in a white room and a curtain fluttered*

"That which you hold holds you" 

 -Tom Robbins

You who come to me in sleep

touch me

fold my body to your body—

mock me, 

your pity eyes dark

in the woods

by the water

inside the gazebo—

I love you.

Love me. 

Don't—

You leave me when I wake.

You leave me when I wake. 

*From "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski

Cigarillos

This is not about race.
He stole cigars.
He listened to rap.
His friend had tattoos.
He was huge.

A spade is a spade.
A stolen cigar is a stolen cigar.
A gun is, well —

His mother receives a letter.
In it, lamentations from another member of the aggrieved.
It wasn't about her son's race.
He was threatening.
He covered his face with a hoodie.
He was carrying Skittles.

For all we know they were stolen.
That's the end of it,
right? 

Philadelphia

If eating vegan marshmallows after breakfast is wrong then I don't want to be right.


There are three drops of my blood on a bar's pool table somewhere in Philadelphia. They are close to the pocket on the bottom right side.

The difference between a small, grungy dive bar with a jukebox and neon green lights inside and a boutique beer list with wrought-iron sidewalk tables is exactly one block (and several jello shots).

The inside of a Rite Aid at 1:00 am on a Saturday morning is the great equalizer. A room full of people cheering for the man who found his Cheetos.

My kingdom for a king-size bed.

Creaky stairwells and loose banisters and waking up in the middle of the night needing urgently to pee.



The next morning I bite into bacon, lean back eyes closed and chewing, when I open them again I say to the waitress you have given me a new lease on life. She laughs and I tip well.

We walk all over the city and then run for the train, 35 minutes along the waterside trail underneath the art museum.

I shit you not: There is a line of people each waiting to take the exact same photo of themselves in front of a statue of Rocky. One by one they raise their fists over their heads.

The train ride is sleepy and uneventful. After setting down my backpack in the kitchen and kissing Wilson on the top of his head I walk to the park, lay down a blanket in the grass, look up at the tree branches above me blinking.

Back home in bed I sleep well, dream I'm an FBI agent in the middle of a life-or-death investigation. I slither beneath stone walls and test a blind man's veracity, confident, I will not let that woman get hurt.

What does it mean to be non-hegemonical in everyday life?

If I paint the walls will anyone notice this home has been condemned?
I bought a bucket at Rite-Aid then stopped to play the piano for the young man on the sidewalk.
Music for everyone he says I say I can get behind that.

In the hot grass lot I trade two organic Capri Sun rip-offs for three shots of vodka.
That concert changed my life.

The kitchen floors are mopped, now, the sink scrubbed down, the dishwasher run.
Why don't you go and find it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~


After the rains the world cools down. Damp wood and puddled roofs.
When I ride my bike a thin black line of water appears on the back of my shirt.

I have no one to talk to about this.

Tomorrow I will build supports for the tomatoes and peppers.
One cut bleeds on my knee, the other at the base of my left hand's middle finger.

The rainbow plant drowns.
The begonias are due for a watering.

Wilson is learning to be brave

In the past, even before the rain hit, he would take cover beneath the brown corduroy couch and re-emerge hours after the thunder had passed.


This time, as lightning illuminates the living room walls, he stands between my knees and the backs of my thighs where I sit on the rug—tense, ready to run the two feet to the couch, yet trusting for that second or series of seconds or a minute maybe that everything, as I promise him over and over, will be okay.

"I don't think it will ever be easy to make an album"

Bees cling to clover, lilting heavy side to side.
He lies sick on a navy blue L.L.Bean quilt in the grass.
Two groundhogs run for cover.

Feel better, darling, and I'm off. I am here to get away
from war, bombed-out planes, oil barons. I step down the trail, the trees are so much bigger since last time I was here, the flowers too, big bushes of green growing so tall they swallow the edges of wooden houses filled with birds. I am thinking in poetry again, if only for these muffled steps through mud, and clumps of grass, if only in my own head.

I run. Miles move slower than normal, my feet fall heavy, it's okay, the better to see the creekbed, floating leaves, purple puffs and sparrows dotting the green hill. I expect I'll walk the bigger hills but here I am hopping up them, watch that rock, there, and that one too keep your eyes to the ground but occasionally, if you're up for it, sneak a peek at the top. It's not that far away, after all, I run with a dragonfly for a while, I say with but I'm no match for its speed, we both know it, this is not a competition





*Tallest Man on Earth

the better to keep sweat from accumulating

He stands in a raft rowed by another man tugging at lines. I spread my legs wide, the better to keep sweat from accumulating in the spaces where knees and upper thighs touch. For my birthday I bought myself a bike.

Her name is Lucy, I bought her for $200 and change on consignment, already I've earned my money back all it took was one speed-pedal down that shady tree-lined hill fucking flying one time? I've pedaled out hard nearly every day since. When I sling my foot over the seat and step off my thighs are shaking, this despite running five miles at a time and doing squats in the kitchen. These days I do them with the fan pointed right at me, in my underwear and a tank top, it's the only way to make exercise bearable in this heat well that and coasting downhill

Meanwhile Wilson sleeps all day, hot on the coffee table or the stone floor in the kitchen, both are cooler than the rug or the couch or anything made of fabric though it's a relative term in this apartment these days, he's committed to the birthday suit just like every day me I'm trying to keep it relatively decent what with those filmy curtains in the kitchen




I am grateful to you, I hope you know that, there is a clause that I want to write here but I don't know who's reading, that and slurping gluten-free dairy-free ice cream from a spoon.

No I do not want to write about that, the lines are too long and they're always gone by the time I get there. Anyway.


I ride with the memory of the day that car hit me, young woman on the passenger side crashing into me thrown from the bike its frame bent around the stop sign and blood all over it. I comforted her, tugged at the metal a bit then climbed back on, it took me another few blocks to figure out where the blood was coming from, a deep puncture in my finger that's all, the scar's nearly gone now but it was when I stepped off the bike again that I started shaking