Poetry |
“The Garden State”
“I keep an artificial hydrangea in my vase, / its pale blue shot-through with khaki. // In Jersey, we called them snowballs, / so much fuller than roses, so weirdly azure …”
Poetry |
“Half the Hour” & “Measure”
“For a poem ‘Close Is Far and Figured’ I plotted stanzas and rhythm / simply to fulfill the title // “Close is far” back then was a sad young man on the crowded F train / his thumb slowly swiping texted photos of his mother …”
Poetry |
“Broken Coffee Break”
“I stroll up to my favorite out-of-town coffee shop/ and find it closed for good. Through the black glass,/ a naked counter, stools scattered, space thrown open / to conjecture and rats, stillness, indifference.”
Poetry |
“The ‘Gfit'”
“… it was early in the pandemic,/ even though I thought maybe it was getting / towards the end of the pandemic, / and I didn’t have cancer, or if I did, / I didn’t know I had cancer …”
Poetry |
“My Mother” and “Malcah”
“I strained to serve as her first son. // She sang songs from WWI with her father that she sang / again, but who would listen? Not I, clearly her worst son.”
Poetry |
“The White Hare”
“You saw it first in a dream: / the white hare bounding over / tufted knolls, the sun arcing / toward sable twilight”
Poetry |
“Thank Plankton”
“Well, they are gone, and here it comes, / the August sun, with the momentum of a rolling boil, / to blanch the greens and blues from leaves of grass / and trees and lighten boughs / by grafting absence where sap has stopped.”
Poetry |
“Negentropy”
“Is light / more like the waves sloshing ashore, or // the shore itself, all seven quintillion grains, / give or take?”
Poetry |
“Comedy (iii),” “Preparation of the Dead Girl or Preparation of the Bride” & “Roxies in Savasana”
“As far as Courbet’s knowing could carry him, the girl was dead. She was dead & then made marriageable, badly resurrected by an agent, white dress layered over her naked body.”
Poetry |
“A Few Wars”
“They’re reaching out to us with their guns. / They must want to make a difference // to someone — it’s us they hail now …”
Poetry |
“What’s Your Favorite Color”
“— I asked, icebreaker, and someone said “orange, now,” / and I agreed, somewhat, having come around to it also. / My favorite rose is orange.”
Poetry |
“Anterior Cartography”
“Certain wavelengths appear / not as beatific summation / but as feral anterior cartography where terror attempts to invade / our interior translucency”
Poetry |
“Edensong,” “Can You Hear Me?” & “What the Beard Said, III”
“Wanting song / in the beginning / beginning to end // now we are falling // through what’s to come …”
Poetry |
“Sabbatical,” “Genealogy” & “Allegory”
“I knew I’d go missing if I lugged my life / around the corsos of Mezzegra / but I got lucky, stumbling on a celebration: / the anniversary of Mussolini’s hanging.”
Poetry |
“Nourish,” “Old Lady Smell” & “January 6, 2022”
“My mother made me promise / to tell her if she ever started to smell / like an old lady. My fastidious mother — / who dusted every Saturday / who never left a dish in the sink overnight …”