new zealand poems: glenfern

trapped like everything

but blue, holding fast to

curtains drawn in the dark

and looking where we know are

mountains.

Cook for those who cooked

For you, sometime, and tell me

About the disappointment

Of sunrise with no sun.

I am tired of days spent

Holding out for no rain, counting

Dollars spent like karma

Leading me to this life.

Welcome to now, slow

Flowing stone of ice, I feel

My sockets carved like a valley

By deep and groaning movements.

I am reading poems about my own heartbreak

Written by a bisexual woman halfway

across the world. I guess that also describes

the one I love. I guess I want them both

laying down a bed of apologies for us.

She should be sorry the way she treated

Mary Oliver—the way her brutal honesty

Caught my soul like jade in the river—

Now I am raw in a sleeping house wanting

To cry out, it is too much,

All of it, too beautiful this

Green that is life that takes over everything

like the lake that gives life, this grey

That is water that changes and pulls

and covers the world like night

And is kb’s eyes even as i

Struggle to be here and she is

There—too much, the world

Beginning anew, looking up at new stars unable

to find a pendant to prove it to myself—

Too much knowing these others in the dark

That look like me but who’s souls

Do not, knowing they are going through it too

Equal and strange like the

Glacier moving down the mountain

With new snowfall, its foot

Curling up as it melts.

Discussing north korea

And oblivion we say—

It never touches who it should—

Being here is hard

Because now is sad

So many are gone

So much of me is gone

Washed into the ocean of longing

I know I am on dry land but

Right now, not all of me

Can love the rain

new zealand poems: trainride

the wind drags its fingers through

the sand. Have we become numb

to this? the feeling of grey cliffs carved

by river, carved by glacier, by dynamite

as we speed through. “what must it

have been like, to lay the steel forward

into the unknown” my mother

asks. “you make me think of that.”

I am wheeling through

Tunnels and fields like the gulls

Through the sky. The walls of

The mountain are close when

We run in, it is dark

In the husk and bright when it is

Broken. All of us pupate

In silence—I sleep when I want it to end,

Don't know about you.

We steal touches across a void:

Did you know they moved up

A meter in the quakes? Even when

It seems everything is falling. Do you

Want a lolli? Im thinking of a bracelet

For her.

What have we forgotten

We’ve forgotten?
Can it be done on purpose?

Because these rolling green hills

With sharp yellow flowers

Are making me remember

I could live here

I might die here in the grey

Passes as a storm rolls in.

The wind is tugging at my sleeve,

Asking me to go inside—

But in the cold I remember

Nothing specific but something

Quite old

I am a wild animal

Reading symbols into the elements,

Scared and shivering,

Alive and trying

To stand on two feet

And mouth the name of god.

yom kippur 5778

Arm around my mother

Hearing psalm 148 for the first time

We are falling asleep in the sermon

I am coming home in the verses.

Boy, it's hot in a tallis and your father’s sport coat

Boy, it’s sad when we speak a thousand names at once

For kaddish.

Boy, we’ve got a lot of arguing to do,

This family.

These are the holidays of the new moon.

This is rejuvenation.

But mostly, I feel the spokes

Of the wheel; when I rap my chest

And sing, it hurts. She cried.

He went to bed unheard. They

Exhausted themselves talking.

They aren’t going to get it,

At least not from me. Marks missed.

Not like clouds in the sun at all.

My dry tongue is that I have not spoken.

And my legs quaking is the gutless way

To use conversation for power. And the sweat

Running down my back is the river of doubt

I harbor. And my swollen hands.

The chives on my breath. White scalp.

Isn’t it beautiful? My whole body alive

With sin, reminding every second

What it must do for love, what it must do

Not just to stay alive but to remain ALIVE.

When we call, we talk without talking.

I say I feel a painful god, and you say good.

You say you can’t hear me, it’s too much like confessional.

Here is the bud of the root, and the root of the bud,

Here is the cold april rain for which there is no jacket,

Here is the branch holding on outside your bedroom window

That knows our love defies simple laws like death:

Your foul weathered love makes me want the ocean.

Your sunblue eyes cool me, watch me pant

Naked on your floor with nothing in my hands.

I have to run to snatch you up

When I see you praying beside the bed,

Or trying to find your WE folder,

Or putting on pants.

I am sorry I have ever hurt you.

If you're a bird

When was the last time

I sat in the trees watching

the brown birds with their black

wingtips dig baths for themselves

plumply in the gravel? Birds this small

always look afraid— whether house sparrow

or northern mockingbird—but that one,

quickly tilting his head and fluffing

his coat over a cigarette butt,

just looks free. Nowhere to be

but where he is.

The spring of some other place calls

to him, but not so strong now. Now

there is the sun and leftover burrito

in bright tinfoil, and the others chirping

excitedly,

and children waiting somewhere higher

but—-in this moment—I cannot

fathom the reason for standing there or there—

the feeling of that freedom—the life of it.

Long after that hotel is union or

not,  after our government expires or

our bodies evaporate into a cloud of blood

and radiation, after the pencil skirts and neckties,

this ground will be here

and it will be covered in slow falling leaves that become dirt

and then plants will grow and the homes

and skyscrapers will crumble, the forms will die

but there will be life, hungry

birds in the sun and squirrels

passing between them

in an agreement so old

it seems aimless to someone like me,

terrified of what to do when

not working 60 hours a week.

Be the body you are.

Raise your voice in praise.

Nothing has been given that

will ever end.

Love does not die.

People die.

The large speckled bird with black chest

and long legs runs from the shadows.

Northern Flicker. It evades death 

every second

in this city full of dangers,

but I am the one

who is afraid.