Apartments by Owner

I hate birds
but will admit
the term “nesting
instinct” most accurately
describes my drive
to collect that
which in sum
makes a home.
I will tuck
down and cotton
into the walls
to plug drafts,
drag in wooden
flotsam to suit
our prairie aesthetic,
and feed everyone.
I want to
paint the walls
in warm yellows
and hang curtains
that flutter gently
in afternoon breezes.
Pier One will
be my hunting
ground, and may
God have mercy
on any man
who tries to
out-barter me
at the flea
market on Saturdays.
Exposed brick, lofted
ceilings, utilities included:
none of this
matters a whit.
I’d just like
not to move
for a while.
Fight or flight
must get old
for birds too.

Ransom Note

I'm writing this

just in case my baby calls,

so just in case

my baby calls, you can say

I was taken, all at once.

And just in case my baby

calls know that it was me

and not me, that both were taken,

that both

left.

I am reading a prophesy of what is to come.

And what is to come says Go.

So just in case I'm not around

when I won't be around and my baby calls,

tell her I've gone,

tell her I'm taken.

Tell her it's the same thing.

Packed

I pile the clothes into a bag,

which I will carry

across the city.

I have to be ready

for changes in weather,

lugging enough

to warm me into the night.

But with each article,

the bag gets bulkier.

So I have to weigh comfort 

against readiness.

After months of dragging 

boxes, from town to town.

I've come to realize,

that it's exhausting 

to try and prepare myself 

for anything.

Rubbed Raw

My heart is still raw, but you wouldn’t know it.
Every morning I groggily bundle it in soft layers
and a hood and usher it out the door, making sure
it has not forgotten its backpack. I zip angel food
cake and encouraging notes into its lunchbox.

I’ve gotten my heart the best headphones money can buy.
They fit perfectly over its ears, with a bass boost for the beat
so it does not forget its purpose. I pad the cells
of my calendar to keep it from rattling, so no emptiness
makes sonorous the gaping void that might echo
thoughts of her back upon themselves indefinitely.

Most days it stays pretty well cushioned. The bumps
and sharp turns of the day knock my heart against
its casing, but it is bottom-heavy and well grounded.
It almost always rights itself before anything spills out.

The trick is to make sure that, like a foot in a new
shoe, it is not rubbed too long in the same place.
I don’t think there’s a thing in this world I could talk about
for twenty minutes straight without weeping.
Polish a pocketed penny with your thumb for half a day,
and tell me its luster restored brings no tear to your eye.

A Word of Warning

There is a great chef 

named Tyranny Sue,

who is known to scream

till her face turns blue.

See there's only one dish

that she'll ever make.

And she strictly controls

the grade of her cake.

So when in her kitchen

you must keep your head.

Don't ask to make chicken,

pork chops, or bread.

For there is a story

about Tyranny Sue,

of the pain that she caused

to a misguided sous;

an unfortunate soul

who made the mistake,

of suggesting they try

and cook angel food cake.

Sue strung up the poor boy,

and once he was dead,

dried him out like salami

till he no longer bled.

You see, that's the secret

of how Tyranny Sue

makes such a finger-lickin'-

good tiramisu.

There's a secret ingredient 

in each slice of cake.

See if you can taste it

in the next bite you take.

It's that poor little sous chef

hanging up in her shed.

In the place of ladyfingers

Sue uses his instead.

Death of an Avid Reader

The words came out of his mouth already
Formed into perfect red apples which she
Ate too fast.

Interstate Ode

I.
A few days after the wheel - we will call the human A - A thought up the axel.
Then A died.
In the memory of A we have the cart, which a sweating Aramean yokes

to an ox for a walk at a time when roads stretch slowly behind
unfolding in reverse. Ruts repeated in grass and mud.
Time. More carts. The idea of the wheel spreads
a slow fire where it goes. Roads follow, a map shows,
errant spokes on a freehand sketch radiating outward. 

If only it were flat, damn it.
The world has no respect for roads, or planar geometry.
Just mud and ruts.
And why is the shortest route between two points no longer, necessarily, a line?

It is probably a road.

II.
Two cross (perhaps in a wood) a problem: intersection.
Solution: code of conduct. Eye contact,
a gesture from the unoccupied left hand,
a grunt signals to a cart how to proceed and then progress.

Etiquette today:
octagonal, red rear-view tar smeared asphalt evergreen
air fresheners concrete curbs and rear-view mirrors slurped sodas
sunglasses cell phones Technicolor green electric lanterns red to yellow
jangled in the dusty wind on cables rear-view strung from metal pylons and
A wraps hands around a wheel wrapping objects in rear mirror are than
they their own Safari ® steering in acrylic leopard pelt appear

an asphalt kiss
in precise symmetry.
Two, three, four lanes – in either direction. At any given exit,
an entrance available in either direction where the only reason
to pause is lack of fuel.

