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.

Tuesday, March 15th - "Library Warriors"

After a long morning spent reading

all about the causes of the French Revolution,

they had promised to meet up outside

to share their light lunch of cheese

and coffee, share any insights

their eyes might have gleaned. Instead,

he wanders into town alone,

buys a pint of beer, sips it by the highway.

Thinks about going in

for confession, before returning

to finish his reading. Guilt

is like that: reading about wars

fought long ago, he realizes

what he's been missing out on. Hopes

she forgives him for his absence, understands

his need to imagine himself at war.

At night, he paces back and forth

the perimeter of his bedroom, smokes

a single cigarette, drinks a bowl of soup

without bothering to taste it. Triumphs

of scale, revolutions of medium.

Before bed, he always likes

to declare war on new countries

in his closet, hoping his empire

can defend itself until morning.

Monday, March 14th - "In the Garden"

Asleep by the stream while the sun shines,

shadows dissemble in the arch of his spine.

Lying still with his back to the wind,

even his most profound thoughts turn to stone.

So, mangy-haired rascal, the child,

the savior. A dream of amber,

a pillar of salt. A glade of rushes left

to lie his head upon at night.

In the morning, find him

rolling round the tree trunk,

searching for a place to climb.

From down here, everything

seems lit by the sun. Curled

in a fetal ball, searching

for a place to rest his bones,

all his visions calcify into tears.

At night, God whispers him

a lullaby, the wind

breathing ripples at his heart, the moon

a knife curved over his weary loins.

Sunday, March 13th - "But She Could Have Left"

They ended up burying her

in the same outfit they found her in,

the faint drops of dried blood

just faintly visible against the backdrop

of the luscious, swarthy ermine fur,

or something meant to resemble it. Standing

in a circle holding hands,

we try to guess at her last words: maybe

do I look fabulous in this,

darlings, or perhaps even

the discarded need to look beautiful,

sometimes, don't they,

dears? We all

squeezed each other's hands,

felt for pulses, danced around

to the reggaeton songs

which she loved to sing

in the shower, deluding herself

into thinking none but the birds

could hear, perhaps thinking

that if she sang enough about love,

someone might come to believe it.

And one man, his hands draped

over his potbelly, puffing at a cigarette

noiselessly, says under his breath

that she deserved it – deserved it,

for palling around with the sort of people

who went shooting all day

and gambling all night, who would trade dreams

for another chance at the dice, another

quenched nightfall for another

hungry morning. Deserved it,

for not having the good sense

to walk out alone, leave him

in the dust, at the first sign

of danger, to accept the marks

around her throat as her one chance

of target practice, marriage as a chain

binding gasps to their silences. Sometimes,

I too believe lust is a game, love

an apocalypse, and wars are fought

only on the battlefields

of lightly stained bathroom tiles.

And if given the chance

to trade danger for bliss,

we all have to make believe

we can somehow make do with both,

lying lazily in the arms

of the springtime's

cruel saplings, the branches above

the only things that we deserve –

deserve to wrap around us

as the sun goes down, all that will ever

hold tightly and refuse to let go.

Saturday, March 12th - "Zion"

In the first year of this brand new revelation,

we still had to work for our fruit. Long summer nights

spent plucking out locusts, mornings woken early

to try to taste rain on our tongues. They promised us

that planting would come easy, in this part

of the world, the praises rolling from our tongues

like milk and honey in the streams. We all

gathered in the town square to dance for rain,

we all whispered breathlessly about its absence.

Only the little boy, running around

in only his loincloth, saw the world

for what it was: another translucent atmosphere,

another red shift of our bodies, a lullaby

stretched out to the length of a season. The boy

swallows, drinks it all in

in the same way we would drink wine:

slowly, first, and then accelerating

rapidly, until finally, even the assembled elders

have no choice but to bow, the illumination

of their shock and awe, just barely enough

to light up the fields and make them grow.

