped intricately around an idea

if ever there was no such thing

you could go to war with yourself again

while getting dressed at home

(but that wasn't really your thing)

or find your way out

and melt into an armchair 

just enough on display

you could cheer for the college boyfriend

of a high school friend

hoping we all get a chance

to be shiny in new places

We found an unexpected community in Pensacola. 

Well, when they said there was no WiFi,

I said, “What the fuck is this Pensacola?”

Unexpected is a euphemism for driving off

the Bay Bridge and losing all we owned 

to water and the capacity of our lungs. 

It seemed they too have driven off the 

Pensacola Bay Bridge and decided to 

use their misfortune as a Hermeneutical Lens. 

They took care of us, showed us their 

collection of lost goggles as an argument for 

why we should call this place home. 

Look at what can be ours. 

What you thought was the worst day of your life 

is a lifestyle, a heritage, a natural phenomena 

with its own beauty. 

But it just wasn’t for me. 

I still remember their vast heartbreak

as my eyes slightly drifted,

looked at the wall, 

and I doubted their most sincere hope.