SUBWAY BIRD
New Poems by Adriana DiGennaro
Submitted in partial completion of the Masters of Fine Arts degree
at Sarah Lawrence College, May 2010
Table of Contents
Section 1: A Monday in Fall
Pillows…………………………………………………………………………………….
New………………………………………………………………………………....……..
City Lodgings……………………………………………………………………………..
Crash……………………………………………………………………………………..
Tanka for a Strange Season……………………………………………………………....
How Could You Hate Fall…………………………………………………………….....
How I Got My Acura and Liberal Arts Education...…………...………………………...
The Sixth Parting………………………………………………………………………...
My City…………………………………………………………………………………..
The Machine Steals the Woman’s Only Ten…………………………………………….
Subway Bird……………………………………………………………………………...
The Arrangement….……………………………………………………………………..
The Cab…………………………………………………………………………………..
Section 2: A Friday in Spring
Worried…………………………………………………………………………………..
Breaking……………………………………………………………………………….....
Nicole Biskoff’s Spring Break Behaviors…………………………………………...…...
Eternal…………………………………………………………………………….……...
I Had a Baby Once………………………………………………………………..……...
Self-Addressed………………………………………………………………….………..
What Are Men Anyway……………………………………………………………..…...
Plaza Bootery……………………………………………………………………….……
The Register..………………………………………………………………………..…...
The Recruiter…………………………………………………………………………….
It………………………………………………………………………………………….
Pomegranate…………………………………………………………………………..….
When I Come Home to Long Island…………………………………………………......
On My Way………………………………………………………………………………
SECTION 1: A MONDAY IN FALL
Pillows
1
Drool sponge.
Faux torso.
Shutter upper.
The biggest little bliss.
Forgiving sphinx.
Giant powderpuff to relinquish faces in.
Doughy cake you can't eat.
Cool cat on the flipside.
Taker of low-profile impressions.
Cushy slab smelling of soft.
Lover to miss from a work desk--
want to call it on the phone,
say ohh I cant wait to hold you.
A vantage point.
The nucleus of a home.
Sack of dried tears.
Packet of salted stuffing.
Manila folder--
file filling with information,
microchip encoded with the data of sleep.
Nightly reservoir in which the ear's
collection of words
empties and forms complex dreams.
2
The sweet one I soaked seven years ago when I loved and you didn’t.
The sweet one we held three years ago when we both loved.
The sweet one you banished when I left because you love and I don’t anymore.
3
Last night I didn’t need any.
I have your pajamas
plus two cotton teeshirts belonging to men I’ve met
since I tucked you away.
All in my bed, heap of other people’s laundry.
Your pajamas have migrated toward the wall
in favor of these.
The younger guy’s shirt continues onto the sheets:
Hormones, sweat. Cologne.
But the older guy's is so clean it reeks of fabric softener.
I gathered it about my neck at bedtime
and pulled it off this morning,
waking up to a white sky, worrying
about
power loss
New
Oh, to be New—
pudgy hand and eyelashes like wet feathers, babbling
to the babysitter. Given a partner for projects,
chased by boys on the grass. Today we learned
new words.
Or fifteen, the body tight, the B minus a blessing,
Wait, who had sex with who?
Or those fashion design majors I met--
Have you heard of This? Don't you love Them?
I didn't know what to do with my arms
in my cheap coat, and felt
the weather.
If I've outgrown a bib, then I want real leather.
If I'm not New, who should I be creating?
Tonight putting my cousins to bed, the little one couldn't sleep.
I stroked her hair. I want my mommy, she said.
I'm no one's, not even my own.
City Lodgings
Plaster,
walls crack.
The kitchen sink with its two taps
trickling.
The lack of counterspace
and sticky dots of dried cran-grape.
The angry pile of cutlery, butterknife
and fork tine.
Dishwater smell, untouchable towel.
Mismatched drinking glasses.
Couch slumped,
cotton coming loose.
Outlets iced in white paint.
Little rugs never get cleaned.
Brass locks and neighbors,
Yes we have a corkscrew.
The heavy windows
and honking, walkers and mica glinting.
