Month: June 2010

Saint Mark’s to Saint Ann’s

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I am the impulse
to give
you that book. I am
the melancholy 

stirring within
as I study a 19th-century
façade that’s lost
its building 

on East 12th. I am the joy
of hearing a childhood
friend’s laughter
still ring the same 

in my ears pressed
against sea shells
we picked up
on our way to discovering 

that one perfectly rubbed
piece of sea glass. I am
the desire to walk

up and down city 

sidewalks at home
and the resignation
that these are visitor 

steps. Here I am
all shadow over stones
ghosted away
and ready to reappear.

Carousel at Lighthouse Point

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Another chance for naked
thought escapes into a threatening
sky before it tips 

into night. Nothing comes
of the gusts. What blows 

over wasn’t as transparent
as she wished. Dangling
power lines frighten her 

now as they did when
she ran all the way to the point
for a slow spin.

What They Call Normal

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Sweeping in the nude (not
naked) has other implications
laid over hardwood. Who 

gets to say when
a book’s a book isn’t
my question. Beneath 

the chaise, the curvature
becomes pronounced. I may
be too modest to chase it out.

Not a One Is Blind

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Fold up those black bat
wings, try not to break
any bones. Would I stay drier
with a mature adult
protecting me overhead? 

Getting tangled
in hair is a myth. I could see you
if these clouds would disintegrate
is another. When I look up
it’s all concave and vital again.

No Enclosure

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Her stomach won’t flip
to break hearts, she cannot
fathom being a begin 

parenthesis without
a promise 

of an end
somewhere down the ragged line. 

That she can think circles
around herself
is gymnastics enough.

Another Circle Poem

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Twenty-first century letter
boxers jump the fence
into a dog park, follow 

text messages on the tiniest
chance they might match up
all the clues leading them 

to the diamond ring
treasure. I’m back one
and a half centuries 

with Emily still writing
“my letter to the World
that never wrote to me.”

Circle Poem

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The last of the public
pay phones, a dial tone to nowhere 

backwards in a dog
park is a hunt 

for diamonds, is easier
for some to fathom. Me, 

I don’t know how
to wear them, am seeking 

other gems.

Connecting Flight

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Free to walk in the rain
in a park—to imagine a dial
tone from the sole remaining 

pay phone on the southeast corner
where the sun might have crept in
another afternoon. It might dry up 

in time for true blues
on a plaza, for a baseball game
to play out in a new stadium 

where birds get in free.

Haunting (Day 2,757)

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Incidental instrumentation
is a snare drum dance
on a low stage. The frequency gentle 

and occasional, the result
a steady and uninhibited linger. Blueprints 

to buildings sometimes reveal their windows
upside down, sometimes superimposed
lines pull a stillness over the implied glass. 

Merce Cunningham paused on film
in three movements, the music plays 

without instrumentation—Cage composed
and decomposing. The lyricism of the moment
collides with an unrecoverable 

past. Staggered evidence of feet once buried
in sand, and I’m six and not concerned 

with the inevitability
of high tide.