Poetry

Whiskey / is the perfect color if what you have / is a singular capacity for swilling / embers.

What speck, what sun, what cluster became / what fig, what plum nestled in my trunk

They hadn’t seen me the day before: / free-climbing ballerina out of the music box

The smallness of / this long day, / minutes parceled out / by tweezer.

Her insistent tap tap tap on my arm /is a gentle yet unwelcome alarm, /yanking me from Morpheus’ embrace /and the blessed anaesthesia of sleep

And then you came and stuck, /expanding me like a swollen milkweed pod, / exiting me in a dark wave / on that winter’s first night of snow.

It’s like taking a Zumba class with Richard Simmons after a second cup of coffee. / It’s like shushing a marching band in the library.

We should be getting a new tire today, / but we are driving slowly / to a farm in Queens instead / to see llamas and sheep, pumpkins and cornstalks.…

There was a time I could not fathom / her being able, allowed, to wander the house alone.

“Are you supposed to reduce them?” / I ask. // “No,” she says, “we didn’t learn / simplifying yet.”

His arms are outstretched in a cross, dropping / what could be stars through stick fingers. / The birds have yet to arrive, / the diamond shaped pellets continuing to…