The resident, rustling
when sounds fold up into silence.
Crash
I was manic and 18
when I made a quick turn into a phone pole
on (no joke) High street. Backbone
jolted awake, sideview snapped off.
He and I,
it was a bit like that.
Him on the sidelines,
six foot three,
aloof, shadowy
when I careened around the corner
of summer and fall.
He stood and stood.
Even when I,
singing radio ballads, swung out fast
and wrecked myself on him.
What could anyone say?
I got up,
reminded of the damages--
tugging long splintery shards
from the blue body of that broken sedan
and what it had cost to pry
the stuck-shut door open.
Tanka for a Strange Season
The sun fakes gold and excess heat as if
it’s still summer, but she knows better, and
the trees know better: things really are dying.
She hides her head under the covers for
as long as possible until someone
gets angry at her. There’s nothing she can do.
She dreams of a shaman healer. Of her
red eyes the healer interprets, you have
allergies. She says, I have blocked energies.
There’s yellow and brown and red confetti
shimmering meanly in the yellow light,
rude and wishing everything away from it.
She goes to the outlet stores to shop in
October. She buys mom a gold compass
necklace and she gets herself a bag. Big deal.
These signs touting activities. It’s just
people taking some pumpkins and apples
knowing full well the end is coming for them.
Every morning someone wakes up at five
and seven and nine and never really
sleeps. And she wakes up to coffee but boredom.
Sex happens but boredom returns and the
ground is still full of what’s rotting. Those crows
still unzip the sky. The days get chopped in half.
And what a terrible thing to realize:
only the crows have laughed in these three months.
worse to wonder if she ever will again.
The torment starts in mid-august and doesn’t let up
until the end of December when winter
has thoroughly replaced it.
How Could You Hate Fall?
Autumn, get off you are hurting me.
Autumn, I found August spasming, possessed.
Autumn, I suspect you are the proprietor of August.
Autumn, September is an awful person, a dictator, I fear it.
Autumn, with your yellow light fading.
Autumn, with your silent N.
Autumn, with your ruining of perfectly good oaks.
Please stop making messes on my street. Look at all this.
Autumn, clean up all these clumps of wet leaves you left here and also those twigs on the grass.
Autumn, don't force me.
Your pumpkins are not enough to make a person glad.
Autumn, some people don't find sweater weather quaint.
Autumn, razor blades in candy apples?
Autumn, your kids were bashing jack o lanterns, beating each other with shaving cream cans.
Or they were breaking out in hives waiting for the bus.
Autumn, I am never ready when you come up behind me and say pencils down.
You with your truncated days and ceaseless sighing.
Autumn, I will hire guys to rake you away.
Autumn, stop being so sick and not sorry.
Autumn, you're dying, get it over with.
How I Got My Acura and Liberal Arts Education
When I talk about it now I say I’m almost
glad it happened that day age 5 in Florida
and I still like dogs even after all that
she’s not afraid of dogs my mother said
and what a stupid little thing it was
not even a dog the neighbor girl’s cocker spaniel
I’d crouched to hug it and it lunged
and bit the round part of my nose nearly off
I remember her dad had been making lasagna
suddenly confronted by a child with no nose
I remember a red checkered dishtowel
you were brought to our doorstep covered in blood
my father said
face full of bandages in Kindergarten
my first deposition
I remember that defense lawyer
struggling to claim that I’d attacked the dog
what a bunch of hooey said the judge
The Sixth Parting
1.
I just need to give you a gift.
I’ll be on the east coast one night only.
Please, I just need to give you a gift.
Conflict. Truth
swallowing its own tail and somehow
I’m driving there—
2.
I waited in the cold.
She creeps out in a dress, black sails in a bitter wind,
moonlit skin at the bustline,
beggar woman floating towards me.
Same height, same hug like a hauling
of selves into one big bag.
3.
We went where we could lie down.
Her eyes dripping water on our cheeks, watering my eyes which then watered on our ears, weeping intermittent tearstorms, her sheepish fork sweeping around the food I fixed for her, the dragging time, the granite air, the orphan of her question would you visit me in Oregon.
Like an agent,
I work alone.
