Parenthetical Place (Day 2,440: Take 3)

Everyone is (a) pedestrian.
This corridor is mine
to crawl through to touch
the classless dream(.)

Cedar Point Not Lost (Day 2,160: Take 3)

Sandusky is not merely amusement, not merely
a beer garden, bathhouse, dance
floor where the first lover
would begin to break

my hope over cold water. Edging Lake Erie,
a peninsula not an island

after all, Ohio’s tendency for hills. I stay away
to prevent roller coaster motion

sickness—we’re never cured
from the disease
of memory. What we get
if we’re very lucky, and the light

is with us, is
a daily reprieve from our inner ear’s relentless imbalance.

She believes she can stand tall against shadow,
affect the light
into afternoon, identify the stone
figure staring at her as she turns a corner

to enter
another establishment
old as sin. It could be
hers—wrapped into the dirty

canopy fabric above the narrow door.

* The title comes from the Preface to Luc Sante’s Low Life.

On a grayscale
from blizzard to moonless
night, she rates you scattered
clouds and the smiling bright
new 35W Bridge.

I swore I would never do this, but here I am trying to start a blog using my little day poems. Here’s one from a couple of months ago.

Plectra
(Day 2,322)

Everything vibrates
whether we admit it
or not. The piano
is a percussive instrument

I could not play
very well—the harpsichord
is plucked like a child
from a secure sleep

into male and female
shouts going to different lengths
and depths to be
heard. No one was listening. A rock

glass smashing against a wooden step,
a china vase shattering
against a windshield, impervious
to the drama. When all motion stops,

and the permanent split is identified
and legally documented,
vibrations carry on elsewhere.

I only played the baroque instrument
once—I was that child.