Category: Poetry

In black space the world sleeps, dreams,
spins, holds its center together with stars
made of sugar.
The cosmic clock ticks for astronauts.
The subway rumbles through tunnels that
whisper secrets no one can decipher.
We paint our lives on air, naïve artists
astounded by the miracle of being here,
Love is the only color we remember.

FUNDAMENTALS

If you could record everything
that is happening everywhere
at any given moment and feed
this information into a computer,
you could predict the next one
and its consequence and so on:
how, when, where, why, Frankie
killed Johnny, or Sluggo kissed
Nancy, or Albert decided to
square energy instead of money.

We blew up chicken gullets, like balloons
for the girls to carry around on strings,
and played pirate with sharpened stockyard
bones which we sheathed in our clothesline
belts, like swords, marauding through the
neighborhood.
Along the sidewalks, the girls played hopscotch,
arms raised in the air like wings, hopping toward
the Blue Sky with tiny, one-footed leaps.
Angels flew in the city of wind, around the steeples
of the churches, over the rooftops of the tenements,
under the viaducts and bridges, through the gangways
of the houses, down the narrow streets and alleys,
above the fuming slaughterhouse chimneys
billowing black smoke into the wind.

I can see nothing. Darkness
fills the window. My head
feels foggy, my body numb –
like waking up in bedlam.
I turn on the night light,
reach for a cigarette.
I remember a party, vaguely,
each face a phantom version
of itself, each figure spectral.
I remember a dream. The
streets were empty. Dark,
deserted buildings surrounded
me. Although I could see
no one anywhere, I knew
I was being shadowed
everywhere …
“Tick tock he loves me not.”
A woman sings a soft lament
somewhere in the shadows
of my cloudy remembrance.
“Tick tock my heart has stopped.
Tick tock tick tock.”
The smoke from my cigarette
floats above my bed like a spirit,
and softly disappears into that
shadowy space between here
and nowhere.

BREAD AND ASHES

A shadow in a shadow land as
time goes on and memories fade
and you weather the years and
visit the graves, until your dream
falls asleep, too, and all that
remains of the ashes of winter
is the warmth you once gave.
A ghost, even then, in her faded
print dress, dusted with flour as
white as her hair, I used to sit at
the kitchen table and watch my
grandmother bake Sabbath bread—
a weekly miracle which I could
never fully comprehend. Her
wizened face glistened with
affection each time she glanced
in my direction. Her cloudy eyes
squinted for perfection as she molded
the mysterious dough and we listened
to phantom voices on the radio.