The only way I feel safe
is alone,
but remember in New Hampshire Carolyn was mad cause she forgot her jaw grind retainer and we told her to maybe wear the Jimmy Bob teeth you got from that coin machine and she actually tried them on and we laughed at her so much and she got so pissed—
3.
The gift turned out to be party favors
from her brother’s wedding:
four chocolates in a gold box and a gold candle.
She urged, burn this
each time you miss my love.
5.
The thing I would miss
is a system virus
built to access me.
How she opened my copy of Man the Manipulator
which looked like a spellbook
for a lynx on ritual night
or she was an artist studying the classics:
the most artful ways to smear,
colors that conspire,
the painting of things in bad light.
My City
Strip of sparkle
from the bridge
downtown the slotted skyline.
Then the lit
peeping tip
of the empire state building
piles of steam
next to someone’s high heel
gray rainwater pulsing in gutters.
Saxophone sound.
Bum piss and sewage
and candied cashews
Little key between rivers.
Spiky sliver of grid.
In midtown,
swarms of bodies and light.
I got high on a billboard in Chelsea
in the Apple of my blond Texan’s eye.
The Machine Steals The Woman's Only Ten
Today she tour jetèd, she rushed last call last CALL and all the machines were taken so she stood in line anxious
and seething for one, wet with sweat and heaving and while there she saw six ex-coworkers including Noah
and they were like, "Ha ha! Whatta coincidence!"
She got to the machine she put her money in the machine and it wasn't taking it and oh God Noah
came up and stuck out the slat of his gorgeous cheek for her to kiss and she did
and it felt like those nights in Brooklyn, and he was trying to say hi but she was jamming her ten
into the slot and saying "FUCK this it’s BROKEN!" he said no, relax—look it's taking your money---
it's gonna take it, just slowly. She watched it inch in.
Then he said goodbye.
That's when
the machine stole her ten.
Then she yelled "FUCK!" to the whole crowd watching, and walked away
with a deep frown, disoriented sort of looking for customer service.
Then two people said Miss, Miss,
there's your ticket, there on the ground. And she heard them and whirled around and scooped it up in one
grand plié then pirouetted, took off running toward track 13 and jumped
into that train with the doors closing on her leg.
Trains take off so wobbly as if undetermined.
And she was too unstable to stand,
and she said "can I sit there" to the seat next to this leggy man
and his legs started fidgeting, overtly sexual so then she made a deep frown face again
(only slightly shallower than when
the machine stole her ten)
Subway Bird
After I get emptied hollow
and have to face the daylight
that's when I finally say it:
used again
and it seeps in while I wait
at the station near his place
(I hear a siren on the street inside me)
I’m watching at this sparrow walking
on the platform
what are you doing bird
down here in the black dirt
and rush of feet
(I hear a siren on the street inside me)
you think you'll get your breadcrust
you precious bit of sweet-eyed fluff
cocking your head like an offer
don’t you know you can rise
above man’s reach?
I see you peck and get fluttery
but there's nothing here for you
(I hear a siren on the street inside me)
are you dumb or something?
The Arrangement
Mr. Oyen, my new friend, I scheduled this meeting
in hopes I could sell an idea I’ve been dreaming
will help with logistics. Forgive me my scheming;
I don’t want to manipulate, force, or seem desperate,
but we gush so much mutual praise, without respite,
and we want to have sex, indeed you’ve expressed it.
I know where you’re at, and it’s where I’m at too—
I let go of my S.O., you dumped yours. Are we rude?
Might be, but we’re too young for long-term, it’s true.
At this point we want sex, we’re about our well-being.
In fact I have several young blokes that I’m seeing.
And men make fine partners despite all the fleeing.
See I am a woman, and it seems I’ve discovered
that things get lost, post-sex, and can’t be recovered,
and it’s over this issue I’ve oftentimes hovered.
I’m so torn cause I don’t want to limit my choices:
say X or Y comes down to New York and voices
an interest in kickin it. My whole heart rejoices!
If life is a cooking show, variety’s the spice—
you’re a man, so I don’t need to tell you this twice.
But a steady along with the options sounds nice.
