is when you get a paper cut, 

While still in art school I was told
being an artist may take a toll  

just forget about material wealth
work hard while you still have your health  

wash your clothes in the sink and try
them over the radiator so they’ll dry  

Burn your drawings to stay warm
like Picasso did in Paris, but be warned  

Never burn your sparks  

(After-poem inspired by ”Fire” by Billy Collins)

We walked into Cal’s
and walked out with
two boxes of books,
our wallets too light
for comfort and
our bookshelves
burdened and bending.

We walked into 
thrift addiction just after
and walked out with 
a pair of new work shirts
and John Denver
and the Muppets,
a Christmas together on CD.

We walked into Winco
with empty stomachs and 
long lists of whole goods
and walked out with 
mason jar vases,
roasted pine nut hummus,
and a too large tub
of marscapone.

We walked in with
a fight hanging between us
and walked home with
easy silence and love.

The best days end with a champagne
flute of sparkling apple cider.  My family’s laughter trills like clinking
glasses as we burp bubbles that tickle
tickle our nostrils.  We toast the mundane splendor
of unspoiled Saturdays, so deep in our cups we forget
to set the next morning’s alarm, a trifle for tomorrow
while we doze smiling today.

When the sun sets,
The stars begin to appear from behind its light. 
There’s almost always a lonely dot, 
That appears before the rest. 
A lot of people see the fist star of each night, 
But what most people don’t know, 
Is that sometimes there are two first stars: 
One in the sky, 
And one it’s reflection in the still water. 
If my reflection could speak, 
I think I know what I would say to it. 
The two stars can’t speak, though. 
If they could, I think they would still do what they do now. 
The water reflects the first star’s stillness, 
For it’s happy to be where it is. 
And they just star at each other, 
Just like I star at them, 
Awed by their serenity. 

                                                                                                                                                     for Stan

Your statuette still sits on my shelf: A mahagony man to woman, abstractly
sensual; I still stare, wrestling with where their lovemaking begins and ends.

Sculptures of wood always spoke to you, so you spoke to me through this, carved
in Cuba, of course, mortar of our accidental reporter-activist friendship.

Far from that Caribbean border, which you crossed over and over in a low-key
life, you lunched with me and shared the strife of Jews you knew from your trips.

With every visit your brought what synagogues need – prayerbooks and kipot – religious Red Cross boxes reminding old men and women that someone beyond Havana cared.

You became my eyes and ears in this place that was frozen in a Ford Falcon
past, taking me to the side streets and sugarcane fields beyond the city’s bones.

Cuba was our mortar, my friend, and through that bond, you opened the heavy door
to your life, it squeaking away from the frame; that’s how I learned you had a son.

I still recall the kiddish cup my wife and I drank from at our wedding, the rabbi thanking you for the gift, and I used it ’til its silver plating wore away, like your final rest home stay.   

dreamt of my baby again, her skull
making geometry of my skin, my skin
cradling her. in dreams my skin
can’t break, just my voice, and I never
seem to talk. the simple telepathic
knowing of dreams. my arms miss her
never having held her, never will.

but all of them, all of the daughters
I’ve abandoned by waking, I do love
them. all of the daughters because
daughters only give birth to daughters.
and don’t tell me about changing
of minds when I love them, don’t tell
of love I already know.

love that’s already been inside of me
by force of this daughter mind. this mind
of rose yarn and botanic perfume, it will
always know that baby. it will send dreams
of her, both fetal and grown with pink fixing 
hands of her own, like holiday cards:
greetings from what could have been!

Two starlings fight over
a chicken leg bone

I watch from the bus window
at a stoplight of a busy intersection

on a bus tour of Rubbertown,
Louisville, Kentucky

a community tucked between
smoke stacks and sludge ponds

hearing stories about pollution and
poverty and unrelenting

policies protecting money,
the same story here in the city edges

woven through Appalachian hills,
all of us hollering for change.

I’m insane to breathe your name,
but there’s nothing else to say 
                                as the daylight comes,
              bleeds down honey-like 
into my open palms, 
crystalizing the wound into
so many monuments of your absence,
                                then your begging,
                                as you’re begging
like you regret your loneliness.

But you don’t regret the white-hot
you’d kiss the knife you cut me with.

Turned me inside out like lightning,
searing new patterns into the art,
new versions of our lives
            playing out in heads
                          breathing underwater.

What is there to do but watch
myself become yours then
                               become nothing.
             Now it’s easy to regrow
my limbs with practice
until I am who I want.

Now I’m this girl I love,
you’re still waiting on someone.

Craving something to soothe you,
need another face darting in the silver
to watch the expression of,
                                  to dissect
                   and pin down
        with every sharp bone
in your body,
need a body to take from.

Because you had someone who loved you
once,

and you had no reason to disappear,
dancing into the white heat of spring,
and now you want someone to love you.

                             What was I but love?

When you build a life cluttered in rubble
how do you find your own hands drowned
in the darken river of your mind?
You cannot get clean in dirty water,
you cannot give forgiveness holding a knife.

You cannot apologize.

You’re noosed on the telephone cable
calling me through guitar strings,
nosediving into lyrics and relics,
smothering my best dreams bad,
summoned by a half-faded image
      of a girl
            who adored you,
                  her mind oilspilling 
                     into every bright space
                         to kill what you loved.
I’ll make your twisted fantasies
uncoil in front of your dark eyes, 
         smiling.
            I’ll take my hand
               in my own hand
                  and dissolve to ash.

Love is a burning feeling after all,
that’s what you had me believe.

After the flood, her dancing wreckage,
I’m leaving signs for you like angels do.
They’re all all landing outside my window
and you’re not here at all, thank god
calling me into the killing light,

the silence runs like river water,
I am whole again, regrown like you said
beyond that sick mirage.

I’m leaving you like I’m a dead thing
hissing from under your mattress,
and I’d rather be dead to you
than alive, drowning in the halls
of your handmade hell.

It was not a gift, my dear.
It was a haunting,
                       a begging,
           a begging,
a begging.

My darling, welcome to womanhood. 
You are smart, gorgeous, powerful…
You’ll be tired, moody, sad…
You’ve heard of the pink tax?
One fourth if you’re life
you will pass blood. 
Otherwise 
you’ll be
fine.