His breath tripped over words stuck between his teeth
and tongue as sinewy shoulders curved.

The child stood, small, shivering in her tattered brown coat, 
a dented, scuffed brown suitcase gripped in her hand.

Light drips on the handle of our cups.
Mine is dark blue, hand
Crafted by a lady I met
Once, in Kentucky. It’s filled
With Camomile tea. No sugar.

You sometimes wonder about
Pangea, the supercontinent
that existed 300 million years
ago.

When he had finished writing, and crossing out
and standing and rewriting, and looking
out his window, and feeling the sun

If I could, I’d use
my recently purchased cell phone
to call the pay phone outside
the community swimming pool
in Fairview Park, Normal, Illinois,
that summer when I was eleven,
and the country 200.

It was the night we were told we couldn’t pretend we were Catholic.
The priest turned only toward you and said, “It’s between you and God.” 
And you cried. 

I dream of her, 
childish and illogical,
straight hair and tiger-eyes.

My punk-rock    gothic-pixie    little sister    fourteen    fresh faced        
    We listened to The Cure during art class     Made bongs and pipes
out of ceramic        You taught me how to kiss people who could
never love me

Supermassive Black Hole        swallowed your cackle-low    
            Cosmos whisper pretty Come here darling and you come

I hope I never forget that pack of middle-schoolers
at the playground near my house, how they acted
like middle-schoolers, shouting their conversations
across the neighborhood as if showing off new sneakers,
the boys doing mean things to the girls,
the girls saying mean things about each other.

Tilted
head, right arm
behind the back, fingers
curled around the left arm’s inner
elbow

We all live on the Hudson, America’s only true river. It’s
a driveway, a landing strip, and a dead end. The Hudson is not the only river
to become a school, but it is the only one once beheld by the likes of George
Washington, Melville, and Sir Winston Churchill.

When the new principal
under the direction
of the educational
consulting company
asks you to train
your minimum-wage replacement

I am melting from realizing some
unfixable holes in this carton of dreams. 
Someone carried down my teenage
ambitions in a sack and slung them
onto the floor.

Tulips lift toward the sun
not as lips parting,
but cycloptic eyes, self-blinding
to defy dozens of faces
that peer directly inside,

I accidently knocked over
the Singer sewing machine,
an old black metal one I found
in a junk store.

The waves are shaped by sirens
and the sea walls built to echo
silence.