Run it through a filter
to clarify your thoughts
Dark, light, midtone
a muddle we call a garage sale
We slip shadows to each other
across the mismatched table settings
A group of misgivings and sentiments
arrive, hang their jackets on the stool seats
& order double everythings
while you look between the rough-hewn rafters
& your hands, the rough-hewn rafters
& your hands, as though
you’d just put something down
but couldn’t remember what
& the spring light & trilling
of the peepers saturate the area
at the open double door
Month: April 2026
Noir Interlude
There are a lot of ways you can order numbers There are a lot of ways numbers get disordered: clumsy
fingers; thick head But there is…. so much ringing Is that not coming from the other line
Maybe you should be asking these questions To a doctor there’s no time for that there is ringing
then there’s someone’s music
Running interference Is that Bill singing through the walls Coming from speakers
I’m imagining a girl on roller skates must be Venice Was it Venice
where I ran into Sommer Outside some small and crowded café Was it Venice
I dreamt about as a boy the past and present get so tangled I know it’s hard to look
back and it’s hard to live in they say to move forward
Forward to where into what is this about money its lacking its needing
any luck There’s a call on the line is it that boy from Chicago er… there’s no listed number
um… its unnamed and when you put the phone to your ear it is voiceless
just ringing unless you can consider the ringing its own kinda voice
there are doors and windows day-glo colors misplaced nights murder in the air
a window in the mind what kind of game are you playing at a murder of colors
a half-remember song fragmented into mismemory book with torn pages water damaged
an unanswered line a mistaken lead given way to a great lake Dan walking along the shoreline
Is this a search for clues or a falling into a rhythm an invitation for love
let’s not get ahead of ourselves there’s dried blood on the blade weird photos
distorted faces enlarged noses there are some real Twilight Zone elements
Bill singing like he believes in nothing Bill singing like he believes in everything
Dads in the park with their kids hot dog stench Sunday sounds
Forget about Chicago the witness is compromised the witness is all lies
Dead end another dead end phone ringing unlisted number
two phones ringing it begins again
FRIEND IN TWO SWEATERS
A seagull named Ruth says humans can’t handle their own desires
or energy sources
Are you a widow if you’re married to a dead guy
Try to solve an eastern problem in a western way
Snow we left behind
An invisible hug of mustard
I chased the spots in my eyes in a being is becoming kind of way
Answer yes to impossibility
as though I am in the Army of Making Things Happen
Yes we can do the fifteen minute version at the Met
What do you know about fifteen minutes
an entire family can come apart in fifteen minutes
For fifteen minutes you can wear and photograph yourself
in Michael Jackson’s Napoleonic coat and glove
for fifteen hundred dollars
There is always an interloper in the folklands
someone who cut the jumprope
Listen here kids everyone is first in line
April 17
Shajareh Tayyebeh
— Elementary girls’ school in Minab, Iran
bombed during “Operation Epic Fury” February 28, 2026
Panic painted gentian arrows on our feet
between the carpal and the sour toe
a molecular transfer of energy the red
thread pulled us all the lure
and the reel pickled our sorrows
count on happiness as revolutionary
because the beast is at the door
carnivorous two headed
the secrets we were promised as dangerous
girls lying low in the tall grass
imagine the animal’s astonishment
finding us swimming there
arms finally let loose from their silks
it was a measure of time
we were not inevitable
violence or salvation
it’s all the same a constant ache
trade these stories like currency
in the land of indulgence
we were too small for fatigue
we craved the beast we were given
we will not be targets
of this horror
Do
Knowing
what you know
now what would you
tell yourself then
And based on now
what would then
do differently
What would now do
returning from telling
to knowing the telling
had left you
here in the making
What would you know
knowing the telling
was the making
that made the told
Every word
predicts what
it will say
then when it says it
it does what
it said it would do
If you did before
You can do again
Made can be made
Done can be done
Do you promise
Only the difference
makes differences
You told what
you made before
but only
after
Only promises
tell what would do
if did
what will do
as done
You promised you
would make the promise
then you did
Every Single Day Is Tomorrow
I was foolish, wearing jewelry
That was sentimental
In a city of wind tunnels
Thinking I had plenty of time
To get to the hospital
That my late twenties—and late thirties—
Wouldn’t be a series of small ego deaths
That I could make it to the subway
After staying up all night with the baby
Watching both Miss Congenialty movies
Without stumbling over my own feet
Bashing my knee—which still hurts
Even now as I fold onto the tufted rug
To give you one last kiss goodnight
16
I’m so over it
I was writing this poem
when my then-boyfriend, Useless,
got arrested at a Gulf War protest
in 1991
Steel-toe boots
to the skull
Steel-toe boots
dive off the stage
Steel-toe boots
to the bottom of the fairly slimy pool
You’re so high you’re looking for
the helmet you already have on
your head, visor down
& won’t let me borrow
your books
I wore men’s suits I thrifted
on the east side
with long red hair & lipstick
I’d wear that now too
if no one else did
So over it
So over it
So overcoming it
Upchucking around the globe again
in a malaise of pallid & vicious repetition
Boots to the head
Boots on the ground
What boots go best with this
motheaten suit?
Butter Fingers
I was fast. Not the fastest, but fast enough. Mr. Ianocone asked me to join the track and field team. I was rail thin and sucked at distances but give me a 50-yard dash and I couldn’t help but show out. My parents wouldn’t allow me to join Track and Field. My father said, Be no part of this world. I wanted to be a part of the world. I wanted to be a part of a team. I wanted to feel wanted. I awkwardly declined. I wasn’t very outgoing, but I knew the boys on the team. They were nice enough. I was embarrassed; I couldn’t tell Mr. Ianocone my parents said no. Instead, I was weird about it.
