Category: Poetry

Poem for Tim Faust, who said that poems shouldn’t be about flowers

This poem not about flowers just goes to show how far we’ve come since the days when people could practically not think without a daffodil, when in poetry a rose was not yet just a rose but always stood for … Read More

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For a COS Major

I am 1, she is 0, and maybe that’s all there is.

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Soap Poem

found an old bar of yr soap in the bathroom closet more like i found it in the store (amazon) n bought it n brought it home n bathed myself w it n had a v v emotional time ie … Read More

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Rothko

i remember the anguish of space— standing half a step too close to you under the copper light of streetlamps,   with every word and gesture, feeling surprised by how my hands would strain against their own skin to touch … Read More

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Odi et amo

Constellations of pale paned light

lapse across shadowed walls

as the din of street stragglers

dissipates in the slums,

appetites for fucking or for food

finally mollified.

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Saturday Nights at the Marquis

After the show, we sit crosslegged in the theatre and smoke long thin cigarettes

and watch the smoke drift among the rafters, the tattered red velvet of the curtains

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The daylily, Hemerocallis, continues to bloom for days after its scapes are cut

for L. When you left me here to rot aboveground—preferring a disintegration undersoil, solo—they did not publish the story in the paper, this being in poor taste, your being far too young to die, the Star-Ledger style guide answering the … Read More

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Conclusion

Here’s to the rubble: starlight starts to grow quietly. The world comes to chaos so quietly.   Gravity promised to give up for a minute if we told it the things we know, quietly,   so we let foggy breath … Read More

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Genetic Drift

In Arkansas, five thousand blackbirds fall on New Year’s Eve, pepper kernels crunching up pavement. The street-sweeper parks and stares.  Does not know who to call.  The corpses are cleared but they keep missing spots, like when mother paid me … Read More

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A Not-Sonnet

Chamomile tea gets me off More than getting me off does See also: girls laughing at my jokes & 90s video games   Can we go back to your place? Sure, but only if you’re down To smoke dope & … Read More

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Sopor

Last night I caught you sleepwalking again: you stumbled to the hallway and curled your toes against the hardwood, spun like the skipping track of a cross-eyed orbit.  I had forgotten what you look like off-balance. Your nightmares only ring … Read More

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After throwing your cigarettes out

I took a bus home to your nightly reenactments, the ones performed before you ever hid your lighters or begged for air. My blood’ll sort it out, you promised, ignoring London and your heredity, all those veils of ash and … Read More

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