Skip to main content

A letter 

I’m writing a letter to you.
It’s in a maze. Like me.
Surely you’ve seen the Perseids.
Above the sea.
It’s the same with the words,
which I’m writing or have written. 
I don’t remember.
And they are always another.
Not those ones which I’d like to say.
Or I’ve said?
I don’t remember.
I’ve abandoned the thought
like a traveler who is walking
to a harbor.
The ships depart there.

Yeats Exhibition

The voices of actors on endless repeat
as if every word somewhere
always being spoken,
always being heard
we moved between his manuscripts
projected onto screens reeling
Sligo scenes and ancestors raised
like cheap-trick spectres
by magicians in music halls.
Made sure they were scribbled over,
any words meant to blindside
or to deceive- shot through
and left in his wake.
The bare museum pieces
sealed to not shatter to dust:
this his last pair of glasses,
lock of his hair.
Held in the crypt
of this crisp Dublin day.

The Door

I opened a door that was beautiful and promising.

As I walked in, the room was bright and cheery.

I saw a cup that was filled with a warm chocolate mixture,

I gazed into the cup, anticipating the delicious taste...as I drank,

the sweetness turned bitter and sour...the room darkening

I turned to leave.

My heart broken, yearning for the warmth and promise that was not to be

 I closed the door knowing,

Sanity


You make me question my own sanity
why can I not get you out of my head?

You cursed me and made me feel worthless
you have pushed me away and treated me with disregard
and yet...my heart aches for you

I feel so confused and repulsed by my own weakness

I have never felt so rejected

To watch your life play out in teasing conversations with other women
while I'm sitting on the sidelines, a silent witness to it all

My heart aches, my body is torchered, my arms are empty

Machine from Animal

When I was a kid I couldn't tell
machine from animal.
The patience of those cars waiting
all night at the curb, like horses
tethered for hours outside saloons,
disturbed my sleep.

In the fields, cows stood chewing
their cuds and shoving out manure.
Our washer or dryer shook
and left a little red pool.
My father wound a grasshopper
up and let in leap into the weeds.
It leaked a little oil in his palm.

Yet, I rode our dog and teased
our cat.  I climbed into our Plymouth
and was driven off to school.
I am still that kind of fool.

Unfinished

UNFINISHED


A fascination with the blank spaces
keeps this city still—the quick
inhale of dawn, the white
between your words—
 
My senses stay grounded
in the world’s wait, with days
heavier than years and the explainable
like steam skating off lakes,
refusing to sustain itself.
 
But I am always miscalculating
distances, running into edges
of walls, corners of conversations—
everything and everyone
pieced too closely together
Subscribe to New Poems