A few months later in PE we did the 50-yard dash. It was neck and neck. Joel was fast, but I was faster. Mr. Ianocone said Joel won the race even though I beat him by at least a half-step. During another PE class, I dropped the baton. It was an accident, but Mr. Ianocone took it as sabotage. Called me Butterfingers like it was the dirtiest word. Teachers called you all kinds of names back in the 80s. In the locker room all the boys called me Butterfingers while throwing their sweaty tighty-whities at me.
ROZ, FIRE THE B!TCH
Does it matter if your car is shiny
Are you sure you want to become a martyr
sucking on jerky
Pull the vines down even if you showered today
The only way to prove your truth is by dying
The cloud coverage will not last long
Did you know the future was yesterday
Enter the time of popcorn and fulfillment centers
Your backside ages too although you can’t see it
until you see it
Do you remember when you told third period
you weren’t going to say a word
You painted with gouache
and showed them how to layer
wait to dry then layer
All students painted the same person
Mats of mattering
Tryer trying
To story a poem
Makes up names
In a phone book
When called
They answer
And hello
Collapses
How do you do doer
How do you live
Because becauser
It’s been a while
Not so lives
Are threatened
No one hurt in here
By poetry silence
But the quiet
Opposite of bell
Or bell rung so fast
It has no opposite
Don’t you know
Aren’t you adapted
To already
Being
Waking up waker
Always tomorrowly
How many are you
Party
Like a poem’s poet
Enough’s enough
To say too many
No one
Needs such
Excess necessity
Under hats
More hats
But less hattier
Lesshead
Naturalism
Hi again. I thought of you when my lens slickswifted
over a seal. Sitting on a samegray blanket in a boat.
Facing thataway. So maybe it had nofaceatall. One
of those bowlingpinius nightmaricus seals. “Reader
like seals,” I thought, then, “Faceless seal?” because
it was. “Reader like true?” In a shortblink, mind
brushed its image over me, singing that Mamas
and the Papas song, “Faceless seal,/no time to turn
around./I’m sneezing up yer image/as I float on by.”
I was going downstairs to do laundry. So ok, sea:
samegray as seal. Blanket: samegray as sky and sea. ss
Laundry: soon blue then gray then drained again.
“Reader love nature.” True. So I carried faceless
seal in my jaw, smelling, tasting, superimposing
face on seas, skies, laundry, etc. Thinking of you.
give them blight
I feel so shy sharing this – sometimes these words flow through me and I don’t quite understand where they come from – but they are a piece of me. And I can’t always find that voice. But she is here now so I’ll let her shine.
Look at these bad bitches take flight
They can’t clip our wings and have no bearing on our rights
Let em all melt on that hot desert sand
I haven’t got time to listen to their snivelling demands
We’ll rise high up against the walls
Breaking all our bounds like breaking balls
Nothing can ever hold us down
Take to the streets and find your crown
Were not flaming like you think
All the girls want my little winks
Spreading out like georgia o’keefe leis
Like a chorus line of queer cakes
Let them fly away
And Streak across the sky
Give me little bites of that pie
But don’t stray away from the bullseye
Color it like a poison pink sky
Call the sunset a pollution beauty cream pie
Burn hotter than the stars of a universe
Sweep me up in the milky way flavor hearse
All the play at my finger tips
Girls are fighting for my tender lips
Crash the congress doors don’t let them sleep
Bring back the people not those soldier feet
Demilitarize the fate of humankind
They can’t win the war of time
They can’t kill us all we’re not illegal
Decorate the girls with sequined eagles
15
April, you thrill
of frilly yellow thangs
& peeps of purple!
You greeny hues
tinkering among the mosses
& the pippities of kinglets
who flash their neon crowns!
You humectant, furling, swollen
stream of snowmelt
& last year’s heartschmerz,
flung open like the barn’s
upper story gaping for hay!
Hey! April! You brill-
iant capillary of sunshine,
let’s flounce!
This Lemon Is My Nighttime Snack
These early years a nonstop lesson
In life’s most valuable baubles:
Thieved slipper, stained scrunchie
The last fresh lemon cradled between
Itty-bitty goblin hands, eyes agleam
At the very top of the stairs
In my own nightstand drawer, a bowl
of puerile trinkets: shells, crystals, stones
Harvested from a distant Grecian sea
So smooth in my palm they made me cry
Life has a strange way of unfolding right?
HP texts while I shop for yogurt and bread
Hours before evening’s gentle ritual
Of disassembling a tired magpie’s shiny nest
The metal party
Cold clone
You were invited
To the silver age
You fretted
On the margins you
Courted overhearing
Heard too much
And let your facial expression
Become your face
A sort of story
Storytellers tell
In between stories
They look to replicas
To remind themselves
Of lost originals
Like mountains of porcelain
After an age of winds
I thought your myth
Was only a thought
Like a hot doorknob
Opening into dark fires
Cracking liminals
To hear something noises
In anymore ears
Cold clone
Going gone
You told nothing
Where your mouth had been
Your mouth still was
safe grazes
what swollen sound
scape displaces
your best work
for good? body
double bird
too close to
the ground wet hollow blossoms
better with
some rage bait
I have dropped
into a more or less
delightful splice
o the fucking
exclamation of safe
grazes wet star guide
says bangled branches
have a tendency
to overabsorb
I have slipped
skin again
I am in my own
fashion a teeth
gnasher observing
this pickled
policy of sponge
and release