COMMUNION

the banana chips left over from

our broken hike

like communion wafers

when I eat them now

they are your body

stubborn and sweet
and almost saving me

empty poem

Under my blankets, alone:
. this is the place where you are enough. you, by having a body, have the right to exist.
This threshhold balls up with other monotonies
seizing at the cold every morning walking to the subway
picking a skirt to wear by the dresser
packing lunch, brushing teeth.
staring blankly at the screen.

Permission, over and over, to take the time to wallow.
compelled to be empty, brain glazed. I let myself. I give myself permission, usually,
 before I just give in.
it doesn't always feel this way, but  it's felt this way before.
presence is an anamoly, any excitement is proof.
Repeating, against the larger picture
you are holding yourself together.
you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay
you're going to be okay.

Bravery on 10th street

At the gem shop on 10th street
The man wants courage
On christmas eve.
He wants clarity.
A rare piece
Of a meteorite,
A see through piece of
Courage,
An opaque, jagged clarity.

a ride from the hospital

to ride the bus on a friday night
from the local college campus is to practice
my craft of observation

glassine girls with knee scars and ankle boots
cluster together, take sips from
wine they stored in plastic water bottles look around at
all the others riding into the eleventh hour
think to themselves:
is this the night/ am i something special/ will my eyelashes melt into/ my face

i sit without make up
without ankle boots
with knee scars, i write a poem in my head:
peaceful wonton frat boy noodle
hospital hugging girls

as the sky darkens and
the bus whooshes onward and my
college campus angels peel off one by one
swallowed by double doors
confidently they step, hot pressed hair and
nylon calves, the last things i see

January Networking

cold eyes expanding, round cubes I'm convinced

more tired than trying to see

supertitles the theater and faces, especially

especially faces a cube's not round until

it's a word for ice. 

Object memories it's a theme

the contraction/expansion is troubling, tiresome

worked all day with two big screens

then to the theater, faces, to smile

eyes squealing shifting states

to smile at someone new

oh god what's a word for

Dance Gives Nothing Back

endless spinning
cellular earthquakes
stacks of playbills
no paychecks
no leaps left
no stops, no drops, no rolls,
why do everything
why imagine everything
there's no family in a company
there's no home in a full house
playing a 15 year game of Charades
my phrase was "love me"

Date

I'm grinding my heel into the final dry patch of sawdust,
swinging back on the brass.
The only thing I relish is crossing over.
I make the quiz machine calibrate me,
I can refer back to the pattern of the demo sequence,
knowing how the flashes would have been. 
Having crossed, 
I have given in to what I imagine your room will be,
where my socks will be,
where my breakfast will be,
when my shower will be.

sunny someday

maybe tomorrow
my job will go away
and i can move to California
and feel sunny.
maybe someday.

1 through 7

1

the orange net means safety.  the orange cones mean rest.  the sky over the concrete wall suggests the ocean

2

coupled people using tinder for the first time

3

my aunt and flowers and my grandmother's legs

4

my grandmother's legs and shoes and a chair and newspaper

5

beatrice in the wooden rocker on the porch, wearing a checked dress and holding an egg

6

(part of) the bust of alexander skene

7

below, a white guy in a toyota stuck waiting to cross the road, caught digging in his nose for gold while he thinks no one is watching him

FOR CHINA THE BOY CAT

In the bakery

the little girls are friends

they talk about giving bread to

dogs – sometimes when I feed 

my amminals, it's quiet in the sun. 

I have humanity to thank

for the vial that contains me,

and animals to thank

for forgetting that it’s there.

In warmest January

Elise says so long

to China, the boy cat –

little macho love-bug

who peacefully patrolled

a house of human women,

a universe of

softest things,

still asking him

to stay.