New York

“The Most Fatally Fascinating Thing in America”*

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“The stark, unutterable pity,
To be dead, and never again behold my city.”
—James Weldon Johnson, from “My City”

What if this is how it’s going to be—
atmospheric screen frozen,
no rebooting. Only one season left,
all natural warmth from the sun

a myth
our ancestors handed us
on a microwavable platter. The raw
movement dies from lack

of passion.
No more fire
in the belly, no more burning
desire to create friction—

to get next to you. This table wobbles.
That type set to tell on those paintings
has shrunk

to a grunt. I’ve lost
the secret code to maintain
an allusion. This uncoordination
has nothing to do with my left hand.

* James Weldon Johnson, from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.

Air-Bridged Harbor*

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“Whose flame/Is the imprisoned lightning.”
—Emma Lazarus, from “The New Colossus”

In a slow return to daylight after hours, she winks
at March and flirts

with her own promises to wake up
a tiny piece

of dirt. Hers is an impassioned lightning
that could strike

even now—before spring.

* also from Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus.”

Fact or Fiction

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The details have begun
to fade—was it June
or July? New York or
Cleveland? Who were you 

opening for? Was a body
of water involved? I could sprinkle
these memory ashes
downstream into the river 

deceit. The truth: 

I haven’t forgotten even one
detail. Down to the pocket
in my dress, later chewed and torn
by an innocent Airedale. 

The truth? Do memories drown
when they’ve served their purpose?
Is two decades long enough?
What if they float?

Hothouse April

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I collected them
from their metal button holes
in a women’s bathroom stall.
I tucked one 

behind your ear, the other
behind mine. I did what I could
with them: message
in red, in elongated green, 

message in true thorn.
I did
what I could.
Should I have 

taken them
with me when I left
your room at dawn? 

A perfect poem
of the ridiculous becomes
subtle, becomes two roses
crossed on a table 

we left behind
by choice,
we left behind
by choice,
say it twice
for both of us,
for what’s left of them.

Leaving Hoosierland

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A moving walkway is coming to an end, begin
here where passing through
is an industry. Will I speak
to strangers, you ask no one. I will
not use horizontal escalators
to get what I want, you state

plainly—rural routes
delineate a grid
unlike any you know now.
You remember how you did the leaving,
a wave from the way back window in the red
Chrysler wood-paneled station wagon

as your mother pumped the gas pedal hard
and away. East to Ohio was never enough. Farther still,

New Jersey, New York, Connecticut,
a town in Southern Portugal. An absence
for something, did you ever know, you ask. Some day you will
believe in the pedal steel
player’s sticker on an instrument he plays
that night in Indianapolis:

“Non-judgment day is near.”