Poetry

when I read the news
and try to put out the flames
that crawl across my skin,
forget it. But my tongue tastes
like ash. My hands wisp into smoke,
hold nothing but history.

I play the twin birches like a musical instrument:
missing is to lost as go is to leave.
To the spider bags or sacs of flies
woven like god’s eyes in the trees’ hips
I say, batting, batting, the quintessence
of spring. If the eye were an animal, sight would be its soul.

If the heart were a pond, woe to thirsty birds
in winter with nowhere to light

At night I think about my mother —
how she no longer inhabits
all the rooms in her body.

I wonder if in her dreams

she walks outside or even flies
over the corrugated roof.

When somebody says, “I wake at 5 a.m.,”  
they are from New York City, a place  
where you need to get out of my way.

Come to my reading. Name my people
and get me wasted. I can’t write
in the same room as Favorite Boy.

A wrist of sticks cut, thrust in water
to force the sweet crease of cherry flosses
& then forgotten now thickens with fur-dross,
greeny on the windowsill through which a neighbor’s

radio pines in Friday-night nostalgia
to the tune of a six-pack of something.

Almost home. I ordered Bean Curd
And Broccoli In Black Bean Sauce.
The woman who takes my orders
listened, nodding, conjured
characters on a lined green ORDERS pad.
She spoke to three idle chefs: white aprons, white
paper hats.  They rose and moved, one
to the rice, the white and red cartons.