Safe

206 bones lie heavy
under the papery quilt
on the right side of my bed.

206 bones lie on
the left side
and those ones
are mine.

27 times two
of these bones
of ours are holding each other.
28 phalanges bones
gripping tight.
Our combined efforts to 
breathe 
in a living rhythm.

I am holding onto
you, 
the last slippery boards
of my sinking ship.
The last raft 
I can find.
You and your
slim arms
and holding me above water,
just enough.

You fall asleep
against the rain
under the tangle of stars
in my weak and trembling hands.
Soft, shorn blonde,
and a subtle strength
in your jaw.

206 of your bones
with 206 of mine.
and together
they make a perfect
nest of protection
against the pounding
waves and rolling tides
and the swift small 
breakings of rain against
these windows.

Grown

A street lamp
shivered,
turning itself inward.
The night air
crept up on cat-feet
and the road became 
quieter.
Softer and dark,
a blanket
on my suburban home.

The sunroof open
to the moon in 
my settling car,
breathing in
the last threads
of youth.

Clinging,
as my stereo croons
it's only teenage wasteland
Hoping my mascara 
isn't running into
spidery legs
down my pale cheeks.

An unwelcome plague,
with shadowy consequences.
Bubonic may have been 
easier. Open,
blackening sores
preferred
to my white-girl whines
and growing pains.

Adulthood.
Comes when you are sleeping,
as the government
slips a bill under your pillow
that you'll never pay.
I was handed pennies
to build my future.
And it isn't what it used to be.

The bugs don't buzz this time of year,
still sleeping,
being born.
The dogs bark at the surrounding dark.
People close their curtains,
shut out
this familiar unknown.
Each night.

Each new piece of paper,
building myself a thin-walled
home with legal paper
and toothpicks.
five dollar pineapples
and the constancy of
a dying street lamp.

Rockets

A little Russian boy
sits to watch the news.
His mother speaks
the new American,
his father 
takes to drinking.

A space rocket
takes off in front of him
in staggering black and white,
in his eyes
it mirrors and takes his 
soul for a ride.

He puts his father in 
place of the monkey onboard.
His mother chitters on the
phone like a yellow canary.
Her dark hair in pressed waves
and she tells him to call
her "mother".
He cannot understand.

She is placed into the
rocket as well.

He sits cross-legged,
scuffed knees from a
playground kerfuffle.
He was pushed for being a 
commie.
A dirty commie, and 
a little Patriot spits
in his hair.

Beautiful west Russian 
blonde boy,
his mama from a 
village of thirty,
his father from Moscow.
Meeting years after
the Revolution
to move to 
ticky-tacky houses
in east Jersey.

Little Russian boy with
eyes star-dappled,
he can't understand the
American flag.
He misses Babushka's
walks with him to 
the park.
His mother
cannot take him out.

He climbs aboard his shiny rocket
and takes off for
his homeland.
Father pours the new 
whiskey,
a burning amber 
our boy once tried to drink.
He cried alcohol tears
for a week.

Space rockets whizzing in the
stars, through the asteroid belt.
He hopes to land on
Neptune.
He thinks it would be perfect,
his comics show 
beautiful creatures living there
in colorful houses.
Every house on his street
is white.

Sitting in front of a
television set,
this boy dreams of 
home.
A vague word
to describe the aching places
in his bones.

B-Ball

The smell of kraft paper bags
full of fermenting grass.
The wet clinging to the air
as the clouds roll in from
the east.

We rhythmically bounce
the worn-out
basketball on cracking asphalt.

The shaking of the chain link fence
in the wind,
urging us on
cheering for our team.

Up past the colors of Harlem-
in Morningside Heights
we play ball on the courts
at the big park,
swirling in green springtime.
We breathe verdant air.

Then a real game moves in,
with real players and
two teams,
so we pack up our ball
and our bags
and walk to the corner bodega
for a quick, cold coca-cola.

We bounce the ball for the bodega
cat, before the Iranian man
smiles and laughs 
like we told a good joke,
and with our shorts
and sweatbands,
we are the
good joke.

Second Hand

There were aisles of analog
televisions.
"Rooms"
set up with ratty furniture,
paintings out of doctor's offices,
hung on slatted walls.

An oatmealy chair,
green and trimmed.
An old man's dearest
friend. Sitting under
the harsh fluorescents.

A child wanders along
the linoleum halls,
stacked high with
board games and puzzles
missing pieces,
chipped glassware
and stuffed animals with 
matted fur.

He holds a tattered lion,
limp from his left hand.
His mother picks out
coordinating silverware
and old VHS tape
cartoons to play
on the black-and-white tv.

Her son
loves these outings.
These things
that are new to him,
shiny in his mind,
for him.
He has never seen 
a big toy store.
For Robin,
this is his place.

His mother smiles a wan smile,
her eyes rounded by 
worry. She will take
her boy home
for macaroni and cheese
before pinning 
her name tag to 
her starched white 
uniform.
Robin will fall asleep
without her.
In a second-hand bed
with cheap sheets.

This isn't how anyone 
envisions their life
when asked at 16.
But years later
at 26
here is Robin by her side,
and a dank apartment 
awaiting.

Robin knows no difference
between this life
and his mother's old one.
She just takes his 
small sweaty palm
in her smooth
white hand.

He carries his lion tight to his
chest. Warrior boy
and his beautiful mother,
he, master of the 
glasswares
and king over the porcelain
dolls.

Robin walks beside his mother,
his heart swollen with pride.

Dry Season

The wooden steps

leaned and creaked

under my shifting weight.

A cigarette dribbled its

smoke down my fingers,

swirling with chipped

red nail polish.

