Poetry

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…

What is it called?– / the seed carried aloft by the ephemeral?

…the warmth of my father’s voice / as cozy as the rooms he’d heated / summoned me to breakfast, / my feet scurrying across the thawed, wooden floorboards.

and I am thirteen again,/ back in your old green pickup, ripped / seats, empty coke bottle, your spittoon, sour / smell rising up in August heat.

“Dad, will you be home tonight?”/ And I just know Bismarck looked like this when he was four,/ in his PJs and miniature spiked helmet.

He is my father, a stranger with my teeth, / jagged bone-white peaks. Eight visible blades / of a smile; eight flames of the menorah.