Poetry

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.