If I were

Lightning is traveling sidewards
                not staying long enough to say
                and gone before I get to
         
               is a blueberry pie bursting through
               and staining the picnic blanket
               not steady like you

              bites into a plum and sees itself
              would be the cosmos
              won't put down roots

The end of the affair

The end then of this business of
looking deeper -
of making something of the blue pad of gum on the sidewalk
-the boy among cops who says
if I catch something with my good hand,
I keep it.
My hand around a twix bar.

Now I'll walk lightly
a little too so
seeing only the bouyant
that make it up to the surface.

The hearing trumpet

immovable like a post
the note held long
rubber bands holding the keys
in place
the sound is taut-
the first hangs in the air
til next pushes out
whole
the boy's ear hangs low
just one stop,
then go the other directions

A short history of a small place

A shift of the sun,
the heavy lock turned --
sober lines stretch on the radiator
and the orderly bun
rests at the nape of his neck.

Caribbean genesis

From up here you can't tell it's a funeral home-
only the bright blue roof is visible
and the cartoon clouds far off.

Street level she opens her ginger soda with her teeth
and turns away.

Her thick hands stretch across the table
to offer me a piece of gum.

The hundredth monkey

Her puffy jacket getting caught in the train car doors;
a weird, sad army marching out of step through the tunnel.

The green book

Pairs of girls and women.

The woman at the table

with an egomaniac ex-husband

and her daughter that will not get on the train

to ditmas park anymore because 

the girlfriend's always there.

I eat a hot dog and my
mom talks on and on about Denise-
she is jealous
and can't stand that daddy's little girl stuff.

What else could I feel
 when my dad wouldn't give me a ride to the mall
and wouldn't answer which one of us
he loved more?

Brick

the sheet breathes out bit by bit
falling into peaks and valleys
only once a landscape.

the snow hissing
and the big blue man
gloaming in the window.

Art forms in nature

she will fossil you
her teeth chipped
and shoulders raised
like the 7th grade boy
who wrote on a flashcard
someone kicked
in my personal
spot and it doesn't 
hurt but something 
is coming 
out
the shape of it a crystal
or stalagmite.

Through a window

spread over the neck of the elephant
with the love connection falling flat
nursing sore legs at the coconut bar
the bleeting aussies in search
of magic milkshakes
ebbs in the shoreline
and in the assurity of the other halves

The lives of girls and women

the girls spreading their blankets
again and again
homemakers already
tucking themselves in
and taking care to make it straight
then later tending to the careful
balance
of playing
which we have long since lost
the muscle for
only in fits and spurts of courage
do we say
may I join?

Division of labor

The one thing you said you'd like us to do different than your parents

is not to divide the labor in rutted tracks 

that can't be crossed or seen beyond.

And yet we are starting to know 

who cooks and 

who washes

and who unplugs the computer at night.

The other way to listen

is the flashlight swinging
and the rope still
glad?
each breath is deeper
sullen, sunken.
ice cubes and twitches
in a noon day sun.

PARADE

We are walking down Lark street in Albany, state capital city, with its stained glass brownstones lining the green tulip park, concentric circles that bleed out, morph to skinnier row houses outward, away from that architecture of esteem,  brick to wood, more people slumped, strewn to hot days, hot nights.

We are walking down Lark Street with sandwiches and coffees. Every man who passes  looks. One has no teeth and a black t-shirt with yellow print: SHOW ME THE HONEY.


Where Lark meets Central the Memorial Day Parade is coming. We hear it, approaching like low thunder. Where the two streets cross, we meet head on.


Just the white boys marching. Vietnam. Korea. Civil War. Boy Scouts. Uniforms of different colors, different horns, guns, hats. Different fights. Different songs. Different orders. Left, right, left.


And then, in back, with a gap between the last of the war boys and the first of the new noise, the neighborhoods spill out in their humanity and their harmony, all fists and shouts, yelling loud intention.


It’s so hot out. One woman holds her toddler by the waist to her hip. He is released, his back flops, bouncing to her march.


On the sidelines people slump and smile and wave their little flags. Part solidarity part cooling effect.

On the sidelines it’s all children and women and brown skin. We are watching, close and distracted.


The sun beats onto our surfaces. The city is sitting there like a waistline, can’t help it, blatant floater between that deep pine wildness above its belt, the tangled concrete metropolis below.


One leader tosses skittles to the crowd. The packages hit the ground. We reach for them, push them around with our shoes. 

The prophet

Today is the prophet's birthday, you'll be home late.

You are exhausted. I am learning Arabic and every night you come home exhausted. I cook dinner and    

          run words through my head. Sounds tacked together that I can't remember which mean what and  

          when to use them. Yaktuba, taktuba.

It has been a year now since you were sleeping in the car waiting for the storm to pass and I was a     

          thousand miles thinking of you and watching fourth graders dance. Some have so much 

          energy it seems they could never get tired- they could run on and on away from me.

I listened to the prophet, his profile hazy and purple, on the CD player as I packed for the trip to San 

        Francisco, tagging along with my mom on her business trip. At fourteen, it was my first time on a 

        plane. 

Baab is door - my first word that I can write. My first time knowing my own handwriting as beautiful. 

        This word goes back and erases all the notebooks I filled during nights spent sitting next to my dad 

        at the kitchen table practicing each letter over and over again. And my dad, with the messiest 

        handwriting I've ever seen, hoping to undo something of himself.

I packed my rust colored pants made of parachute material, elastic cords at the waist and ankles. I'd 

         worn them the night the night before when some boy told me he loved me in a basement room 

         with four other people around, and told me not to leave.

Some letters let themselves run from one to another, exist as only a hiccup and slash mark, others will 

          not be joined; they will not let themselves be surrounded by others who are up to more.

I hope you never leave me.

I listened to the CD on my diskman and laid on the deck of the hotel. I tried to tan, turning from my 

         back to my stomach each time a song ended. I walked around the streets close the hotel. We 

         shopped together at Macy's - I didn't want my mom in the dressing room with me, and cried when 

         she passed me a medium over the door instead of a small.

At the school today we played leap frog. Each set of partners held hands first and looked in each other's 

          eyes. Say I trust you friend, I told them. They would say it, loud or quiet depending on the kid - 

          each seem to have a life already decided of shouting out or mumbling low. 

Say I will never hurt you, I told them. And they would say it. I barely hesitate at telling them to make 

         promises I know they cannot keep. Each takes a turn making a ball on the mat while the other one 

         jumps over him.

I promise you in the morning when I help you with your shoes that I will never leave you.

I help the kids with their shoes. I tell them to switch their feet, to loosen the laces, to push hard and do 

        their part, but some will not and I just put the shoe on for them.

Freedom today

there is nothing quite so nice
as flying cross first avenue
-all the lanes far away and waiting

Uplands and lowlands

your mercury mouth
your voice like chimes

your pockets
your street car visions
your flesh like
your face

my warehouse eyes

your sheets
your belt
your deck of cards
your basement close

your cowboy mouth
your curfew

Play it as it lays

At the french wedding they roast a goat and fall over lawn chairs
Down in the valley the circus is setting up -
we'll have liver there tomorrow.

Colossus and the crab

Quick-silver come-lately
with a duct tape tongue.

Chickees near the fire
feeling one, feeling lone.

be a sweet babe
snarling smile
go on home.

Gydyby (If)

coffee legs blackout
short strides
if anything towards the library
closed for renovations
to meet the math freak
show a different face

the surveillance tower
guards the cross guards
puffing hot air into the cold air
if you're smart