Posts for June 25, 2026 (page 9)

It must be nice to be a person who isn’t aware of their body

to fast without thinking

to be a physiological man

and have only one dominant hormone to navigate

when you try a new regimen

it must be nice to know how to process protein every day of the year

to lift a gallon of waterwithout tearing muscles

to not need to wait for someone passing by the window

to be able to unload your car

it must be nice to not feel your heart pounding out of your chest

even though your blood pressure is “fine”

to not have it wake you up

or vibrate your eyeglasses

as your face moves

to its ancietn rhythm

it must be nice to stay at a temperature where you can burn germs

where hypothermia isn’t your norm

where you don’t notice the difference

or impossibleness of half a degree variance on a thermostat

not nice in a way you’d ever ever notice,

if having only lived in that body

but sure nice from over here,

where three dominant hormones change the calculus and danger and safety of every intervention

every few days

where the body doesn’t adhere to any studies

mostly because the studies weren’t done on biological women

or plant eaters

or meditators

or anyone else who’s like me

There’s a woman who walks
the block with her greyhound — 

she strolls; he struts, a sinewed
supermodel sure to stun

passersby with his falcon’s
gaze and sculpted-marble body

built to spot, outsprint, and seize
small prey. One snatch and shake

is all it would take to kill
an unlucky rabbit or squirrel.

Yet, on a sun-drenched morning
in the middle of June, he stops

before a neighbor who kneels
in her garden, her cheeks smudged

with dirt and tears. She looks up,
grateful, eager to take his head

in her hands. As she rubs his ears,
the dog emits a gentle whine,

offering some measure of animal
comfort, the softness of leaning in.

It has already begun.

The heat out of season
tourists melting on Roman streets

 It has already begun.

The birds chattering
about our folly in morning blue.

It has already begun.

Black ooze melting the joints
of Roman cobbles.  

 It has already begun.

Map of meteo Europa
with suns and desperate digits.

It has already begun.

People saying “It’s hot!”
like it was always this hot—
but not always.  

 It has already begun.

Is it a comment on positive state of mind,
or the negative amount of creative time,
That there has been a dearth
In the annual June purge
Of therapy via poetry or rhyme

You must think me so monstrous
My dark shadow looming o’er
My hands a grasping predator
As I try
And try
And try
To gently shoo you out the door

Southern Comfort

1.

Her left foot is connected to malleoli from 
which lithe ankle bones ascend like skyscrapers
high past femur and quads and up, up, up 
to her most secret places where her weiner dog, 
Gizmo, resides. Habitual in hunger he swallows a GLP
pill downtown and starves to death.
He doesn’t eat much in the first place, whether at 
McDonald’s or Little Five Points’ Roosters Ice Cream.
I love her ankle bones.  Proceeding to gnaw with
my toothless snarl and nibble, I’m left with two
perfectly formed big toes named Lucy and Ricky,
and play joyous second-line on a miniature bass drum
with each, down some seedy street in New Orleans,
a trombone poking me in the ass.

2.

What bone made us walk? We wrote to our parents
after rolling in the sack four fisted with Jim Beam
in one hand, and Southern Comfort in the other.
We never laid the whiskey on the bedside table.
She dreamed of weiner dogs in her sleep,
and I bought her one fucker entering puberty,
which was ideal because the missus didn’t want
a puppy.  Neither did I.  I wished for a cat.
Our last night we turned on Christmas lights and
I Walk On Gilded Splinters, and after portobello
frittatas with leeks and tarragon we put away
our alcohol to spice things further—made love
for the first time.  We never had it so good, again.

To Be Needed Gently

Night settles around the workshop
like a shawl around a tired shoulder.

I sit with the dolls
the way you return to a memory
you can’t quite close.

I take them one by one,
setting each gently on the bench,
as if putting an old house to sleep—

a crack here,
a loosened seam there,
nothing that can’t be tended
with a steady hand.

They sit quietly,
their hair falling in soft disarray,
their eyes open with a stillness
that makes me feel they’ve been waiting,

reflecting the lamplight
as if something inside them
has just stirred.

One has a fine crack along her jaw.
When I lift her,
the fracture catches the light
as if it’s calling for someone
who knows how to look.

I lift another,
feeling the warmth rise in my chest—
the old instinct
to hold what is giving way.

Her crack is small,
and I touch it
as if it were a pulse.

I lift another,
and her crack opens under my thumb—
not in fear,
but in trust.

And I think,
this is what it means
to be needed gently.