poet, interviewer, musician, traveler
I Just Rewatched The Episode In Which Kanan Jarrus Dies
The first time I watched it was with you.
He dies in a big explosion at a fuel depot.
I didn’t realize at the time it was a metaphor.
Other than my parents I think you’ve caused
the most damage. Well, maybe other than my parents
and me, of course. Two and a half years later,
I’m waiting for the flames to die down.
/ / /
26 March 2023
Charlottesville VA
A Room Of One’s Own
In the cartoon,
the boy wakes up
in his berth
on a spaceship
surrounded by friends.
The image
is one of distress
in the context
of the story
but it looks like
heaven to me.
/ / /
25 March 2023
Charlottesville VA
Safety
Surfacing from sleep,
I felt your arms around me.
For the first time in days,
my whole body relaxed.
I awoke, alone,
on a camp cot in a minivan.
/ / /
22 March 2023
Charlottesville VA
Parked.
“No parking.”
Park!
/ / /
21 March 2023
Charlottesville VA
23
This is a poem
inspired by an album
inspired by twenty-three paintings.
This is a stanza in a poem
inspired by an album
inspired by twenty-three paintings.
This
is a word in a stanza in a poem
inspired by an album
inspired by twenty-three paintings.
T—
his is a letter in a word
in a stanza in a poem
inspired by an album
inspired by twenty-three paintings.
is the absence of a word
in a stanza in a poem
inspired by an album
inspired by twenty-three paintings.
*
up in the sky
we make the stars
make pictures
/ / /
14 March 2023
State College PA
“We got to the top but we didn’t see anything.”
It feels like a put-on.
Is it a put-on?
Excited?
Ambivalent.
An early 20th century coinage.
Following the pattern of
“equivalent.”
It’s a choice like any other.
The next step.
That’s all.
Sometimes you spend too long
climbing a hill and when you
reach the summit
the whole damn thing
is covered in clouds.
No views at all.
“Valency counts all arguments,
including the subject.”
That’s what I mean.
Take it all into consideration.
Stop making plans
for what follows.
What follows is too far away.
/ / /
13 March 2023
State College PA
Progress
I used to be sad
at night
but now I’m sad
in the morning.
/ / /
10 March 2023
State College PA
every good pub
is in your town
cardinal in the bushes
/ / /
7 March 2023
State College PA
and in the end we
agreed not to agree
snow on the branches
/ / /
3 March 2023
State College PA
Regular Bird
I saw a Regular Bird today.
It was in a bush outside the grocery store.
It was doing Regular Bird things.
A bit of hopping. A flit. The odd chirp.
I took a photo but it just looks like
a Regular Bird, which makes sense I guess.
Then when I got home I noticed
my entire neighborhood had vanished.
/ / /
2 March 2023
State College PA
Night Poem
There’s a gentle scraping against the wall.
A gentle scraping.
There’s a warmth that spreads
through the veins,
to the skin,
to the feet and then
to the earth below.
To the earth where
it is received like a kiss,
a promise, a question.
There’s a sound on the air
like water, like blood, like
silvery laughter breaking
against a hill,
and the soft rush of breathing
against the hollow of his neck.
/ / /
28 February 2023
State College PA
Edges
I am standing on many edges.
I am balancing on the tips of my toes.
I am avoiding certain phrases.
I am hinting at what everyone knows.
I am holding a jewel in my warm hands.
I am singing softly under my breath.
I am hoping (if “hoping” is the word I want).
I am listening so intently and yet —
This isn’t my house. I don’t know the noises.
I mistook the furnace for rain.
I am gathering up the courage to say it.
I am standing on edges again.
/ / /
24 February 2023
Farmington NY
Jean-Jacques And The Finch
He walks five miles through suburbs and parking lots,
sending photos of English ivy back to its home ground.
He stops to look at birds because that’s what she’d do,
and that’s what he’d do, too, which is why he’s telling her.
The pods of the catalpa dangle like alien fingers
as he stoops below them to angle the camera just so.
On other nights she’s sent ghostly images of blackened forests;
captured the orange glow above rows of identical roofs.
He’s listening to Allen Ginsberg, she’s reading Rousseau.
He wishes he’d brought some water, but he hadn’t planned
to take this walk; continued in response to her delight at the photos.
A turkey vulture glides above his head. He raises one hand
to shield his eyes, captures the image with his thumb.
Rousseau to Voltaire: “I hate you … But I hate you as a man
better fitted to love you, had you so willed.”
There’s a purple finch on the wire under the water tower,
balanced in that way birds can and humans aspire to.
He imagines the feeling of falling, or feels it, truly –
his chest tightening at the thought.
When he looks again the finch is gone.
/ / /
20 February 2023
State College PA
Possibly Sparrows
I sit on a Saturday morning,
sipping tea that is rapidly cooling.
(There used to be a name for that;
a sound that these days is returning.)
There are little brown birds in the leafy bush.
They’re hopping and chittering and, as a human,
it is easy to imagine they’re friends,
gallivanting among the branches.
It is quiet on this Saturday morning,
with the tea cooling on the borrowed desk
and a soft-voiced parliamentarian
intoning the words of a long-dead poet.
The dog paces again past the closed door,
nails clicking on the linoleum,
as I sit at this borrowed desk,
carefully tracing my feelings
with a cup of tea cooling at my elbow
and the sound of the poet’s words in my ears
and a slight discomfort under my left leg
where the cushion has lost its spring.
I, though, have regained my spring;
have found myself dancing around rooms
when no one else is at home as the kettle whistles
from the kitchen to say it’s time for tea.
/ / /
18 February 2023
State College PA