For Inspiration

I just found this one the Poetry Foundation's website and thought it could be some help to all of us. I rarely feel as inspired as I do after listening to a sicknasty poem.

Poem of the Day

A poetry reading

Eliot and Keats sound just as you’d expect:
one nasal, one booming, both buoyed by affect.
I scoured the files and at last found Ms. Plath,
whose rage was more definite than I had empathed.
We grew up with Ginsberg and Dylan’s a given.
In fact, there’s no trouble with poets still livin’.

It haunts me, the voices that I’ll never hear,
though the tone and the diction resound in my ear.
Have you wondered, at times, of the timbre of Dickens,
or if Sappho’s drawl made the Grecian pulse quicken?
I stay up at night, just tossing and thinkin’
how sad it is never to listen to Lincoln.

Dear Me

I found mouse droppings on my childhood diaries
in a drawer that opens for anyone to read.
This is what comes to diaries.

Upon Listening to Mark Strand Read

Really there was my Self, and that

is all there was. The moving car

and the bar at midnight - both

me, as much as I'll ever be. And as for those

sad lost things, the shadows around

a planet's composite rings, the outline

of the iron dust a magnet lifts, the gifts

and the fire trucks, they too are here,

somewhere. Search through the pockets

of the memories I haven't got

and underneath the lesson plans pre-written

for what I've yet to hand

over to whoever's in charge you'll

find a guarded, secret place: here

is where You take shape.

Ugh-ly

My room is steamy.

Didn't I leave Miami

to avoid this crap.

Ode to Joy

Stop circling the bell,
Just ring it, Loud!
Throw all your butterflies
Into the crowd.

Snappy

I found her to be
A snappy lady.
Not to be confused with
The Snapple Lady. Whose products
I fully endorse.

Four questions

what makes you the expert on poems?
who is grounded when the sky’s the limit?
how much merriment does joy merit?
what is mania but the American Dream?

The Most Important Lessons of This Child's Life, So Far

Have not resulted - as the boy's father assumed
Before becoming a father - in tough-love scoldings,
Tears, and forced apologies. Instead, they occur
Unexpected, in quiet moments, and they pass
Before he can think of saying or doing the
Fatherly thing.

Driving, he listens to the boy in the back seat
List the people coming to Easter Lunch, guessing
Almost everyone right: Papa and Grandma,
Annie and Mike, Uncle P and Tee-Tee. He is
Wrong only about Tee-Tee, a once-certain
Future aunt.

"Well," the father starts, "Uncle P and Tee-Tee
Aren't together anymore." The boy's blond scalp
Tilts in the rear-view mirror. At the next stop sign,
The father turns to face the boy. Both pairs of eyes
Land on the squiggly dinosaurs dancing
On the boy's undersized necktie.
"Do you get it?"

The boy answers with innocent certainty. "Yeah."
He has learned to answer this way to questions he
Cannot fully understand. Do you love your baby
Sister? Do you love Jesus? Does Jesus love you?
He has also learned to walk, to swim, to not take toys
from his infant sister's hands, as all humans do -
Through repetition.

Hours later, the father holds an empty glass
By the stem and calculates how many years
Will pass before he learns the perfect words.
The boy opens and closes, opens and closes
The plastic egg he discovered in the yard,
As if willing the three jelly beans inside
To change color. He looks up, eyes searching the air
As they did the first day of his life, and he asks,
Where's Tee-Tee?

new haven

i have a tendency to chase them out
with chance encounters where
we reflect on celestial kisses
and symmetry and how stars shatter
before shivering and recently with them these
ghosts i survey what was never ours.

i climb to rooftops where i slip
under wet steel barriers between
quips about necks and lips
to stare at a city submerged in fog.

it is a fog that blurs its spires
we tell ourselves while we talk
(yes it is that kind of city).

it is here that a roof becomes precarious
in the way that only a precipice can
and we grow too close to the ten story
limit, telling and telling and telling.

chayefsky is with me from floor thirteen
to the lobby, while i dream of fellini
and screens and and all the years between
and my mind drifts to a fall - nothing
serious. ziggy just jumped off the roof
at a wedding. two storeys and
all he had was a cast and ziggy
is just a white dog with a neon cast.

our thoughts and words, our vision
hazy with the fog, spiral
in admiration of the prestige our
city never attained (acid weakens
does not strengthen stone structure
and you cannot reinforce the past
with steel) is what we learn
in and around the silences. we agree

sitting on parapits stinking
of damp tobacco. we stare at cars
that circulate a roundabout parking
lot, down and down and down.

this is my city, or was
caught in a hairpin turn
several ivy miles
from the buckle of the rust belt.

Scallion Pancakes

Scallion pancakes

are essentially sponges.

Sponges of fried dough,

with a few green slivers

scattered inside.  Just enough

to give the dish a name.