Is that wholly crazy? You might later laugh saying,
“This girl wrote a poem to ensure sustained laying.
She made this whole offer but I was just playing.”
In that case you’re ign’ant, cause I’m playing as well;
we play; with no playing ‘twould all go to hell.
Let’s win all around is what I’m trying to sell.
The Cab
Was driven by a black dude with cornrows and in the passenger seat was his woman smoking a cigarette and I said, grand central
they were listening to hot 97 and we were going over some really lovely bridges with looming twinkly cityscapes on either side and you could see everything clearly it was a very clear night, and the driver guy said do they still have fireworks in midtown on 4th of July
and I didn’t suppose he'd be talking to me so at first I didn’t answer
and then I realized he’d been talking to me and we mused about fireworks and then the radio DJ said throwback to 2001 and Usher "You Got it Bad" came on the radio
and the girlfriend was singing it and at first I only mouthed the lyrics, then sang quietly, then just sang and the driver joined in
then all three of us were belting and everything that used to mattah / don't mattah no mo' / like / money / or the cars / you can have it all, like / FLOWERS CARDS AND CANDY
and I doubled over and the driver thought I was laughing at the lyrics and goes, no that man speak the truth right there.
SECTION 2: A FRIDAY IN SPRING
Worried
Can't get up, can't eat, can't speak.
I'd stammer it all out to my mother,
but she'd worry.
Always a "her" to worry about:
like spun-glass Aria sobbing at Club Love,
wailing she felt ugly
as everyone shimmied around,
or gorgeous, jobless Angelica,
cursing out her boyfriend
and friends for no reason,
taking benzos as a bandage.
Anna, who had given her the benzos
cause they're chump change in her trove,
well she has this voice telling her to drive off a bridge, or
crawl under a bus.
Plus her mother hates her deeply.
My best friend Alaina's MS forced
her to move in with her mother
who actually tried to kill her.
"And I have pneumonia," she croaks on the phone.
And I'm worried, yes, about all of them,
but most of all about you,
who puked so much when I quit you in July,
and who still writes to me saying
"You’re not my baby. You're not
a poet. You monster. You sad little girl,"
You whose birthday is today,
and whose old, soft green scrubs I stole
for my bed
for the coming cruel year.
Breaking
I think back to you.
You, besides your skin,
were far from porcelain.
I think of your thighs and biceps.
The day I could break you!
But the day did come.
I could snap this in half,
you used to say,
gripping my thin arm.
Nicole Biskoff’s Spring Break Behaviors
Waking up at seven
Shuffling into the kitchen every morning to mix fiber and drink it
Grudgingly cooking me bacon and eggs every morning; refusing to eat bacon and eggs with me yet picking through my scraps
Saying hi to her cat and going “Pepper!” in a surprised, precious, drawn-out way
Asking me to turn my music down because “the cat has sensitive ears”
Getting frustrated when I couldn’t find and operate the correct remote
Washing everything after using it and putting it on the drying rack; washing the drying rack
Using too much detergent on the dishes so that everything tasted like tangerine bubbles
Putting things like the hair dryer away in cabinets lest they get left around
Using a spoon rest
Reminding me that Sunday is cleaning day
Calling my couch spot a mess even though there was just like two mugs and a glass
Refusing to put the heat on in the desert morning despite my using towels to weigh down my blankets
Growling at noon “What am I going to make for dinner tonight?”
Not using contractions
Using special vagina soap for washing sensitive vaginas
Holing up in her room to write stories about pirate ships and relationships
Eternal
Take inventory. What is eternal?
Begin with this room:
Not the sound equipment.
It will become outdated,
then break.
Not the rug; bit of filth for a street.
Not the walls; not these buildings,
how the city sheds and shudders.
Maybe not any building
and of course not the woman.
She will wither, a dull leaf.
I Had a Baby Once
For three months I thought he was my baby. Sleeping or awake, I was aware of him. I slept lightly because of all the marveling I was doing, like, wow, my baby. His cream skin, his red mood lighting.
