How the Bee Gees stole
that intro scratch
from Jimi Hendrix.

How she loved
to wear sunglasses
in the rain.

How the words
came last
if they came at all.

How he walked the same
sidewalk she did,
and they never met.

How the Manhattan skyscraper
bedrock myth
got debunked by

the sky (and the depth of developers’ pockets)
not the ground below
was the limit.

How rock paper scissors
spread beyond Asia
only a hundred years ago.

How the orange lizard
beat the blue, blue beat yellow,
yellow beat orange.

Sometimes the scratch
was just a scratch.

And the cue ball
was a milky globe

that lost its way
inside a dark pocket
without a GPS signal.

on this warm October afternoon
the moist air smells more
like spring dirt rising
than parched death falling

this is the last
day of her week
of writing
about the present tense

tomorrow she returns
to her preoccupation
with yesterday

she hears Hendrix
drag Dylan’s
like a rolling stone
through Mississippi blues mud

in the background
purple haze
comes before
purple rain

she knows about this chronology
more than the flames
that burn up another guitar
shaped leaf on the sidewalk

the threat of another storm
shrinks by the minute
as the waxy taste
of candy corn

corrupts her view
of high rises
on the other side
of the hill in the park

she shreds light
with her teeth
to form the words

don’t be late

reaching the next
island that wrecks
the horizon
with its geologically active grin

“With used furniture he makes a tree.”
—Anne Sexton (from “The Black Art”)

She wants to carry a bundle
of twigs into the wood
where she will do her best
to get lost.

Where she will turn
benches into trees,
trees into musical chairs
below the thrush’s found song.

The day begins.
He pushes dreams aside,

retrieves the Sunday paper
from the vestibule,
says aloud to himself:

But this is
yesterday.

Everything reminds him of something
else. He refuses to respond
to memory’s taunt.

Refuses to predict
his winter feelings.

He sees two dead squirrels
and a woolly bear caterpillar
that moves slowly across the path

as he runs. Their narratives
remain dormant.

A parliament of owls
protects him
from night fears.

He doesn’t see or hear them
but knows they breathe nearby.

He knows it’s a lie.
Even solitary animals sometimes
need stories to promote the group.

Her fire story is
26 years old
tonight. Even older
than the one about

an idol who jumps off
a stage into her reality
for a few brief
breathless moments.

Before it goes up
in flames. A reenactment
of Purple Rose of Cairo
before she saw the movie.

Sometimes we steal
from the collective
imagination first.
Sometimes it takes a long time.

26 years for her
to think of the birds
that lived in the nest
those roofers torched by mistake.

Six years and counting.
You’re not coming back.

Another perfect fall day
in this northern city
you rarely left.

Tomorrow will mark 24 years
since you parked that U-Haul

filled with all my belongings
(including me)
in the parking lot

below your apartment
above the cobbler’s shop.

I’m still here.
Mr. Lee is too.
But you.

Sometimes it makes sense
not to put things back

where you found them.
I had a dream last night:

We were on a plane
flying from somewhere
going somewhere else.

When I see the calendar,
I remember—that’s right.

But it isn’t right at all.
Who can say if we really belong
to ourselves. Anyone else.

If you break enough
roundtrips, you don’t make it

home again.
You become that guy
in that song:

“Used to live at home,
now I stay at the house.”

Do they have bars
where you are now?
I wish I could

call your name out.
Wish I could

hear that song
with you one more time.
Make it a thousand more.

As a child, I played house
inside moving boxes.

Some people can’t go home
for the first time.

Somewhere along the way,
I decided if I can

stand still
long enough, then.

Being home = fear of another move.

Or, some people become too tired
to pack another box.

And the narrator of my dreams
becomes unreliable as

the voice in my head when I walk
into another morning.

It’s nothing personal—
her terror.
She doesn’t need
a weatherman
to know which
streets to walk
when civil twilight
leads to civil unrest.

She’ll never hold
a loaded gun
again. In the summer of 1984,
she cut her finger
on a squirt gun
during a drunken weekend
reunion in Brooklyn with someone
she should never have reunited with.

She feels constrained
by the box she lives in,
its four top flaps
just beyond reach.
She wants to take
a train to a plane
to an island
she doesn’t recognize.

She wants to believe
in something
greater than this
cardboard vista.
Wishes she could make
a diorama from a milk crate
someone stole from PS 7 in the Bronx
just for personal use.

Draped and placed
on a stool,
it would tell a new story
from an old fear.
A tiny bent light beam
would seep in
through a tear in the canvas
sky. Outside it might rain.

Two days before
the autumnal equinox,
I want to slip off the main trail
and run into Cedar Lake’s
eastern woods.

Let the wind
and slope and root
burst through dirt
determine when
I make it home. If.

This age of anxiety
gives way to another age
of insecurity
that rolls over
cold slabs

onto the coast that is
never going to clear.

Now I fear
the very existence
of dumpsters
in the alley
and what they contain.

The Flatiron Building,
the Hotel Chelsea,
the McBurney Y
before it moved
nine blocks south—

West 23rd Street, New York, New York,
I love you.

I want to meet the blue
that can’t decide
if it wants to be
purple or gray.
With an A not an E.

I pray
my favorite season
calms the ground
and cools the sky
with quartz-flecked slate.

I must walk
these streets.
I fear
these streets.

I love
these streets.

Open or blocked
with Jersey barriers,
one way or boulevarded,
paved or cobblestoned,

crowded or abandoned,
I am these streets.

Someone shouts:
Hurry back!
I wake from that dream
where I run barefoot

on inner city sidewalks.
It’s happening again.