Tag: new poetry

Riddle

He was like the town bike
everyone got a ride. He was like a ride
that made me vomit. He was like the vomit
I spewed in a Wendy’s parking lot.
He was like a parking lot I lay
down in and let the hail beat and bruise me.
He was like a bruise you discover but can’t
remember where it came from.
What did you smack into?
By now you know his hands
were threats. By now you know
his hands were switches. He was like
the switching breeze that smacked
the chimes against my house the morning
I found out he’d hung himself.

castro street

Luck

my shadow
my train.
Luck, this much
is plain:

hatchet face,
ratchet grin.
The bin
needs emptying

again—
too little.
It’s true, I’m in
the middle

harvest moon

LOST CRICKET

The least cricket of evening
is invisible, naked except for
its tiny violin, the lost bell
of its heart. Somewhere
in this room my terracotta
cricket with its sap-colored eyes
raises a hair-thin quiver

lavender leaves

Flight Of the Bumblebee

What music would Korsakov write
if he were here on earth as the bees
are dying? Their hives weightless lungs
paper lanterns swaying on the wind?
Their queen done telling her endless
stories to stay alive, no longer daughter
of the immortal gods: Father Frost
and Mother Spring, her heart melting
for the love of a man.

violas on a rack

Aubade with Mother Gone

And then it came back to me as I heard
a young boy practice his violin
under the concrete canopy of the park’s amphitheater

spiral staircase

Love in the Time of Vertigo

Without help now
I can maneuver myself

upright, then supine to correct
the wind spinning my brain

from myself. My face angled
and pillow propping my shoulders,