Tuesday, March 22nd - "Abraham's Apology to Isaac, or: My Inability to Fully Suspend the Ethical Teleologically"

Curved like a scythe when the rain comes,

shadows collect like tears in your open palm.

So, my angel-haired darling, my sweetheart

of the smoke: dream easy and fall hard.

At night, I see you standing erect,

the mountains above curved like your spine,

the silhouette of your body a still life

painted vaguely on an empty field.

What kind of father does it make me,

who refuses to bend down to touch you?

Monday, March 21st - "Sky Lights"

Another living cliché – a poet

watching the sunset dreamily.

I want to ask, “Haven't

you ever read Baudrillard?

Don't you know it's all spectacle?”

Instead, I bury my hands

in the pockets of my jeans,

look over my shoulder at the pub

advertising half-price drinks

for anyone willing to trade dignity

for another chance at glory.

Without our verses, songs

will still be sung, measurements taken,

dreams transformed into art.

Shoulders rubbed against each other

until sparks explode. I forget

to put on my black shawl: I am still

in mourning for the words this scene
will never inspire me to pen.

Sunday, March 20th - "Dinner Table Economics"

My father says he doesn't understand it, saying thanks

for one's dinner. After all, it's not as if some invisible being

had a hand in picking tomatoes in Florida, in shipping them

in cheese-wedge shaped bags up to the supermarket,

in slipping them over the countertop to purchase. It's just

capitalism, he says with a shake of his chin, slowly sipping

his decanter of red wine. No one needs a thank you. We all

come out ahead, in this transaction. That's the beauty

of America, you know. He pushes his peas around with his fork,

stares greedily at the bread basket in the center of the table,

dabs his mouth daintily with the thin paper napkin,

which tears almost as soon as it makes contact with skin. Well,

we may as well get it over with, he says, noticing

the slight grimace on my grandmother's face, breaking

like a curse word etched into her worn out forehead. If you insist

on saying grace, get it over with, so we get on with dessert.

My grandmother shakes her head, says it's all right, says

she's already finished saying a thousand thank you's

in her head, by the time my father is finished. Well then,

that's good, he says, his mouth cracking loosely

into something resembling a smile. See, we're all

happy. We all got something out of it. Now

you know why when I get up in the morning,

I only feel obligated to say thank you to myself for all my luck.

Saturday, March 19th - "When Existentialists Die"

Do they travel to a dingy Parisian basement

in the sky, lit only by one naked

lightbulb, the wallpaper peeling

faster than their skin? Do they sometimes

draw the blinds, and look out

on a landscape of clouds, and wonder

if they could have built something

like that on earth? Do they stand up

and push boulders up hills,

only occasionally stopping

to let them fall back down,

the time in between exactly

synchronized to the breaths

from their smoky lungs, which will

never again wheeze? Maybe,

joining hands in a mildewed

shower stall, they lean in

to kiss the wall, hoping

it might disappear, if only

they could will it. Make it

into an obstacle, make

a meaning out of it. Perhaps

they think their continued

existences, give them

some kind of karmic obligation

to learn some way of faking

prayer, if only through

the stepwise motions

of their feet, up

and up, and up, until

there's nowhere left to go

but downwards.

Friday, March 18th - "The Lifecycle of a Poem"

The quick and easy removal of adjectives

from circulation makes the sentence

direct and uncluttered, lose out

on any ability to ever be used

to trick a lover into thinking

those sounds had meanings. The phrase

lies on its side, does its duty, and

goes home, to that place where

ordinary sentences wait to be plucked

from their dormancy and

inserted into new forms of

self-expression, too pretty to be

fully functional in ordinary

coffee clutch time, small talk

with the man ahead of us

in line for the bathroom,

but surely nonetheless too original

to fit back into the little holes

approximately the size and shape

of ellipses, which, as we all learned

in high school biology class,

is precisely the womb where words

grow from, and where they go back

to die alone, wistfully wondering

if anyone knows what they mean

when they scream out loud alone.

Thursday, March 17th - "Why You Lost Your Faith"

I don't expect you to forgive me

for laughing almost

uncontrollably

that time, a few nights ago,

when you confessed

that you yourself, like

the men we saw

on television, had once

been touched

inappropriately

by your youth group leader.

It wasn't that I was trying

to make light of it,

but it seemed so

convenient, to explain

why you struggled with faith

in the unseen, why

you thought the powers

in front of our eyes

were so much greater

than anything

we could imagine

with our minds. Once,

just after we were finished

reading each other's

love notes,

I rose up aggressively

behind your back. I promise

I wasn't intending

to scare you. I simply

couldn't imagine

that you were afraid

of things rising

and never again

falling back down,

like the cross shape

on your chest,

which I always thought

was a reminder

to keep breathing,

over and over
like a sea breeze,

no matter how hard

the silhouettes around you

pressed down on your stomach

and wouldn't release.

Wednesday, March 16th - "Stairwell"

 More than anything, I sincerely wish I could thank you

for the time that you allowed me to lean over

and steal a kiss in the stairwell, as we passed each other briefly

on our respective ways to geometry. And not just

for giving me something to brag about

with Joey at lunch the next day, or even

to have something to smile about

at night, while lying alone. No, I want to thank you

for the beauty of it all, the truth. The way

you just gave a brief smile

and walked away, and I had to store that

to get through the whole rest of the week. True,

at age fourteen, a week can seem long enough

to grow up and die, and we could lie

on the halo of grass outside the school

and pretend not to hear the ringing bells,

each one announcing another period

of our lives gone and disappeared. And,

if you say that time is sacred,

space an abyss, bodies just shadows

stretched nervously across an empty lawn,

then I'll be that little flickering light

in the stairwell once more, each bulb trying

so hard to stay lit till the kids go home.