d

you deserve a poem all to yourself

not just to sing your praises—

how you bathe your lovers

in yes

how the graze of your chin over mine

drags me with you

how you would rather turn to stone

than see me harmed—

not just that

(the briefest glimpse of your light)

you deserve a poem all to yourself

because poetry is beautiful and sharp

and you are poked through

i don’t know anyone who has bled so much for art

without making it

see: you have given your bed, your sex, your love

your looks of hunger

you have been husbanded and cuckolded and used up

and loved, yes, but also valuated and parsed and lyricized

you have born it all

and all of it has been hard

whether you know it, or not

and here you are, unbroken

cat, rug, pounce

another night of inverse sleep in this strange, new place
and my cat is pouncing on our braided rug
turning it sideways so the whole room looks confused and ugly.

in our old apartment, the rug fit just-so
pinned beneath the couch so it couldn't move.
i miss that feeling, precision borne from familiarity
but i am here, not frozen
wandering aimlessly in the valley between happinesses.

i do not know what pushed me from my peak, but
i am beginning to notice that the afterwards is always eternal -
things cannot un-happen, through sheer force of will or desperate wishing.
time fills up space
and no amount of crying can put things where they once were

not even a rug, which in the morning
i dutifully line up with the floorboards
studying its delicate weave and the space where it has snagged a thousand times
hoping to return it to its original positioning.

i am almost successful; the rug is almost where i remember it being
but everything uncanny is measured in micrometers
and the cat will pounce again

orlando

the only safe place to cry
is on the streets
where nobody will wake up
and pretend to know.

not ever new york city

where were you this weekend?
my landlord's face gets ugly when i say
n-y-c
he's not alone in that, we all have our reasons
for instance: the combined smell of hamburgers and cigarettes
july sweating at three a.m. waiting for the j train
bottles of urine on the subway and the street
people under blankets on the street next to people in suits
the way a hurricane can kill a coastline
while one mile inland, all anyone does is drink
but cody gets uglier than that
his big lips dropping down like melpomene
ugly at the sound of ghosts and gay bars
he says "new years eve, 1983
is when he let a guy fuck him in the bath house
and i knew."

never mind that nobody could have known.
some places are so full of ghosts
that it doesn't matter which ones
lenape, homosexual, black
there is always something garish about discotheques on graveyards

arriving home at sunset

it was a joke:
we are a 501(c)3 negative-profit organization
and we need your money so that we can
grind ourselves to dust but not disappear
so that kira can go home at night
and not cry because the people she loves
are tense in their shoulders, faces, laughs
about going hungry for the things that matter

i am driving home in a car with a cracked bumper
and a breaking axle, and
the crack will turn one-year-old soon, and
the axle will snap, and
i am thinking "who did this to the world," and
the black woman by the side of the road
holds a cardboard sign that says "anything helps," and
i drive past her and consider giving my last quarter
but it seems too small
and then she is in the distance

later
as i mount the hill whereon i live
an orange sun meets me and shoots up gold
rays across my windshield,
reggaeton falls onto the warm road from above,
the dust of a springtime afternoon
caught up in the sun and the music and the rattle of my dying car
and upstairs, my room smells like summer salads
and firewood
and i think again "who did this to the world"
because nothing so horrible should be so sweet

and christmas is eight months away

evening setter, sun setting, set-up: poinsettia

off my balcony spills a city bricolage

promises to be beautiful, not lonely

promises to be rainy on Christmas

to drown out being Jewish and ignored

or being in love with a Christian and living with a Christian

and surrounded by Christians who don’t know the difference

between menorah and chanukkiah

though really, neither does any other Jew

who claims to not feel sad about lights on Christmas trees

lights on Christmas houses, chintzy plastic chanukkiahs

on chintzy ‘80s temples.

I could list and list the things that give me distance

soul dysphoria – not just religion, but

rickety tables, rickety chairs, laminate countertops, electric stoves

linoleum kitchens, loose sockets, dusty corners

crying dog downstairs, the band “crystal castles”

but really this it it:

I want to wake up in the forest and not miss the city

to wake up in the city and not miss the woods

to pick mushrooms out of my backyard

I want to love Christmas trees

poinsettias

sunsets, evenings in Providence

myself

inverse correlation

no poetry
painting
or songs
just gentle winds
and long walks
an endless caress
and just like that
no reason for art.
it is better, true,
but it is also quiet.