We sat on your
porch and lit the
years on fire. Burned
them to the filter and
then to the ground.

Far too reckless with
the fires that we started
but you better believe
we were burnt out
or put out
(of our misery).

The years are
ashes stored
somewhere in
the hippocampus
or the amygdala
waiting for you to
want them or need
them.

And then the light
on your porch began
flickering and
fainting in and out of
consciousness and the
years began wilting and
wrinkling and the time—

Oh the time it passed by us
like a speeding car. We felt
the motion, helpless broken
down on the side of the road
with no place to go but
nowhere.

has just pulled up in a small mid-sized car
a young couple, they might be hipsters
she is wearing rubber soled rain boots and carrying a plastic tool box
he needs help with the monitors and speakers

they leave to come back later

she sings softly avant- garde of passing by and passing on and something about despair
he strums a broken guitar, hums staringly solemn toward the bar or the aloof barista
and pushes buttons on the keyboard that is otherwise without a pilot
set off to the side

behind them, a few cords leading to the noise

there are empty chairs and not so many others in the standing room either
they play on
sheepishly happy without applause

a pillar of static in between songs-

Give me perfect hope if you have perfect hope.
Give me a book you wrote, if you wrote a book at all.
Give me a tissue to wipe clean my grief or if you can’t,
give me a cotton handkerchief for my mouth to ruin.
Give me money for new lipstick, if you have money.

At my hand is a bone-handled magnifying lens.
At my hand are the keys to the universe.
At my hand is the gift of queen bees being born.
At my hand is my other hand. Your ring is there.
At my hand is your opposite hand, sleeping.

Of course, I don’t mean to order you around.
Of course, I have no right to make demands.
Of course, I can’t make you do this.
Of course, I tried to force it.
Of course I did, for years.

All the time we could have played house, we played war.
All the time we could have had babies, we cheated.
All the time we could have kept together is gone instead.
All the time I misinterpret people’s expressions.
All the time I think time doesn’t exist at all.
All the time I am wrong.

---

This poem previously appeared in Ink Node.

I like my sex like Bushwick,
lose myself in you as a tourist
of poverty.

The repo person rubs gloved
hands, staring at my tenuous
authenticity. What will I pawn
to maintain my street cred?

Every episode of Girls
is a chapter of the soon
to be popular children’s book
Where The White People Are.

I’m sorry I don’t know the best
subway routes. I’m not Park Slope
enough for your love.

Outstretched limb
and
June-faced
you,

That humid bedroom
and
poems
of English painters,
poems
of Chilean romantics
in a language I can’t understand

The animals kept survey;
yellowpupiled barflies
dreaming of your legs
and mouth
wondering aloud
where my tongue
had found itself yet.

Another record
this one Gainsbourg.
you longed for Bridgette,
I called you Bonnie
and we lay broken
there
on the ashburnt carpet.

I was not jealous of
that southern one
that boy my brother;
watching his hands on you
hearing you gasp
and watching you wither,
though I did find myself disgusted
imagining
the texture of his tongue
and the shapes of his genitals
and wondering
if you may prefer them.

How foolish a creature am I?
How lovely a thing
we are in the morning,
bloodied glassware
and windowed cigarette,
vines born as legs
and another torn bit
of golden foil
discarded.

I’ve repeated my praises
too often,
requested yours
too willingly
but
please know I meant it
lovingly,
and understood you
as a rarity,
a being that evokes
poetry,
a wolf in the night
I went wandering.

I am
on this morning
decaying;
an autumnfaced thing
of yellowteeth grimace,
and you my hands:
the growl
that throats Van Gogh
from an Underwood
unquestioningly.

Please pause
if only for a shaking sigh
before you collect your things;
When that time comes
I will accept it
but for now I am yours.

(You’ve seen so little
of me:
a form of loneliness
and nostalgia,
a boy
of few friendships,
but I hope
you may look past it,
(explore the unflesh
form of this):

and know
that I remain here
when it would be easier
to leave.

There is no need to fear the lightning in New York City,
shoulder to shoulder with scaffolding and fences.

The metal and concrete,
roof decks and penthouses,
will catch the weight of the sky
should it feel the need to fall.

The city’s grid and deadbolts protect you from the unplanned and they damn it.
They put whim in a cold mauve filing cabinet to protest the unmanned planet;
they find the fruits of youth and attempt to can it.

But out deep in the forest
the lightning is so possible,
the trees so wet and waiting,
your death so near,
and all other things so very real.

You remember that all of the energy in the sky,
under the weight of an angel,
or for no reason at all,

might empty into you.

When I was five, I asked what to call you, and you said daughters don’t call their fathers by their names. Call me Da—It’s what Irish children do, but I didn’t know that then and you didn’t tell me. Never one for explanations, I never found one after you decided this world wasn’t yours anymore. Other kids used to think I had forgotten a ‘d’ when I wrote about you. Other kids didn’t know what to say to a girl with a dead dad. Now I drive your old battered Lincoln and only ever look at one photo of you. Young smile, dark hair ruffled back, wearing burgundy corduroys and a suede jacket. A perfect stranger. I make up a different claim to every lover who sees it beside my bed. You’re a guitarist from some band, a TA from some class a few semesters ago, a friend of a friend, a real nice guy, really. All the other pictures of you are put away for good and no one ever asks about my father.

what about when i find you in the bushes
what about when it’s cold outside
you can’t do that shit no more

did you know
that you can buy property on the moon
one guy owns the moon
he’s also a trained ventriloquist

there’s a phone number you can call
you get a certificate and everything
30 bucks an acre
look
we don’t have to be here no more
but we could still exist
out there

I am a visual learner

so when I am sitting in the fold out chair, with my two buck chuck
and you are up at the mic
turning pages, swiping screens
the words are incomprehensible

I give up, I let them go
I let them hover above my head
(a sleepy mist, a sagging tarp, the northern lights)
or pool at my feet
(an unassuming puddle, a pile of dirt, a sticky soda spill)
I am mapping your brain waves
to see if they match with mine

I miss a poet because I am in the bathroom, coughing
but I fall in love with one boy
and the other, well, I want to lick him
there’s the girl who makes me shiver
the woman I want to slap
and the old man who is like the rest
except he has to sit

From them I hear, in no particular order:

• a hot, wet bed and lines of code
• alternating patterns of pink and blue
• the soft pad of a cat’s paw
• a knife and a frosted yellow cake
• white-capped waves of velvet
• a string of Christmas lights
• a New York city sidewalk and a potted plant
• breasts, perfume, something…more, I can’t remember
• where else are you allowed to stare and stare and stare
• where else can you see
• electricity all laid out like that

an intimate pantomime plays out
publicly. no one claps between acts,
but they rearrange in seats uncomfortably,
everyone following the script but us.
focus lingers along our figures,
just the same but not in sync.
eyes touch you across the aisle while
breeze from the door breaks space.
the audience is dry and confined
with the sweat of hands sticking to the screen.
personal prop, all faced
to interface. I am talking to someone
else, and I know you are
just an accessory.
the eyes speak infidelities,
they perform and are willingly cast.
attention intermission:
a retina’s reality shows no loyalty
in looks. we’ll never meet,
a single I with two eyes
staring at screen.