orange crush

Wanna get tangled up
In a spaghetti nor’easter
Noodles wound around my ankles
Strangling my shins
Til i'm tripping
Head over heels into
the soft landing of that dimple
To the left of your mouth

Press raspberries
from my fingertips
into golden pancakes
Stacked on a royal blue plate
in front of your altar
Where starlings peck
at the little luxury
While syrup
Runs down your cheeks
spilling over your chin

Burn orange peels
on dancing flame
And throw them like confetti
over your silk pillow
Pithy citrine dander
adhering to your cheek’s sap tracks
Glinting subtly
Sloppy and sweet as
an elementary
valentine

edible arraignment

this one’s for all the freaks of nyc
who love to love birds
pigeons actually
to the old man on woodward and linden
who upended a full plastic carton of cheese puffs
onto freshly salted cement
as flapping wings descended upon him
and to whoever dumped
that mountain of churros on st nicholas and grove
and especially to the vendor selling hot dogs
on the western edge of union square
who tears up buns
and scatters them around his cart
to attract customers
of the avian kind

leo agatetto does not exist

in the dream im always
chasing a yellow-bellied sap sucker
through a desert
desperate
to return it to a place it can thrive
or im weaving through dense rhododendrons
along a mountain creek
after a cactus wren
or im watching you
a sort of stranger
who I want to love
be married
improbably
to a man named Leo
who I learn
upon waking
much to my relief
simply does not exist

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’

cookiescookies

Look all I know is
On an index card plastered
To the rain slicked sidewalk
In confident sharpie
Someone wrote
cookies cookies
And it may have been a grocery list
But I read it as an imperative
And haven’t looked back since