let’s all lie
about the weather
take a Sharpie
to the truth
toy with people’s fear
shoot a pistol
into the sky
poke a hole
in the canvas
drain the fountain
to get ready
believe the myth
about being
more powerful than gravity
is god
no amount of rubbing
alcohol will remove
these stains
from our hands

Next trip booked,
New York in November
registers this relief.

Hotel Beacon the last two times,
why not inch my way north
to Hotel Belleclaire,

two blocks closer
to the last place in the City
I called home?

I’ll find my way
back to the Bronx
first time in a decade.

Time to touch
all the rivers
that aren’t really

rivers—the Hudson,
the East,
the Spuyten Duyvil—

and then there’s the Bronx,
the only freshwater river
in the City.

I will trace
a route with my tongue,
taste the emptying

with a hand
and heart that refuse
to let go

of the expired
MetroCards in my wallet,
even a bullseye token or two

stashed in a wooden box
filled with European currency
collected before the Euro

united us all.
OMNY present or absent,
I will ride the lines

underground where the City gets real.
Enthalpy and entropy
collide on the third rail.

We’re all falling apart
at least a little bit. What a relief
this reservation brings.

this is no east
of Eden / no fratricide
lake valley

the freighters
come and go
at all hours

the aerial lift bridge
goes up and down
to the same beat

the air numbs
the pain / named or not

I wake in another
hotel room
near another waterfront

for a few brief moments
cannot remember
fresh or salt today

cannot shake
the jamais vu

the sandy stretches
I misplace
beneath my feet

the very feet
I might not recognize
moving in the dark

I look up and wonder how
the aurora borealis
looks from this side

could be time
to redefine too cold
to swim in

I could repeat the one
about pretending to be
a tourist in my own town.
I could map a new one
based on a hungover memory
of a lake freighter,
an aerial lift bridge,
and a temper that refused to be

quenched—mine.
I could write
the color red
out of existence,
and the hotel would
still whisper home
to gravity’s
cooled-off night.

It hurts
the ghost.
It laughs
across a ford.
It blinks in unison
with the light
on the broken table.
It will hurt again.

This unnecessary body
balances against
a persistent wind.

The water tower!
Why didn’t I think of it before?

And the sky photobombing above
the way my dead father
would have insisted.

30

the Your Speed sign reads

you are going nowhere

so fast

I cannot keep up

with your duotone purpose

if I were you

I would confess

you suffer

from such severe

impostor syndrome

because you are

an impostor

those clowns

who wore masks

with your parents’ faces

painted on them

started it

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

your real mother and father

did speed away so fast

I cannot say where

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

it reads

keep your car blindness

to yourself

the small concrete
bridge I crossed
twice a day
for a week
arches over

a seasonal creek
bed bone dry and
filled with gravel
ferns and clover
growing on either bank

a week
among writers
free flowing
wine and conversation
and freshly generated

poems or
at least
inklings

the week
is over

here I am back
in Minnesota
with its hot nights
and Mississippi
high waters

I miss the Napa Valley
already / into this
longing for all
that did or did not
take place

poems begin
to ferment
as long as
I ever so gently
take place

too large to be a domestic cat
too small to be a full-grown bear
a streak of black fur with four legs
darts across the road at sunrise

not willing to investigate
I pivot / redirect my running route
to Main Street where everything grows
wild at a distance

a shrub / a lost cub
a fire hydrant / a dancing one
on hind legs / pronounced snout
and bulging pentagonal eyes

what if it were a black jaguar
or never before seen
melanistic mountain lion
I will never know how close I came

a crumpled heap
lying beneath a marching parade
of arrogant motherboards
I am not done

I can hoist myself
through an opening in the dark forest
wait in circuitous quiet
to pounce or be pounced

it’s not over
till my digital twin kisses all
my past loves
good night

You remember Dad
teaching you two, my big sisters,
how to play Monopoly
the evening Neil Armstrong took
that one small step.
The sun would not settle
into the sound for another two hours
on the island.

My obsession
with a silver wheelbarrow
had not kicked in,
the red one years and miles away.
I remember those small steps
to the porch fronting
that rocky beach, the water,
this shrinking land.

Dad taught me
how to tie my shoes
on those steps,
how to swim
in that water,
how to believe in the number
8 and infinity
under that sky.

Each of us remembers
a different moment
from a different angle.
We all remember
the black-and-white turquoise TV
that framed history for our family
that summer events piled up
higher than the sky.

And there’s the view
of all of us
teetering on the edge
of a gibbous form—
tiny, blue, marbelized,
permanently captured
rising above
the limb of the moon.

than sun
have let men
walk all over me
and my tranquil sea

one of many seas
that aren’t seas

I love you Earth
I am yours
you only know
the half of me

though I may be shrinking
more wrinkles on my skin

with each faulted age
I am not cold as you
thought / can still quake
set the rhythm

to your oceanic ebb
and flow

my moods / my rusty Latin
my maria / marginis / undarum
serenitatis / insularum
frigoris / cognitum / crisium

you see my basaltic plains
I see you see me see you see me

in this tidally locked waltz
through time
not dead / not dead / not dead
not dead yet