What It’s All About
You see (I seem to start that way a lot lately, don’t I?) what
it’s really about is the choices we make, even the littlest
ones we CAN make, where we really do have several options,
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On Choosing a Tomb
He says he wants to see Solomon’s
tomb, the Ark of the Covenant, and
treasures that turn dragons a shade
of muted emerald. Furtively search
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Identity
The way he says identity politics—as if claiming any identity
is something moderately pornographic, a Congressional
tabloid where everything is dirtier than he is. Never mind
his own proud proclamation: White male. Lover of guns
Or Perhaps
Or perhaps you would prefer to hear
my hands shake, that I can no longer
feel my fingertips, that I shut them in
National Poetry Month 2024 – Micropoems
Despondence is
avocado toast.
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Strike Out (Sonnet Number Something)
They may not sweeten after being picked, but they do seem
to get softer, these aging players that were the talk of the baseball
town. For some reason, they suddenly can’t get past the strike zone:
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1969
Ageism launched the year we were born—literally. That was the year they
dispatched us and a supercharged word into a no-so-straight-arrowed
world.
Somerville, circa 1988
Somerville.
Renting a room
in a peeling Victorian,
too many women
sharing one bathroom.
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No Judgment Zone
What shall we celebrate today?
Should it be sugar-free candies
and exercise? That splendid sit-
down cross-trainer that politely asks
listless arms and legs and hands
and feet to do the work for once,
To Me, an Apology
I owe me yet another one – another, I’m sorry I did that
to me, another, please forgive my insensitivity, my inability
to protect us from the unexpected week’s end, blasting
the same old lie, that we were never good enough to survive
Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Past Employer
I
I was of two minds, now
Returned to one: You do not deserve
Anyone.
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Opus Number Something – On Gratitude
I was this many years old when I learned what an opus number
means, how chronological order is not always set by composers,
but by scholars, historians, and academics. And having looked
up the word, as I am wont to do, having taken the head-first swan
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Shall I Tell You?
Shall I tell you I am disabled?
That I no longer can fend for
myself? Or shall I tell you
I now write the poetry you
mocked me for because
it does not pay the bills?
The Gestalt of God (A Philosophical Draft)
Let’s set the record straight.
I do not claim to know what god
might be, nor do I entirely get gestalt.
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This One, Too, is for Traci
I did not know what I would write this morning as the treeline
got etched in wisps of ivory blond—until I remembered
I did not get to properly grieve you. Not really, anyway. Sure,
I wrote you a poem. Sure, I teared up now and again, like I am
now when I think of everything you did and offered, but mostly,
selfishly, I miss your listening,
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What You Would Rather Hear
What would you rather hear? That six or seven
or twelve times or more I actually had ideation,
or that I walked away, instead, unharmed? That I
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**Backpack Part II
It’s not that I shoulder a navy
pack on my disintegrating back.
It’s not that I have swallowed
the kind of pills that retch
even the rage out until
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*Lincoln from the Grave
Oh to be unconditionally loved when dead,
division dissolved by the peaceful inevitable.
Oh to the victory that made us one,
the blood of battle and repair
no longer questioned as worthwhile,
immune to “what if?” in its sad reality,
replaced by “what is” and “what was.”
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The Wisdom of Ancient Things
I return to that Place of Peace,
and the wisdom of ancient things,
the one that reintroduced itself
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