Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Mosquitoes

But that was the year we had an Indian Summer through November and our apartment was overrun by mosquitoes. They came in through the windows at night because we didn't have screens and we didn't have air conditioning. In the evening they were invisible to us. Our only proof that we were there was whining next to our ears and the raised red welts. We would sit on the couch sweating with our shirts off and feel them devour us. Or when we would go to sleep they would leave bites where we weren't covered, on our necks or our shoulders. Michael got a bite on his eyelid. In the mornings when they were fat and slow with our blood we would go on a rampage, crushing them with books against the wall, leaving the guts spattered there as if in warning against the others. They were still as we lined up the rolled magazine inches above them. They didn't care. They had already left their mark on us.

Tuesday, November 03, 2015

The Reaper

1.
I am the Reaper. I am drunk on sweet berry wine
and here to harvest the souls

of your pets. Dogs and cats mostly.
I was late on the day they were assigning jobs

so I got domestic animals – I fish the soul of Simba
the crustacean out of the toilet

or claim Boris the terrier,
run over by his owner in the driveway.

2.
In death, as in life - your animals are playful
and irreverent, nipping at the angels

and slobbering out the window
of the carriage of death.

I come home late for dinner and my wife takes sympathetic note
of the pale indentations on my skeleton

where the ferrets have been knitting their claws.
She kisses the top of my skull and says, “oh, honey,"

and we eat noodles and butter
in front of the television.

3.
When I first started
I would see the faces every night in my dreams,

The lizards that got and trapped
behind the furnace in the basement,

the old dogs, guileless, and with silver fur
around their eyes.

I thought it was to be permanent.
I thought these ghosts would be a mystical curse of the job

until one night I went to bed stoned
and dreamt that I could breathe underwater.

I lay down on the ocean floor and closed my eyes
and have not dreamt of animals since.

4.
It is twilight at the veterinarian's office when you bring in Mittens,
fourteen and with a bad liver.

I wait in the corner. You put your hand on
her side, and she looks up at you with love

and with understanding. When the doctor takes out the needle,
Mittens does not make a sound.

She will come quietly, I can tell.
I am tired and she is tired. We have had long days.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

o to

o to be the kind of person who goes to the store to buy an onion, o to walk more quietly, o to be able to stop picking at my fingers and to stop whistling in the house, o to stop showing up to parties at people's apartments on the east side but then deciding to leave while i'm walking up the stairs, o to be able to say good morning to the receptionist like a normal person, o to be able to smoke a cigarette without coughing, o to walk to the river and jump in and breathe deeply in the water and sink to the bottom and live there forever, with my feet in the mud without worrying anymore about whether i have something stuck in my teeth or whether i should buy renter's insurance, o to stop drunk texting my sister things like "am i a sad person or do i just perform sadness" and later that night i borrowed michael's citibike key and you and i double rode up to van cortland park and lay in the of the cricket pitch and it was warm and i felt something new when we looked up at that orange sky and i realized i could walk as far as i wanted and you would keep your head down the whole time, or that i could assume some agency and be responsible for something small but significant

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Signal Problems On The JSQ-33rd Line

I attended a weekend seminar
in time management
in an effort to solve
the problem I have where
instead of working I sit
in front of my computer
picking at the skin under
my fingernails and thinking
about how you said to me
these years will be hard,
and how upset
I was with you because
I knew you were right.

Will I never learn to sleep
with the night sounds of
the street cleaner and the police?
Or with the orange glow
from across the river,
like a detonation frozen in crystal?
Could I not be the kind of person
for whom moving to a new
city could be a great and
wonderful adventure?
I will light a small fire
and then call
to say that we haven’t
talked in a while but you should
know I printed out the poem
you wrote for me and I read it
on the PATH train
whenever there are delays,
which is every day.