the creditor

i've painted and powdered and strapped down my heart
laid down the lines of my rapture
i've buckled and broken and knelt on the ground
and fingered the points of my fractures

she's tilted and torn and completely undone
all seams that demanded her mending
she's borrowed and begged and humbled her heart
to the debtor demanding its lending.

congested

my words feel backed up this week
my head is congested with this language
and my ribs ache with the fullness of my lungs
paused on a gasp
how fragile self-worth is
how disillusioned we must all be
to believe that we are any greater
than the millions at our backs
and there's no choice
there's only a selfish forward pull
only lights and shadows and the hope for joy
love, only a hesitation
only a gasp then an exhale then a pull away
because we just can't float with eachother forever.

grocery

fruit man wakes at dawn
lines up his apples and peppers
grunts his good-mornings
and sighs at my enept tongue
trying to form the names of what I'm hungry for.
his face is netted by creases
shadowed by a brimmed hat pulled down low
he peers through thick, broad glasses
rough hands on the delicate skin
of a plum
squinting at a scale
hanging in the morning light.

to syracuse

en route to syracuse my car was quiet
i peered into the worlds of the people i passed
or the people that whizzed by me.
the lushness of summer greenery still dripped from the hills
of the spittle of the Adirondaks.
and the simmering gray sky dribbled
moistness that gathered in the veins of every leaf
and between my bottom lashes.
a thick silver cloud squatted over the tops of the hills
and the white stipes of the road fenced gracefully
to peirce my way.
accelerating through long strips of farmland interrupted
by the great splotches of brown and white
bellowing from beyond catweed and tufted tall grasses.
the drive was precious and already
a memory as it happened.

noah's tragic elegance

fragmented biblical whisperings
a three-teired titanic
with an audio menagarie of shreiks and shudders
relentless downpour of the faithless perishing
into blue depths of papyrus
and the one-horned shimmering gracefulness of the unicorns
left wading in water
salty and sinful

hope

cool-headed we approach each other over states and flatlands flooded with uncertainties and uncomfortable prodding from stale air and persistent lonliness capitalizing every letter we ought to questioning the judgement of a far-off face and the histories of a parallel life one fiber in a thick rope winding alongside every story we've ever heard or ever told yet we all want so badly to be woven into another life to be integral in someone else's story crucial to someone else's inhale exhale so we all extend our fingertips into the dark into the cool earth tentatively hoping full of doubt but resolutely optimistic that we wil eventually palpate just the vibrations of someone else's fingertips the whisper of someone else's optimism the unwavering tangible fleshiness of hope.

greek

i'm learning greek
in the hollow hours of my indian summer
the sounds fit in my mouth
like the curves the alphabet settle on my lined paper
i picture myself
explaining the color of strawberries
to old greek men with creased faces
and wisps of white hair fleeing from their temples
the syllables stick stubbornly to the flesh of my tongue
and audible figurines of resonant sounds
drip from my fingertips
i'm sure that all the hunched grandmothers
who smell of feta and olive oil
will take my face into their soft motherly hands
and marvel at my incompetence