But many good foods are sponges.

For soy sauce or syrup,

or broth, or liqueur.

We learn in youth

that we shouldn't run 

our fingers through sticky pools, 

no matter how sweet 

or succulent they may be.

So we strive to create a perfect vessel.

Something to cordially carry 

the liquid flavors to our mouths.

But no matter how much 

we elevate these inventions,

they are really just 

glorified sponges.

French Music

[This and the two earlier poems like it, Matin and The End of the World, are I think becoming first drafts of an extended sequence called Documenting the End of the World]

It looked like it was raining

so we tried not to get wet

and hung umbrellas

from the sky like lily-pads.

I mailed a package and you

waited outside. We

both agreed that you should have been

smoking. When will it be

too late to recover the lists

we never made?

Shake what must be a hole

in the umbrella's worth

of rain from your hair and put

French music

on the stereo so we can pretend to be deaf

and transcendental.

Untitled

When you stare through the glass of the el window,

You can will poetry into any picture.

Stare long enough

And the metaphors overwhelm,

So seemingly full of profound poetic possibility

I cannot bend or form them.

Misspelled graffiti so large you can read it blocks away. Does ‘cock’ seem meaningful this morning because of the size of its letters or because tomorrow they will vanish under a wash of black paint?

The homeless stranger who screams Thank you, thank you now at the same intersection every morning, the words escaping from his mouth with only the slightest twitch at the corner of his eyes, as if he is not entirely accustomed to expressing gratitude to those whom it has never been due.

The light that comes on beneath your feet, beneath the sidewalk grate, illuminating a ladder as you step.

The arrangement of the words APPROACHES TO VALUE.

I am incapable of reflection,

of taking the lives I stare at and folding them

into prose or verse.

I watch them until I hear my blood

pounding behind my eyes.

I challenge someone

to make eye contact,

I am terrified they will.

Stare is from storren, to stand out, project. I do not want to think and so I stare. I try to fill these vessels, trying not to see the projection of my own hollowness through the window.

Is there poetry in a train car filled with rows of people, heads bowed together, reading the same newspaper in unison? Is this less of an act of worship than the screaming woman in the wheelchair who prayed for each one of us? Jesus I compel you, lay your blessed hands upon this bus driver and all bus drivers.

Clapping, singing, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

That mint

We scraped my chairs across the floor,
and taped notes to the windows, open.
A decent day at last.

I plugged the griddle, poured the batter,
so you could watch my tadpole swim
the kitchen, magnified.

Carrying a Cuban mint,
a purple-stemmed, hopeful thing,
I followed from the bedroom to the porch and back,
wondering if that man loves you. With you.

We reached a time of affairs somehow,
and yesterday my fingers never smelled like onions.
We both smoke, but I carry mint.

I wanted to post a poem titled "A Loss of Meter and Dignity" but thought for all of us that this might be a better choice...

I-94

When I’m on the highway and pass other people in their cars, I always imagine that they are brief poems - so far from me in their compact metal planetary systems. I just passed a lady that looks like she’s sitting in Mars. Then another comes on some comet shooting by. Then I pass another on the left – is that an old satellite he’s sitting on? One can only guess. Everyone rides in their own meaning.

you will know them by their glasses

by the blank lens, large and flat before their eyes.
you will know them by their patterns
plaid and polkas, paying no patronage to their prairie roots.
you will know them by their music,
the names spat back and forth in contest of i knew them when.

if you are still unsure, look to their bottom lip
look how it quivers, how it leans forward
waiting to pout.

be mindful of darting eyes at a party -- they seek
a hidden ladder behind you. do not trust anyone who sings
in full vibrato in the shower. count the proper nouns
and divide them by the kind words in each sentence.

when all else fails, look to their fingernails.
if they are not chewed ragged, you will know them.
the righteous cannot keep a manicure.

Apertures

For Namir Noor-Eldeen

1.

Took in the coughing light

of a fire shouldering from a truck

and later the light disappeared

from the shelled out remains

of a car, burnt and twisted the way

bones do not. Here are children

and in front of them two sandals,

a pool of blood, the unghosts

of what was, perhaps minutes before.

Sometimes a woman praying.

Sometimes children throwing rocks

at the aftereffects of explosions.

The sand cushions the knee when bent

for stability.

2.

Black and white, not for dramatic

effect. Grainy, people as the structures

that move. The helicopter's camera

wobbles while invisible voices

speak in another language: Crazyhorse,

Hotel, Charlie, Echo. Count

the bodies. Hollow the insurgent with

a camera. Leak the bastards into the bastard

street and leave them, unholy.

We cannot see their faces anyway.

3.

I too am twenty-three, though I do not

lie down ripped apart and drilled through

where the light can peer through the holes.

Double Down

Bacon, cheese, 

spicy mayonaise,

served between two fried 

breasts of chicken.