A mix up: he belonged to some other woman, so who was I to try to keep him? Six feet of broad shoulders and long arms and legs, his tall flat self. White flag at full mast. Time, please pass, so I can forget all these things
I imagined were mine. In the days before I gave him up, he showed me perfectly structured white clothes--things she stitched for him. And when I cried, he looked so innocent that crying seemed selfish.
He never cried. It’s been a year and I don’t remember much. Just that patchwork quilt on his bed: I had thought the bloodstains were mine. I had scrubbed and scrubbed, and apologized.
Self-Addressed
You are not a scrap.
You are the entire package—
at one time they heard you ticking
and praised the day you’d blow up.
Concealing drugs, you’ll not be delivered.
Rip through your flannel envelope.
Untie the tightened string.
You will function as many things:
you must see what time brings,
you must see what time brings.
What Are Men Anyway
And what are men anyway, at least the kind we like? Lean and smiling all wry, we want them for some reason, all ten of their fingers, both their eyes, each lip, a lock of hair to swirl as we grin at them, resting our chins on our palms. We want them like things in shop windows and we want them to want us like things in shop window. We want them to pick us out of hordes of women, bop us on the head and carry us off, caveman clubs dragging. We want to feel like we’ve earned it—something we said, the way we cut our eyes at them, we want to redeem these things like coupons for the best model of Man. “Did you see Sarah’s 1975 Lamborghini? ‘Matt.’ I want one like that. Just gotta lose weight and I’m qualified for an upgrade.” We want to try them on like shoes. How far can you carry me, O New Man?
We want to take them out for test drives, measuring things they say on the Scale of Fabulousness, go on red alert at one bad statement, close it out, catch a new man like a cab and try again. We want to know when they’re on alert so we can hurriedly take back whatever we said that made his face shut down, that terrible turned-off attitude gloom that makes us lie in bed staring and questioning ourselves. We want to have a few drinks and start over. We want to meet one who smiles the right way, knows how to craft a perfect verbal gift to make us sigh and squeal, back to the door shut against the night with his cologne still floating through it (as he walks away hopefully sighing too, but not TOO much) and we don’t know anything and we love it and we want to own the unknown.
We want men. To kiss every inch of our bodies and tongue us slow and tell us not to be ashamed of dimpling fat, say “I LOVE your ankles.” We want a man to take us by the arm and smirk smilingly at our questions and lead us out to someplace dark. The sinewy-limbed, strong-handed, The ones who make us stew in secret turmoil. We want them for something to think about when it’s a dull moment or a car ride and there are passing lights and sexy serious music. From the outside only a landscape of skin and fabric. Cryptic statements and a blank face. Instead of saying “Do you have a man?” One should say “Do you have a mystery?” “I want a mystery to come my way.” “I’ve been with my mystery three months, and I don’t understand why he’d….” We want the headspin. We want the anxiety, the conflict and resolution. We want him to say nothing on the way home, want to have a fight about something, want to complain to our girlfriends sniffing and snobbling into Kleenex, or calmly over mochafrappalattecino drinks. We want Men to tie sterling strings between their hearts and ours. Just some preciousness. Don’t we all want this?
Plaza Bootery
The whole khaki town's in a line outside
before I come up, delicate
with ratty hair, having walked
on the churchless side of the street
up to work at Plaza Bootery
where I wrench the tall brass key
in its lock and shuffle in. I fit Addisons, Hadleys
for communion Maryjanes,
see the branches flaking leaves
that blow through the doorway,
endless mothers struggling there
to steer the strollers,
saying Ashton sit down
so the lady can measure you.
Then the fugue of my trips downstairs into disorder,
boxes bursting from my arms
scattering wads of tissue paper.
D’you want a lollipop? What color?
I’ll use a red one, a kid said carefully,
and there can be those moments
but at the end of the day I’m ticketed in the lot
and the metermaid is long off duty
and it somehow hurts, the word lollipop, and the idea of all
the families home at dinner.
I won’t forget the boy
who started sobbing when I didn’t have his size.
His father called him Little Bird.
The Register
Noon and the schoolkids get released for lunchtime.
