Category: My poems

Buttered Toast
for Denise

I eat buttered toast
and think of my aunt
who is actually my cousin,
who almost certainly
wouldn’t know me
if she saw me today,
not because I’ve changed –
though I have –
but because her mind
has exchanged the present
for the hazy glow of the past,
where we all sit
around the dining room table
while the future
stretches out forever,
golden.

/ / /

22 March 2025
Charlottesville VA

The Process Of Warping Prevention

Hammer in
the warp stopper.
Over the years of use
this will prevent the object
from bowing
under the weight of the world.
Make sure it has
just enough grog
to give it tooth.
It’s not necessary
to know what that means
as long as you’re
careful to do it.
At 12,500 feet
below sea level
your lungs will collapse,
so stay out
of the deep end.
The two white women
want to take a cruise.
The two black men
have no place to hang out.

/ / /

21 March 2025
Charlottesville VA

scenes from a Sunday stroll

an old man hunches over
the engine of his minivan

a young woman with two kids
walks slowly toward the park

a bluebird bursts from a bare tree
strafes the grass, disappears

sunspots on the rocks
at the bottom of a slow creek

the sound of the vulture’s wings
reaches us before the sight

it smells slightly of old pine
at the end of the wooded trail

a slim volume in Polish next to
airport reads in the free library

someone changes a bicycle tire
on the front stoop of their house

a hooded figure in a parka
trudges up a slight incline

a person loads their van
with clear plastic boxes of clothing

Herman Melville’s head
peeks above our mailbox

a greeting from our cat
as we come in the front door

/ / /

2 March 2025
Charlottesville VA

Exploration

The music of an oud
dances across the room
as we lie in bed together
at the end of a full day.
We started with tea
in a cafe near the hotel,
then visited an artist friend,
a record store,
and a trans bookstore.
A typical day for us,
no matter where we are.
We followed the St. Lawrence
from Montreal to Québec,
then ate ramen
in a restaurant where the staff
spoke Fraponaise.
Tomorrow it’ll be more records
and books and anarchist shops,
then a punk show at night,
later than we’re usually awake.
The joy of exploring new places
is magnified by doing it with you.
Two brains and two hearts
combining to see and feel more
than either could alone.

/ / /

20 February 2025
Québec

The Blizzard Of ’25

George, our server, said
the city hasn’t seen this much snow
since the 1800s.

We’d taken a winding track
through narrow neighborhood streets
made even more impassable

by six-foot drifts on each side.
Buried sidewalks meant the shreds of street
were filled with people,

stumbling and slipping on the way home.
From inside the Syrian restaurant
it all seemed like a distant memory

as we sipped cilantro mocktails
and sliced into fried cheese dumplings
with a tomato and quince jam.

The trouble with travel, I always find,
is the having to go back, just when
you were imagining you wouldn’t.

/ / /

18 February 2025
Montreal

Elephant

We eat vegetable tikka and baija,
talking about TV shows,
prog rock performances,
role-playing games.
We see the elephant in the room.
Eventually we walk over to look at it.
It sits there, quietly taking up space,
breathing in more oxygen than we do,
subtly coloring the air with its smell.
The elephant comes for all of us in time.
When we see it approach,
the most we can do is to find those we love,
pull them close, share a laugh in a cold wind.

/ / /

17 February 2025
Charlottesville VA