Poetry

Uneasy co-existence---

I might have acted as the violence of language / had commanded. With strike-speed struck /your saddled stick, eight inches balling in a fist, / your heart exploding.

Who doesn’t have sympathy for the door / Forever separating the out from the in, / The here from the wherever?

What window would be so kind / as this white wall, where soft focus // is a down pillow, where no wet eye reflects 

You know him. He is the small man / hanging around the periphery. / He has straight white teeth / and a smile for you 

I know your mother doesn’t think / I’m the smartest person alive, / Father said. That’s why I try / to learn a new word everyday / by reading the dictionary.

If someone told you to jump / in the water while you’re on a bridge, / Father said, would you do it?

let’s start this way / below the surface tangled in mud / choked / by grasses thick as braids 

She stood a foot from me / two futures hung in the air between / us

Because some years count double. / Because we were bobbing for apples / in gasoline.