The boys all brunettes, same haircut flicking upward
as they lop along, awkward as donkeys, and the chirping girls
with their own hair breathtaking, long honeyed hanks
bright as the glint and glare of parked cars and melting snow.
I am desperate for them, hungry to be thirteen
in fitted jeans, my prom half a decade away
when the boy I like best, who, though I don’t know it yet,
will take me, shaking, in a lakeside cabin,
the shy firsts of everything, the time of my life,
but that’s the future. Today just walking. Jumping to pull my friend’s hat
over her eyes. Not wishing for pounds off, a pay raise,
I’m blind to this age, this place, and the woman in the shoe store
who has turned off the radio to weep at the register.
The Recruiter
The gorillas of First City Grime were in attendance tonight at Konkrete Jungle.
Kush, K-Swift, Rock and the other. They all stood on Avenue A, big and authoritative—they were in attendance.
And so was one of their girls. The crunchy-haired one with earrings that said Carlos and who I saw at Synctank on Valentine’s day
when me and Emily dodged Kush and Rock who tried to squeeze into that tiny bathroom with us.
The girl had shaken my hand and said, What do you do?
I said, I’m a sometimes receptionist for an ad agency.
She had said, I’ma escort, what if I told you you could make a G a day?
I said, Wow thank you very much and I’m very flattered but it would aggravate my depression.
Tonight she stumbled up to me drunk with a misshapen pompadour, offering discounted salon services.
She showed me her nail art book which was empty except the cover had acrylic nails pasted to it. They were all elaborately painted.
There was a beach scene, an Easter bunny scene, and some sort of Colombian flag.
I called it ‘beautiful.’ She straightened her cleavage, saying, I saw you before, where? And I said, Synctank. She said, What did we talk about?
I said furtively, career options.
She said, Oh yeah! But you’re depressed!
I said yeah, I can’t do a lot of work because of it.
It
1.) It is a series. It is a series of kills.
2.) The heart, the mind, the voice all hung up and dripping.
3.) Today was: a blow to the ear by a big bony-knuckled fist (if other days are mean-spirited trips and jabs and hocked spit)
4.) You can still hear the ringing, though you are not made of metal. You are made of something too soft to stay.
5.) So, what is the opposite of a robot?
6.) When the boss tells you to do something you are horrified by the potential for failure.
7.) You are confounded by the automatic floor cleaning device you are supposed to read the instructions to, set up and run regularly. It has dust on it. Do you clean the dust? You start to clean the dust and don't finish. Sit back down. Avoid it.
8.) Can't move.
9.) The fraught thoughts default to: bed.
10.) I think I want to go on disability.
11.) There is a sense of The Whole Thing.
12.) People can go lower than zero and go still lower. There is no absolute zero. In high school criminal justice we learned about a killer that put parts of his victims in yogurt containers. There is probably even a low below that.
13.) The word mood sounds like things underwater and sort of swimming but not really.
14.) Everyone else is a them. Legitimate and progressing nicely.
15.) Then again, there is no "everyone else" in sight.
16.) The system got messed up but it's too much work to fix it.
17.) There was a person people once knew. This person was something like holy and brought electricity and fuel and fire to groups of primitive people. This made everyone's life easy. Then the resources cut out and the person stopped showing up.
18.) It hurts.
19.) A womb with no view.
20.) Trabajo. Travail.
21.) It doesn't care how many friends you've got or how successful you are at doing whatever.
22.) The deeper you dig, the harder to get out. The harder to get out, the deeper you dig.
23.) If you question how it works, you're not a member.
24.) Abandon ship.
25.) I quit(?)
26.) I messed up and said I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry god why did I do that I'm so stupid I'm so sorry.
27.) No way out after imagining different strategies.
28.) The head hanging by the last thread of the ability to reason means suspension such that the slightest touch will send it into a tailspin.
29.) And the last thread is certainly not of spiderweb or fishingline.
30.) Get it out of me.
31.) Unfortunately there is no such thing as a brain transplant or brain enhancement operation.
32.) We want it out of us.
33.) We feel there's a hole in the bucket and we don't have the funds to fix it. Ashes of everything we've destroyed rain down. Oh and it rains for weeks, or else there's a constant threat of rain.