He stood in the yellowed yard,

white t-shirt clinging

and threadbare

in the humid August evening.

The hum of mosquitos made 

harmony with his 

drafty whistling.

Lifting,

muscles shaped like clay

beneath skin,

falling,

the quicksilver crack

of wood under the ax.

I applauded especially good

chops, the swinging of

the red-handled ax.

His hair falling

like sheafs of summer wheat.

Across the lane

a farmer made his daily walk

through the rows of tall-growing corn.

Snakes sizzled under his feet,

boot-clad and weathered.

A ragged bandana to wipe the

glisten from his brow.

He smelled rain on the earth,

a handful of soil in his palm

said tomorrow.

And the corn would grow taller-

maybe even seven dollars

come fall.

I flicked the spent end of

my cigarette into the dying grass.

A chicken came to peck at it.

its feather ruffled by the 

hot breeze.

Swing

and fall.

Swing and fall.

The rhythm of his ax,

my strong man in the sun.

The farmer's hand lets loose

his soil.

Rain gathered on his lips

and into is throat.

Silkworms

She pulled the strings,
badly torn and thin as
silk strands,
woven by worms.

She crawled into sheets
next to me,
and put her hand on my heart.
I am a silk worm
she told me.
making things small
and insignificant.
She burrowed to the bottom of the bed.

I hold my breath
above watery colors
and sputter out 
dizzying patterns
of cosmos dust.
Sailing on a 
rough sea
of tiny threads.

Tying them round my fingers,
one by one,
don't forget
water the plant
call your mother
tell her you love her.
She stands in 
her dresses
of broken pieces
threads without beginnings
or ends.

Winding the gossamer
silks through my hair,
her fingers stained with
worrying,
she is humming
in shrill bird-tones
the songs of sailors,
whalers and loves.

Do not forget,
she winds my fingers
with worm-threaded
strings
do not forget to
love me.

We burrow to the ends
of the earth that we know,
and nap there,
our brains,
humming silkworms,
working their way together.

Leaving

I felt it drift away,
so my feet pounded the pavement
in broken up old Ked's,
across the dirt lanes,
kicking up 
clouds.
Chickens scattered across
the lawn,
and the wind whipped
the tall grasses.

I felt it get taken away,
leaving me in the 
rumpled quilts,
my face glittering
with salt trails.
The breath left me
with cold puffs.

The bus passed
the stops,
the clouds rolled in.
The breaths stopped
coming in cold,
stopped coming at all.

Stranger

If you would please,
sir,
I'll take your
coat,
and perhaps your hat too,
and hang them on the line
to dry
in my humid bathroom,
above the bath tub.

A kettle,
I'll set it to boil
on the stove,
for a cup of
lemongrass tea.
And you can have two sugars,
I wouldn't mind.

I leave the tall windows
open to the rain,
the wide sills' paint peeling
with each falling drop.

Sit down,
sit down,
oh please,
don't bother with your shoes,
the floors can handle
a little wet.
It'll water them.

The kettle whistles a 
shrill song from the kitchenette,
and two tea bags are plopped
inside, the steep
for this guest,
tattered man
with thick-lensed glasses.

He sits in a disheveled sweater,
smiling, a little cock-eyed,
against the green sofa,
it hugs to him awkwardly,
an old friend, 
familiar curves.

I am standing with
two cups and saucers,
and he is standing to take his.
Before his hands reach the delicate
tea cup,
they tremble,
and the cup

tumbles.

Spring

The sound of baseball
and its rabid fans,
cleats hitting the dirt.

Children in the yards,
all over the neighborhood,
their shrill voices
like the newfound bird calls,
peeping out from the 
wakening branches.

The new zephyrs,
tinged with winter's
old sorrows,
but swiftly warming
over,
summer thrumming
its song in our
veins.

King Carp

And then she felt bad-
the fish in its tub.
Their chipped and dull
shower-tub suburban combo.
Here, in such a 
plain
cage-
its scales waning in color,
losing the beautiful olive
sheen.

Carp- king without throne-
dear diaspora fish,
please forgive.
 Do you hold out your fins
in mercy?

She felt her stomach churn
with the 
sour-milk
thoughts.
Zesting off the matte scales.
Flaying the belly full of-?
Wishes?
Twists of guts or bone?

Forgive, forgive,
for she does not know.
Majesty, your lips
whispering through the
tap water growing grime.

She lays her fingers
on a 
surface of tension,
the audible bursting of
boundaries.

Gliding along your slippery sides,
Oh Carp,
his throne 
betrayed-
washing up in
one thousand coins of gold.

[I wrote this today in Lit, when I wasn't supposed to be, because I decided I wanted to.]

Mama Storm

It was ok,
crying in the night,
bracing my shivering arms
against the window frame.
The wind licked my tears
and took them back to the sea.

The neighborhood dogs
yowled and hollered,
sirens sang across town,
and I could smell the
rain coming in. 

Drumming up her timpani,
my mother
shot lightning through
quivering clouds. 
"My child",
she told me,
"don't you cry"
with her strong arms wrapped
around my shoulders.

I pulled the sheets off
the bed,
clutched them like armor,
swathing my legs
in sticky humidity.
The first drops
cried out, 
splattering below,
making music in the
verdant leaves.

She was singing,
just for me,
the only window
thrown open,
my mother took me close,
sang lullabies.

We danced,
the zephyr 
whipping away the
sobs, pulling them
up from my throat
and scattering them 
with the thunder.

The trees bent their bodies
for her majesty,
the Queen,
she sang her last trill
"Sweet child,
please dry your tears."