Purities

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White on

A contraction from chin to navel
a poem that doesn't involve me

Postures

Shook the hood
At a right angle
Get by angel
Step aside
That big window could beckon
At a stand still

DQ and other endings

A country rushed slowly past
Faced backwards
Or the water from the spigot
Leaving droplets on yellowed pages
A feeling stays accumulated
While the details drift off

We all fall

A formidable domino
Not a dry eye on the playground
Triple wronged
and how

Role play

I want something that you have.
The power to accept or deny. 
That ease at arriving late.
The adoration you get in return for 
Your strategic breaks from withholding.
Should we both be bad
And never learn any lessons?
Or
Should you change,
Like I've long-sometimes wished?
Or
Is it me?

Mind shift

How to turn on the poetic brain
Find a new way to say the same thing about my brother
Watch closer
As the girl presses the stiff plastic dolls together
And asks most days about my wedding band.
If it means something that the pile of pine trees have been mulched away,
Or the father gives into his child
Who circles and circles the hare tree.
These cycles
This hot air against the night
Again

Eraser Cleaning Redux

Will my son one day
Explain the moon to me
On a street corner
In earshot of a passing stranger?
I already know the moon so well.
But maybe I'll pretend? 
I'll be the part that's only sort of there
Slowly eclipsed by a brazen boy.

Power ball

Here you can ask the bodega man how luck works (you never know).
Watch as hypothetical business deals flourish 
It wouldn't be a handout, I could do good work for your business -
If you win.
Two dollars to fantasize
in horror of never-ending options.

Circles

At circle the children are eager 

to share who is dead - PopPop, Grandpa Joe, Mima -
And his red curls shaking, he tells
my mom is dead,
yes and my dad is dead.
I am dead too.
But the after-school teacher tells Chase,
When he asks, How did Martin Luther King die?
He was very old, he lived a long time and then he died. 
39 is so young to be so old.
During nap time Chase
plays with dolls in the office.
They are always turning 36.
Stay a bit,
Sing Happy Birthday,
He pleads

Patterns

The best good
Would 
Be 
To
Have 
A farmhouse kitchen (no. 139)
A place to wait (no. 150)
A tapestry of light and dark (no. 135)
Windows overlooking life (no. 192)
A few bed alcoves (no. 188)
And a secret place (no. 204)

Club everybody

Witnessing 4 year olds'

Social bravery
And social deafness
Ought inspire me to stop

Waiting and ask

My work friend crush out
To coffee.

Builder Broken

Pulling a shadow from the sheet
Don't let me be
       a note sliding upscale
Smooth on that skin tone
Cheers the spoons
            the roving bachata
            a knuckle tattoo
Wandering towards a radiator
the steam draws us in
You've got to live a little
                                         bigger

Mutualities

They take cash at the door
and it's all a sham
(Reciprocal)

Moving men's mumbo jumbo
More secrets to spill to your
spare ear

The cult of us is
piled up high
Imagined syllables --
Permutations of names that were
never ours

lowlevel

The sky is low
and I'll stay together
a life of paperwork
and sitting in moving cabins
begin again
shift your weight
sharpen your eyes
on that coast getting
closer