34.) An urge to curse.
35.) Production is for machines.
36.) Bruisable flowers (gray).
37.) How a girl's high cheekbones can make someone else weep in public.
38.) There is a random children's book in my head sometimes and all i can remember is "strawberry jelly has seeds. my mommy always gives me grape." and it sticks in my throat and chokes me.
39.) Everything chokes us.
40.) When I was little and choked they'd pick me up and slap me on the back in a downward motion till whatever it was would fall to the ground by gravity. What about now, what is It?
41.) I will invent a place where you wear a space suit and throw wine bottles at a cement wall.
42.) I will invent a place where you don't need protective wear.
43.) I will invent a place where you don't need anything.
44.) I will invent a place where you don't.
45.) Hang in there. Through the deep disruptive rumbling.
46.) If you question how it works, you're not a member.
47.) I heard once, it's not whether you win or lose it's how you play the game. I'm on the sidelines gripping my own arms.
48.) I heard once, "it's a dangerous thing, being born."
49.) Somewhere are stars fixed in their pattern.
50.) I wouldn't wish It on anybody.
Pomegranate
A grayish quality behind the color: alone
this should tell you it’s wiser
than your need for nourishment.
A thing more compelling
than any fruit before or since, and yet
that hollow cracking sound
is not a delving into, but a wresting open
of the nest that would be undisturbed,
seeds scattering like nerves. And what’s this
bitter wall
rewards hide behind?
It’s humiliating to pick, dig, gather, try
to get as much as you can
as often as you can
but forced to go slow.
It doesn’t feed you,
does it?
When I Come Home to Long Island
You better take me in your car with all its little lit up icons about adjustments.
You better show me a good time doing nothing.
You better resurface from my past, if you're only in my past, and say things like, I miss those times in high school before all this lonely soulsearching. Why don't we go stand in the parking lot of Toys R Us and play with a shopping cart and make fun of Samuel Farters as we called her.
You better make me laugh laugh till I pee getting out of the car in the cold wind and runny salt-ice on the lots.
You better get high with me and go to the stupid poetry barn for some old people poetry.
You better hollar at me till your hollaring device is like swollen.
You better be my best friend and hang out for consecutive days.
I remember being from small Long Island.
I love Tiana's laugh and beer and lovely science blather.
I love my car full of stolen hallmark merchandise mostly vanilla candle items.
I love Christmas commercials on TV. The sound of the dog's collar and the back sliding glass door when I sneak out.
I love wearing just boots in his black car.
I love how late it can get, and text messages.
I love beats on Hot 97 when I’m driving home to bed, beats like dark chocolate so good, and me so high and not knowing who made them.
Remember picking up her and him? And making Andrew drive. Do we ever actually go anywhere!!!! No never but we see everyone we knew since pre-K. Irishmen who wanna be Italians. Italians who wanna be black. And tacky old men.
I remember those blanched-out fall days near the pine barrens when the sunlight is so pale and the day depressing.
I remember feeling like a stuffed horny high lazy bastard, like a gluttonous holiday ham, when I’m home.
I remember how delicious the curves of North Country Road feel to my body. Little road skirting the harbor.
How the yellowlined dips and turns have to do with physical memory, the old track to my mechanism, a returning-to.
On My Way
Came up on choir singers in the subway concourse, gold aromas
of their harmonies rang through that sooty cathedral
and I dumped out my wallet and felt richer than a sultan
as love will do to you
and I stepped in gum, therefore literally was
a gumshoe. Stairs enrobed in mist,
had no umbrella and no clue,
undead, we should all be thrilled to see
black and blue grill smoke, crisscrossing crowds,
charcoal-blackened chicken skewers piled
on a vendor cart, a man's first bite: that's lovely, he said,
the big red digital clock outside Penn Station
dim and fragmented, broken since last year.
No barkers barking: Sunday, it's softer.
Still the sparse throngs move. Boots with broken soles
from trodding are soaked through,
I'm wide-eyed on the train, giggling at the very trees
and the teen girls with a tank of baby turtles next to me,
faces pure as this day
when I looked around and saw us as: Born