Emoticonfiscated
It was me on Cookman Ave. that night/the newscaster was in the news/for what apparently everyone had always known
The Social Distance Reading Series
Recent Posts
Confession
I did not consider the fact/That for the rest of your life you would only get older/If I’d been thinking, I would have held in my hand
Three Poems
In darkness / empirical evidence underhand / a fingertip rubs black / but not ink.
Three Poems
I’ve hung my light blue/evening gown on the bedroom/door so that at night,/when I turn away from you to sleep,/I still have something to look at—
Poetic Magic: A Modern Metaphysical
By the time I finished Dan Lewis’s collection Intimations of the Focal Plane many sections of my journal were scribbled over with citations of snippets from the tome. His words, blazed and blazoned on my pages, had magically transformed each into a focal plane of its own.
Two Poems
Side effects may include digging / a hole in your personal snow / to a time before your heart / floated next to your father’s heart
Two Poems
Lashed & anchored to the front of each ship, / a woman—breasts carved from dark oak, / all the wildness sanded down, polished out; / half human, half fish, a grotesque fantasy
Incarnate
Two wolves mating and then / at rest, the carnal moment just caught.
Snakes
In Ghana, I was warned, all snakes are poisonous. All ninety-two species. If you are bitten, you have to grab the snake and take it along to the hospital so they can give you the correct antivenin. Assuming they have antivenin. And assuming there’s a hospital.
Three Poems
She keeps verbs in their bee box / until they all are queens. She keeps / words clean as the bowel of a sink.
My Jewish Beard
These past few months, I’ve taken great amusement in others’ reactions to my newly bushy beard, and in their questioning why I’ve chosen to let it grow so full and long now that I’ve turned 60 and my beard has turned white.
Criminals We Know
The British call seagulls the “thugs” of the bird world. They “detest” the birds for snatching food from picnic tables and depositing splotches on cars. Pigeons and magpies come next on the list of most loathed, followed a few slots down by the unlikely sparrow who is simply “dull looking,” a criticism that seems dubious coming from a populace of oxfords, woolens, and tweeds.