•May 25, 2009 •
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smoke
scent of winter
radiator heat
and mirrors
pale blue eyes
gales
stealing breath
and slow-falling snowflakes
on Massachusetts Avenue
impress my days
in the background
these private recollections of
recollecting you
are mine
alone
and this gorgeous story
we have lived
yours
just as
i always
intended
Posted in completed works
•May 5, 2009 •
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maman died today
camus missed the train
sometime following
and me
never thinking
after
like children to rorschach clouds
there are times i self-determine
the shape of elements
i can’t control
we are intertextual
i am living
fiction
borrowed sentiments from films & novels
are just as much mine as
streetlit memories
maman died today
and it rained all day long
i was thinking of you
finally
wondering why
freedom’s just another word
on the radio
for nothing left to lose
four years ago
i remembered
you swam the ocean
sometime following
and maybe you are rain
with all its powers of suggestion
and the torpid fullness
of saturated moments
but probably it is no exquisite coincidence
just a book
i happened to like
before its time
Posted in completed works
•April 6, 2009 •
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nothing impresses me more
than a man who knows how to wait
because i am not
a patient woman
i know conviction grows on trees
but grafting takes too long
and sometimes doesn’t work
things torn and mended
are the lovelier for being one alone
the breeze asserts itself
how long you stood there
i don’t know
these places where i am
are not unbeautiful
the sum of slow ascent is oblivious
but this timely summit yours and waking
how ephemerality was arranged
coffee cups between us
on slow morns
these nights are disorderly and
there is no place
in this space
for me the way my presence demands
more than it requires
expand
accept your unrestraint
if you should unwittingly collect
unrequired evidence
that my reverie is playing at
the corners of your mouth and
the near distance of your gaze
flickering like truth
be certain
you return before me, quietly
i’ll come twenty minutes late
or never at all
inertia like revolving doors in winter
not to find you;
and i can’t think how we’d make a meet
of two passersby
if ever we should try
i’ve been the breeze long enough to know
we oughtn’t
Posted in completed works
•March 16, 2009 •
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do i discern the taste
always
familiar strangers
smile
because i am not of it
or
i am
it?
i survey
smooth white and connecting
lines of America’s backyard
if we had one.
i offer all the dirt accumulated
film on my street shoes
from places i’ve been
in a thought
to match the gravity i sense
all around me
but can’t quite make out.
chasing the sunny side of the street
where i am
it’s always windy.
is it possible to take root
here?
anywhere
i am?
somehow
open and beaming and
winking violet in the sun
i don’t suppose
wildflowers are indigenous to any one
place.
Posted in completed works
•February 10, 2009 •
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some women wear mischief
in their eyes,
the curl of a bottom lip;
still others
around their thighs, but—
no consequence
mischief isn’t telling
across the fluorescent night
i sense crimes being carried out
in my name
Posted in completed works