century

i squint up at the weatherpocked red sandstone of my city bricks
and want to touch it crumble under my fingertips

the signs say STOP (in the parks not to touch
the red rocks) preserving their sandy structure but

not the bricks, no one stops them from weathering away beneath my fingertips

[the snow...]

the snow lights up the city-dark streets
trackless past midnight,
it doubts all could be asleep

solemn street lights imply pink
flakes are falling, and they stand guard,
british rigid, to light the path, but for whom?

fireworks tear through the night sky
bangcrackle fizz, and again,
perhaps not all are asleep

cherries & edamame

cherries & edamame
can be challenging to eat socially,
depending on the crowd

locusts

the furnace sounds like locusts
no two ways about it.

first the Clopek fire-up
then the churning
at last, the locusts
like the sound of school approaching

2

playing second fiddle
backup harmony
never singing out the melodic truth
never singing
only speaking

[i love olfactory nostalgia]

i love olfactory nostalgia
even when i can’t place it

the smell is one thing
pleasant or not
but the pungent memory of an experience

is another thing all together

starved

“i don’t deserve you”
he wrote
and she wondered if he really thought she was fantastic

or
if he finally admitted
that he could stand to do much better
for himself

she hoped for more

high tide

04-21-06

yeah, tall. thin too. and he’s got that
lanky walk that implies indifference with each drooping mannerism.
and that’s my impression

now when we get to the part about conversation, on the other
hand, things are no longer blasé

he intensifies with secret raptor eyes and i can
’t tell if my instant claustrophobia is just because
we’re sardined late on the Red Line or if this country
boy has sardined me within my city-
sized required personal space.

wedging himself between me
and the safety of my comfort zone, he postulates
hemingway’s old man and the big beautiful fish and the taste
of copper

and I, the smell of sweaty palms on stainless steel poles

don’t say i never warned you

04-17-06

on the plane late
this morning she warned us
she turned to the woman in Seat 1E sitting between us and
said she wasn’t a very good flyer
i turned away from squinting through the dirty circle window at
the orange vest people with their oversized orange ear muffs and the
luggage train and the wing and the de-icer. when
i looked at her she warned me that she doesn’t fly very well
then she turned to the flight attendants and warned them
that she had warned us
they should have just handed her the little cabin paging phone
so she could have announced it to the whole flight
load. the woman between us shared with me a
knowing glance of raised brow and one-side smile because there
we were: Seats 1F, 1E, and me.

when the engines start, the white haze
fills our ears and makes it easy to tune (the flight attendants’ seat-belt demonstration) right out.

every kid in the world must want to ride that luggage train.
it is so much like the one at the mall during the christmas shopping season. only
this one is better.
it has secret canvas flaps that hide the luggage from
rain and snow and wind and
people watching it from dirty circle windows. then the orange vest people
load the bags onto that inclined belt
that whisks the luggage away into the belly of the plane. every kid
in the world must want to hide in there.

“LAST TIME I DIDN’T TAKE MY PILL SOON ENOUGH”

“what?” it was like she had adjusted the rabbit ears on my tv set at the exact moment the station broke to used car commercial. i had been enjoying my haze.

“LAST TIME I WAITED TOO LONG TO TAKE MY PILL AND BY THE TIME WE LANDED THEY HAD TO WAKE ME UP. THEN I DROVE HOME.”

“Dramamine?”

“NO. XANAX”

“oh.”

the engines got louder. the brakes were released and we clunked into reverse.

“did you take it this time?”

“oh yes. ohhh yes.”

liftoff brought tears from Seat 1F, muffled smiles from Seat 1E, and sympathetic cooing from flight attendants.

then quickly and slowly at the same time, denver’s patchwork of winter-brown prairie subsided, replaced by the white noise of clouds. i
read a book

then i saw the trees! when we came down again through the clouds – and the river – could it be the mississippi?

then the rows of houses, tiny nested match-book covers stacked nearly on top of each other HO scale – complete with green felt lawns and jelly bean oldsmobiles and fords.

“the local time is 1:30 and it’s 50F. we’ll begin our descent into chicago in about 10 minutes”

the pilot barely broke
through the jet-powered “silence” but he broke
that Seat 1F’s Xanax haze.

that woman gasped as though tapped
on the shoulder by the frigid finger of death itself – popping
her beautiful barbiturate bubble. she sobbed
the whole way to the ground

the wheels barked and bounced

and Seat 1E released a sigh she’d held for 2 hours.

[january in pittsburgh]

02-28-06

january in pittsburgh
slows hope like a housefly

that’s trapped

between storm windows after
the first unexpected cold autumn night