Using meat 

instead of bread.

A sitcom gag 

brought to life.

When it debuted,

in "special markets,"

people thought it was a joke.

In my heart of hearts,

I still do.

Or perhaps, my heart  

just wants it to be;

seeing it's mere existence 

as a threat to my health.

"Don't worry," 

the menu coos,

"it's most available fried,

but can be grilled too."

Matin

This morning the sun lay

like planks shuffled over the rooftops.

I placed my hand on the stair-railing

as I walked up the stairs just to feel

the railing. Someone called

my name. Only, it wasn't anyone I knew

and it wasn't my name either.

I thought about the lightness

of great things, like feathers,

and souls, and tried

to compose a poem where

the sky was a levee, broken apart,

like eggs with the yolk spilling over

the rooftops, and everything.

Haiku for the Sun

You, my wily friend,
give and give and give and suck
the sleep from my bones.

Burrito

I've tasted sugar, spun 

so thin that it floats.

I've eaten pillows of foam;

effervescent clouds of flavor.

I've sipped champagne, which

feather-like, tickled my nose.

All these things, 

and countless others,

have delighted me.

But whaddya know?

Sometimes all I want,

is a belly full of burrito.

fulton market

fulton market is a dinner plate
of a street

                 I walk down

wearing a dinner jacket (of sorts)

and gloves. 

                    unlike many meals
there is first a dumpster
perched on a dovetailing glacier
that bleeds rust,
                         flecks of sea
scales, silver pepper on ice
and by the salty smell of it
we’re having fish

but as any eater knows

dinner really begins with pork
where the tines of a fork-

lift carve into the curb. they 

are propane powered, 

turning on dimes. they 

haul meatpacked sirloins and flanks

while disused shanks 

wind up in Scrap Waste,

(a truck that conveniently trundles 

by at eleven).

                     it travels across 

the carved curbs leaving curlicues 

of rubbed off rubber

as the hunks of fat and flesh leave
bits of fat on its metal pieces.

these are the macro
markings of a morning industry.
The Jungle where buzzwords

circle over head 

but never swoop down

to the ruts and grooves

because there is nothing

- no blood - that should course

through these veins while

meat is packed, boxed, 

saran-wrapped

in the shadow of that skyscraper full of ice

(for cold storage)
and everywhere, there hangs in the air,
the smell of old, wet fur.

are you still proud?

old hog-butcher? or have you

grown starved and thin, 

hiding your knubbly bones, 

your bloody hands beneath a clean

apron in the morning sun.

is it for shame that you

hose down the sidewalk 

by five?

            in any case, you missed

a liver and a breast and a pair

of lungs here on the street.

          
but the trucks don't seem to mind.
they trace time the same way that it carves

streaks into overused china

gathering the signs of use
along with those of disinterest.

on fulton, there’s always a puddle
to push down the drain

and Blommer's will cloak your stench

with chocolate, and suds

will accompany blood to where

it all began, as so much froth

bobbing on the lake.

Why I Hate New York, by Mariah Beth

[Note: Instead of writing a poem today, I celebrated National Poetry Month (the cruelest month!) by helping my sister compose a list poem. She is 15. I think it’s pretty darn good. Suggestions for revision are encouraged!]

Why I hate New York

Smog
People
Skyscrapers
Litter
Gum on the sidewalk
The antemath of bruised flip-flop toes
Negligence - ignorance
Penthouse people plowing past the homeless
Heat of the Crowd
Screech of the Birds
White of the Walls

I don’t like people. I really
don’t like people.

Merry

For Tim

Merry, merry, merry,
merry, merry, merry, merry,
merry, merry,
donut.

The Adoption

They were beautiful, and barren, blithely fishing.
The woman was wading in the water.
In the shallows of a sandbar, caught my brother.
She adopted him, a son, like a fish pulled out.
She saw nothing but silver in the fish, nothing else.
The man with the face planes I would inherit
Idled his fingers in the country's long water.
And he thought of nothing. He was watching my mother.
The fishermen's wives were silent to the strangers.
They mended the nets that my brother had broken.
At the prow my salted brother was drying in the sun.
They took him home and life as he remembers it begun.

Numbers

Numbers don't work well in poems.

They trudge along, 

all with the same rhythms. 

One, Two, Three, Four,

dum, dum, dum, dum.

They are all predictable,

concrete. Difficult 

to bring to life.

You can't make a number dance,

only plod.

Except for seven.

Seven.

Two syllables in a sea

of monosyllabic dreck. 

You see,

Seven can fly, 

Seven can sprint,

Seven can waltz across a room.

Perhaps this is why it is lucky.

Come on,

Papa needs a new pair of shoes.

Weary

For Nina

Weary, weary, weary,

weary, weary, weary, weary,

weary, weary,

weary.