Sleep Like A King

I slept so much last night, woke up and kept sleeping, woke up kept sleeping, woke up sleeping. Now I'm at the kitchen table, clean and bare, mom must have felt inspired, all that's on the table is a roll of paper towels, a pen, and a bottle of wine. And now my cup of orange juice and two eggs... I'm going to make eggs in a second.

Thank you Martin Luther King Jr. for a day off from school. It feels good.

The Day After Thanksgiving

The houses and my face:
Pink blotched cheeks, swollen
wood of door frames in the cold,
locking the weather in or out.

The fogged heat of breath
smothered in a scarf, the intimate
taste of in and out. The frosted
dell in silence, a sleeping cello
whose strings hang loose like wisps
of hair lost from their ponytail.

The cellist only knows lullabies, anyway,
off from school and the dishwashing.

The Art of Rocking a Stoop

A word resonates
at the end of a line like
a boy on the edge
of a stoop.

Hold (revision)

Cling fast, as if holding on
is something that happens quickly.
It is the low waver of a church organ.
It radiates from the forehead.

Tucked between holiday cards, I keep
your ash in an envelope. Your face remained
still when I asked you to flick your cigarette
into my palm. It has turned, since, from solid
to smear of rain cloud. Cling

fast, as if holding on
is something that happens quickly.
It is the low waver of a church organ.
It radiates from the forehead.

4 Minutes Attempting Fiction

The saxaphone hangs like a cross around his neck. He stands onstage, touching its buttons. He lifts it and looks into its bell. He whispers something into it, something private. I wish that I could find something private to say to him. I'm always leaning into his ear with nothing in my mouth.

I am only drinking water. I wonder what the charge will be - for water and watching this musician touch his instrument. This musician. I hope that he'll begin to play soon. I hope that he'll blow loudly enough to excuse me from my silence, some kind of screaming improvisation that doesn't mean anything. Blabbers. I imagine myself whispering blabbers into his ear, him nodding, nodding, turning to look at my face.

He plays C, F7, G7, a blues. The drummer shakes his snare. I eye down the waiter and order a drink. A real drink that costs money.

Observation 2

West Philly doesn't need tumbleweed. We've got black plastic bags.

Observation 1

Before mirrors, nakedness
bulges, looses over waist edges,
squeezes into the sharp angles
of ankles. But Before nakedness,
nakedness smooths.

Memory in Present Tense

Hooded figures run between their groceries and their trunks, treating everything like eggs. My shirt soaks straight to my skin, pink and satin. The rain is a pencil cross hatching. The bus number is a fog light in the distance. A shopping cart flies across the parking lot into a van. A blurry man asks if I need a ride. My hair sticks to my cheeks.

Ode to the Operator

(Decided to go back and revise this again)

The operator was buried.
She lost her job, and slowly
her cheeks began to hang
like sound waves, and ultimately

The operator was buried.

With her went
the lattice edged ring,
the ear against heavy black,
the fisted grip and slight weight.

There is no longer pleasure in waiting,
no "expected" call, no magic
in the science of wires, only

Why aren't you answering your phone?

I'm calling because I'm on the bus,
cell phone in hand,
with nothing to say.

Tallis, Weave, Scarves, Feathers

Six hundred and thirteen knots
mark holiness. Six hundred
and thirteen braids
tickling a back in shades
of brown (coffee, caramel,
timberland boot tan).

Shades of brown, the colors
of the scarves tied in a cast
down the arms of the immigrant women
in display, scarves for sale, soft
and heavy on their arms
when police come
and they run like pigeons
from the foot of a child,
scarf fringes scattering.

(They run with their arms spread wide
there is no other way to run
with so many scarves
and only two arms)

Much simpler:

There are these women, immigrants, who sell scarves on the street in Rome. They tie the scarves around their arms so that when they stand still they can be a human sales rack. But what they're doing is illegal, they don't have permits to make money on any particular slab of pavement. And when the police come, they've got to run away. WIth the scarves all hanging from their arms, when they run, they look like huge birds. Like huge pigeons running from the foot of a child. When they make it around the corner, they'll tie the scarves up and put them in a bag and pretend that they aren't birds but regular people who aren't doing anything but walking.

Much different:

There are migrant birds who sell their feathers on the streets of Rome. Their feathers are very valuable, and come in all shades of brown. They stand on the corners with their wings spread wide so that passersby can see their collection and admire their beauty and softness and weight.

Hold

I've kept your cigarette ash
in an envelope, labeled it,
tucked it between old holiday cards
and journals. The inside is a smear
of rain cloud, you've got to peer
delicately in.

What is keeping? How do you hold?

According To My Sister...

Some writer wrote something about measuring Rome's grandeur by the weight of water that runs through it daily. Do you know that they have fountains all over the city? And drinking fountains, for walkers and their dogs? And thousands of sinks, and showers, and toilets? And a hundred million teeth to be brushed in the morning. There is a universal tooth-brushing face, whether you live in a city rushing with water, or not. There is a certain pained rectangle that every mouth becomes.