how many times can she quit
her life during a blackout
and come to high
on the branch of a sycamore tree

how many times must she whisper
mirror mirror on the floor
were you ever in the hand
on / off the wall / off / on

the ceiling / tell me
a true story
how you ended up there
how I ended up here / looking

down where my feet dominate
not the eyes / rarely the mind
sometimes the knees / I ask
a stranger / you are

no longer a stranger
we’re all strangers
to our futures
reinventing the fairy tales

that have kept us
trapped between panes
of glass / untranslated water
lips of blood / dried-up seas

she can still taste
the metallic / irony
on her tongue from the old type
foundry matrix

she remembers hearing
the steamship whistle break
the news as the ferry left
the strange comfort

of its berth
recalls wanting it to be
the Uncatena or Nobska
or the one she knew best

the Islander

recollects knowing
her wish will not be fulfilled
dreams of another uncharted journey
to the Staten Island boat graveyard

where she might pay her respects
to leftover scraps
of the work horse
that shuttled her

between all those places
that might be stitched together
to construct a make believe
childhood home

along with the other tugboat
and barge remains
that keep so many secrets
sealed in the muck

The new nanny is no lady who sings opera, but loves fish that scat.

No bimbo, she wears a sandal on her left foot to probe the wizard.

To the naked eye, a sea otter pup will dunk the lettuce head first.

That’s not all there is to the story—just another memory dump.

It was collecting shells:
smooth ones, flat ones, ridged ones,
some with tiny spiral slides inside.

Yellow, chalky white,
that deep bruise
of the mussel

that can only mean
sandpipers stand
on one leg nearby.

Seaglass distracts
only briefly.
Every ocean I hear

unfurls from those years
I lived only
in the littoral zone.

Tomorrow our month begins
without you, Dad,
to cheer us on,

without the lights
that open windows
to a calendar—the one

that takes me back
to a scene in New Hope, PA,
where you treated us

to a day by ourselves
with you about to be 39,
me about to be 13

(exactly a third your age,
the way we like our math),

and you bought me that teal silk
(never wool for you or me)
sweater, and I felt so grown up,

and you were weeks away
from your jumping off place,
me from my first kiss.

cloudy water from a tap
clears bottom up
a plastic cup exposes
the mood I’m in / in
reverse or nothing at all

Moleskine gives me random-sized
rectangular stickers
in random shades of red
a square is a rectangle
with OCD / meticulously detailed

leftover maps
guide me through
every maze you drop me into / you
and your drawn-on
poker face / distilled

catenary arch kilns
nothing is pure
those stickers have rounded
corners when peeled off
what remains

is an outline
of a November day
threatened by rain

not Chelsea or Tremont
Coney Island or Ocean City
not Allentown or Arlington Heights

West 15th Street in Loring Park
where a 19th-century row house
anchors the south side

where to the north
within the city’s oldest park
the geese and ducks

and turtles and black and albino
squirrels and pollinating bees
and butterflies in summer are

where you and I lived out
most of your life indoors
with catnip cardboard workouts

and otterbed dreams
wherever you were
was home

“There was nothing to make a fire from—only damp cold moss and sparse bushes the fire wouldn’t even put in its mouth, let alone digest.”
—Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

The digestive habits of fires
cannot be summarized
with one ash branch in hand.
My cat never got the chance

to curl up on a warm hearth
(as far as I know).
I grew up with them
in every house we moved to.

Even had an almost working one
in that last
New York City apartment
on West 98th Street.

By the time Jackson meowed his way
into my life, the fireplaces
cleared their throats
of bats, not smoke or steam.

He caught two. Never caught a mouse
(as far as I know).
He was a cat—
he would have let me know.

There was that incident
involving a candle
and some singed whiskers.
They grew back just fine.

before I tell you why
I’m not a robot
let’s talk

about the weather / how
snow and ice in early
November break

my stride
make my hips
and thighs ache

it’s cold and my best friend
who was a cat named Jackson
died / it’s colder

than I can remember
any early November being
even here where

people escape
to Iceland
to thaw out

before I tell you
a thing like that
look up and over there

smoke plumes
out and about
the old chimney

there’s another one
in use / so many traffic lights
and vague storefronts and

Abbey Road zebra crossings
emptied of humans
and images of buses

never getting anywhere
you can’t erase
and those fire hydrants

that appear everywhere
the bots want to crack
open the mirror

it’s your fault
the seagull died / blood
red metal boxes that fail
to capture moonlight
till it’s too late
high or low tide
the ocean has gotten so dry / drowned
spits and flooded personal weather
stations crowd this space
you desperately seek to rescue
from yourself and anyone
you ever blamed for needing
to be so human / that wing will stain
the shingle / it won’t wash away
our erosion