Smudge
published in Rutgers University’s The Anthologist, Fall 2017 issue

A stick of sage burns down in my childhood home 

because you get these gut feelings, 

and they are hardly ever wrong. 

You saunter down the marble foyers,

and up the hardwood stairs

and across the carpeted landing

on the balls of your feet,

wrists bent, 

a woulda-coulda-shoulda ballerina.

Smoke trails behind you.

You knock on my bedroom door 

and I kneel down, defiant, before you

while you wave the wisps round my bent frame: 

a woulda-coulda-shoulda fairy godmother 

with our twin dark circles under your eyes

casting spells to keep me safe. 

Smoke slides up to the ceiling.

And when you step back, you look down at me

through the screen of smoke and ask

how I’m doing. 

I look down at the smudges on my finger tips 

and imagine all the words 

I could have put down on paper 

that lurk within those inky shadows.

I look up and say: 

“I’m fine, Mom, how are you?” 

And when you tell me all about your day 

all I can think of is driving with you, 

hurdling down turnpikes and country roads,

and you turning the radio up as loud as you can. 

You attempt to harmonize with the voices — 

so clear and perfect — 

astride yours: 

the only thing about you 

that does not exude composure. 

Your off-key, shaking voice, 

how it quakes without rhythm or style, 

down and up the octaves 

without finding a home,

but your voice calls me home,

your voice.

You’ve only broken it

in front of me

once.

When I get right down to it, 

when I want to bare it all, bring it up, and show you, 

it’s never quite the right time. 

So you go on driving 

and singing

and I go on

looking up directions

or down at my hands. 

There’s this shaking secret

that sits on top of my tongue,

while yours is too busy 

tapping the front of your teeth 

because you’re telling me 

how much you love me. 

Would you still? Would you still 

if I told you

that all your smoke 

smudged up the spaces

where I feel I can breathe?

Would you still? Would you still

if I told you 

that all your smoke

brought down

a screen of inky smudges

in my lungs? 

Go on singing and dancing. 

I’ll be here in the car. 

Dead Time
published in Rutgers University’s The Anthologist, Fall 2017 issue

The present stretches before us 

as a thunderhead — 

inescapable, it crouches on the outside

keeping us in

with a wall. 

Looming on the border line tonight

just thick enough

for insulation 

and just thin enough 

to hear 

the roaches disguised 

as elephants 

whispering in voices 

that crackle and splinter 

and make your skin peel back. 

Because soon this skin will not be my own,

And your skin will not be yours,

because our voices will be

stripped away

all this flesh? 

Stripped away,

just to be weaved into

star spangled tapestries: 

a road map

from sea to shining sea, 

and from our bloody veins 

our tremendous navigator

will lead us all the way back

to that imagined melancholia 

of yesterday. 

I don’t want to go there,

do you?