Friday, March 11th - "Slippery Slope"

The coronas of light outside my window

are growing dimmer by the minute, each day

waking to a little less illumination

and a few more furtive prayers. At first

it was barely noticeable, a few

longer shadows in unpainted crevasses

throughout the contours of my face,

and then suddenly, after a disposable dream

about running through beaches

half-naked at dawn, I awake to find

I can barely identify my hands, lying

stock-still on the blank canvas sheets. It's like

when you asked me for a quick

kiss, and at first I thought it would lead

nowhere, the light from our pupils

barely enough to light the way to our spines. Then,

before I knew it, sucking

blood from my vessels, thoughts

from my neurons, breaths

from straight out of the back

of my slicing throat. I was meant

to trade darkness for touches, echoes

for lullabies, exchanges of fluid

to light up our bloodstreams. I've lit up

bodies for less, of course: a few

spare coins, an extra vial

to store my sweat drops. At night,

when the light is about to dim,

I need to feel like the only one

who can reflect moonlight

without creating any puddles on the floor,

too far out of reach to ever be fully cleaned.

Thursday, March 10th - "Homunculus"

 The road to the inside of myself

will not be lined with palm trees. Its pathways steep,

its sentinels guarded, its every step

another word in a long string of prayers. At first,

the body nothing more or less

than its own reflection, a mirror

half-shattered, a canvas tempera painting

of a river tumbling across my back. Then,

a turning, a slaking, a cadaver consuming

aeons and aeons of unspoken curses,

countries we haven't yet visited,

worlds only visible from the back

of our bedrooms, closet spaces

filled with more dead bodies

than we possibly have time to bury. Still,

this harmony, this hymn of our heartbeats,

the sound of the telephone

nearly audible from the bedside,

this constant attempt at finding just

how far away we can get from our skin.

Wednesday, March 9th - "Yahrzeit Candles for My Mother"

My brother says it's silly, lighting candles for the dead.

After all, it's not like they'll know, and besides,

from the point of view of heaven, every candle

must look the same, anyhow. He can't believe in a god

that cares if children remember the anniversary

of their mother's death, if they walk across coals

to prove their pedigree. Still, he eventually says

he'll do it, perhaps just to get my mother

to get onto a less morbid subject matter, while we sit

and sip sangria, and wonder if Dad

will show up before the moon. I wonder

if at the bottom of a grave, every candle

is a little pathway, something to grasp,

a tiny little wire stretched cleanly

across the earth's magnetic poles. Breaking

a crust of bread from the basket,

my mother gums it slowly, slides

the little pat of butter onto it, careful

not to burn her sleeve in the candle

perched cleanly in the middle of the table,

each radian reaching nervously for our faces

as if it's the last step forward it can take

before being snuffed out across the horizon.

Tuesday, March 8th - "Playthings"

 I come from a family that believes in silence.

The last words read from the newscast at night,

the first grace whispered over cold cornflakes by morning.

Once, I asked my mother to explain god to me

in terms that I could understand. She said god

was like a large man in an over-filled storage room,

playing with toys that just happened to fill oceans.

I said this didn't inspire much confidence, but mom

said that asking questions was the problem. Now

when I see my name written in vapor trails

spiraling like cigarette smoke from my mouth,

I've simply learned to accept it, learned

to breathe harder. Sick and tired and yearning

to be kissed on the forehead, I beg

to be read a bedtime story

about the creation of the world. I believe

all the stories about worlds of light

and darkness. If I didn't know anything

about tinkering around with sunlight,

I would still be trying my hardest to learn to dance.

Monday, March 7th - "The Lettuce Pogroms"

Whenever mother got up from the dinner table

without fully licking her plate clean,

devouring every last square inch

of dripping wet tomato sauce, each

river of melted butter, each

drop of wine an ocean in itself,

I always had to stifle the urge,

welling up like helium inside, to finally ask

why she was allowed to go hungry, when I was forced

to swallow every single flake drowning in lukewarm milk,

every shred of lettuce swimming in vinaigrette, every pat of butter

that barely fit on the lukewarm baguette. I know

she'd say this was instinct, from a time when her people

had to flee men throwing stones in Europe, had to toss

their entire pack of possessions over their back, always

packed tightly for just such a possibility, which

hung over them as shadows

whenever they tried to sleep. Naturally,

they would imbibe every last crust of bread,

every unusable part of the skin

of what was once a cow, for fear

that pitchfork-wielding marauders would someday

steal the rest of their bread, slaughter

their cattle, burn their fields, and they

would have no choice but to clutch

a star of David to their chest

and run to a new land, which

would never be called home, so long

as it taught me to insist on cookies

instead of sandwiches, on pizza and burgers

and fizzy little smiles, so that maybe, just

maybe, a scimitar-wielding man would someday come

hover over my bed at night, clutching

a Bible in one hand, desperate to teach

that there's more danger in this world

than the taste of soggy, overcooked string beans,

which clung to my throat like knife blades, no matter

how many watered-down whiskeys I drowned them in.

