The story is almost always the same. Every six months or so, I make the trip from Tucson back to my old neighborhood in New York and discover yet another childhood landmark gone. Some landlord or other has forced a beloved store out of business, the rent raised a thousand percent, . . .
Read moreIt’s where black cats tend to live longer
than their allotted nines, and we avoid
cracks in the sidewalk to ward off whatever
might happen in the whatever places
of our minds. And on certain Fridays
when the thirteenth comes around, . . .
1. Idiopathic
These rooms never have windows. I’m alone
and waiting, still dressed in the incessant blue
of their gowns. Outside this room, my whole life
swallows hard. My husband paces the waiting
. . .
1.
In which I try to decipher
the story it tells,
this syntax of monuments
flanking the old courthouse:
here, a rough outline
like the torso of a woman
great with child—
a steatite boulder from which
the Indians girdled the core
to make of it a bowl, . . .
follow the morning star
Tell yourself it’s only a sliver of sun
burning into your chest, a cap of gold
or radiant halo justly worn by
the righteous at heart—
. . .
In 1516, the Most Serene Republic of Venice confined its Jews to the site of a former foundry. The Venetian word for foundry was geto.
Aubade: The Constitutional
Leone da Modena. The Veneto. . . .
I pressed my face to the car window to see Jackson’s hometown, the place we’d spent all our money moving to after graduation, the place we would be stuck in. It was June, the month of green. Willows everywhere wept over houses and cars and one little girl riding her bicycle. . . .
Read moreWalk into my room and come to find one of my Jordan Air Max 360s floating about five foot off the ground. Soon as I see it, my heart kinda go pie-yow! and my neck get hot. Then I smile at my foolish, foolish dumb-ass ass, and I say to myself my brother Ricky had done strung it up from the ceiling. . . .
Read moreThe American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has an airy, skylit atrium, the recently remodeled Engelhard Sculpture Court, a place overflowing with marble and curious marvels. In one corner, the Vanderbilts’ humongous hearth. Over there, glowing Tiffany windows. Catty-corner is an annexed Frank Lloyd Wright living room, transplanted entire from Minnesota. . . .
Read morebeloved braincase, body’s bleeding heart
helmet law
dear ribs thick with implied meat, disused central
railroad, reverse spec house unplumbed
to propitious frame
dear double-strung forearm, dear violin bow,
dear pachyderm-eared pelvis, . . .