Sunday, March 6th - "Ersatz Poseidon"

Once, just after waking

and before thinking, I tied

the bedsheets around my loins

and pretended I ruled the sea.

My mother told me this

was blasphemy, that we don't believe

in sea gods, in this house. A rosary bead

scuttled to the floor that day,

but they say that prayers

can't be heard from the bottom of the ocean,

even with chests tattooed

with shark's teeth, smelling

just faintly of myrrh

from all the way across the sea.

Sickly from swallowing salt,
I begged to be given

a dominion on land to rule over.

I believe all the stories

they tell about the origins

of the world: it's only

in rocking back and forth

nervously, counting down

the breaths I can take

before being sent away

to sit on my own feet,

that I'm forced to learn

I was ever meant

to stay still as the earth turns.

Saturday, March 5th - "Guilt Trip"

An endless parade of cement walls,

         paper cups filled with rainwater, steps

                 leading all the way down to the road

to nowhere. Beside the slab

         of indeterminate style, a single man

                   reaches into his pocket, takes out a penny,

rubs out the year

            so he won't know if it's older

                     than he is. Asks for just a single quarter

so he can buy

         a little bit of love tonight, or

                      at least a nice facsimile of it. Can't afford

to tear down the skyline,

           but I slip him a picture of the moon,

                      wrapped in old newsprint images

from the Kennedy era, walking past

          before I even have time to hear his reply:

                       you get home safe tonight, you hear?

Friday, March 4th - "Momentary Blues"

The streetlights dimming

as we stare hungrily at the moon,

leaving just enough light

to steal a single kiss

and hope you can't see

enough to take it back.

Thursday, March 3rd - "Mummification"

Words about freedom, he must have said. His face

hanging limply from the magazine rack,

even after death, when all he must want

is to decompose and become part

of the next germination, grow into trees somewhere

in the southern Amazon, which we'll cut down

and turn into glossy magazines

to sell more hair product. The rounded cap

of his domed head completely obscured

by its fibers, why shouldn't he decompose

with the rest of us? Eyes glimmering,

feet yearning to feel the dirt beneath them. Stained

with words we can't read,

why can't we all advertise immortality? Something

of an echo, perhaps, something

of another lost opportunity. When I die,

cut out a picture of my face

and plaster it by the highway in the rain.

Wednesday, March 2nd - "Some Quick Calculations on the Speed of Light and a Lamentation"

A slight trace of light

from a distant dying star,

just faintly visible

if you squint into the sky. Just

for now, lost, but getting closer

with each blink, each tremor.

At a constant rate

of three hundred thousand kilometers

per second, how can we not

grow closer? I suppose

from the point of view

of the universe, you and I

are already on top of each other,

pawing nervously at the Big Dipper,

yearning to be just one part

of this great big cosmic project,

one continuous link

to the sun's morning gleam,

the moon's astral projections. When

you're on earth, you're practically

dead already, by the time

the light from Alpha Centauri

flirts with the earth's surface,

or so I try to tell myself at night

when glancing at the stars,

whispering slowly that you're still

alive, somewhere in a distant star system,

growing ever closer with each time I shudder.

Tuesday, March 1st - "What the Sinner Learned About Love"

Once, as part of a drunken party game

to name the strangest, most inexplicable place

where we had ever disrobed, I said

a cathedral somewhere in southern France,

with the light from the stained glass

shining down onto my ribcage

and playing musical chairs

in the cavities beneath my chest. In truth,

this was a lie, of course, but what I did

in that empty, echoing antechamber

was not so much disrobing as feeling

transparent, with only my opaque fingertips

left behind to trace figure eights

in the dust on the floor beams. This was probably

some time just after I turned fifteen,

and I knew nothing about love,

but I liked to think of it

as a little man in the back of the chapel,

rubbing himself down with palm oil

and confessing his inability

to stop touching himself. I didn't think

that love was an altar in the back

of an empty room, a mountain raised

like a knife over my head, an answer

to a question that no one ever asked.

That night, years later, no one in the room

really wanted to hear about love,

but somewhere, in a jet-black antechamber

in the back of my tangled hippocampus,

I kept an old weathered journal

whose pages were worn thin,

leaving only ink stains, rising

like exaltations in the night,

the way a moth flutters

to the nearest porch light, just to know

we can still see straight through it.

Monday, February 28th - "Brackish"

Clink of fork on glass, plate dropped to the floor,

whoosh of bottles opening and mouths clenching shut.

The sound of sound slowing down. Everyone

knows that this is how life takes its respites,

mildew smell in the bathroom, sensation

of falling from flight. The man in the straw fedora

snatches glances at the moon, in between mixing

vodka tonics, pretends not to notice

when the girl in the black slip flashes him a smile

and goes back to sipping her Manhattan,

letting the light fall from her crestfallen eyes

down into puddles beneath the corrugated glass,

this turning and slaking until even the bushes outside

have no choice but to whisper in unison.

Sunday, February 27th - "Teeth"

Asleep in the field

when the rain stops falling.

Dirt collects in gullies

on the back of your hand.

My sandy-colored son,

my darling of the smoke.

In my last dream, I nearly

wrestled you down from heaven.

At night, we found you

curled up in the rushes,

drinking greedily

from the angels's trough. Your hands

were like feathers,

dripping sweat and dew,

marked off with scars

for all the rest of time. Seeing

you lying there,

child, how could I help

but look into the mountains

and raise up the knife?

Saturday, February 26th - "Chalkboard Mirror"

 I've seen your reflection

in all the mirrors of the city,

in dirty puddles on asphalt

and the backs of newly shined cars,

and above the tallest building,

peeking out faintly

through the salt shaker clouds.

Your half-honest smile

glimmers on the ground,

the only thing visible

through the thick fog

that has descended on the landscape,

rolling down from the mountains

on its irrepressible journey

to the sea. Though you don't

say my name, I know

you are looking for me

here, there, everywhere

beneath the sun. Now, hiding

your eyes beneath your fingers,

I want to pinch

your cheeks, whisper

into your ear, tell you

that I understand what it means

to hide behind trees

all your life, to run

into the arms of a stranger,

to dance beneath stoplights

just to feel the warmth

of the red lights on your bald head.

You tell me you don't

want pity, don't want me

to look at you any

differently, from the way

I would, if you were just

some businessman

in a torn suit, walking

down the street

with his hands

in his pockets. I say

I've been looking

at you, differently,

all these years, all the time,

anyway.

Friday, February 25th - "Balm"

Spending the last waning hours of daylight

sprawled out on the couch, you confess

you once told a lover

that you could only get off

by ripping off his head. At the time

this seemed like harmless fun, a way

to bring a little more danger to what

had admittedly turned into a bit

of a routine, but somehow

he had believed you, had tried

to convince you not

to fall in love with violence, to cherish

his embodiment, fully formed

and nearly functional. Well,

none of us are really

formed and functional, you said, so

maybe I'm just being honest, just

externalizing the metaphor. I know

you expect me to be amused

by this simple anecdote, to smile

and remark on how silly

you once were, but instead

I stroke my wisp

of a beard thoughtfully,

and after some time spent

tracing the shadows of our faces

on the windowpane, remark

that if you must always

make sure your lover

is somehow incomplete, at least

you could try to find

the common courtesy

to leave him a bandage

to wrap himself in come morning.

Thursday, February 24th - "Angel"

Just for now,

nothing. The child

is reborn, the ash

a landscape. For now,

the light,

invisible.

Dream

and I will feed you,

shout

and the mirror explodes.

Echoes reverberate

against a canvas of skin.

You,

my double,

darling, a mirror,

a glass, a cup

filled to the brim,

self-emptying.