if I were sitting by the side of a small pool
the longer I sat there
the more I would know.
the pier at Coney Island, Stillwell avenue. I ate an
entire plastic carton of raspberries
and watched a man catch a sting ray
unhook it
and throw it back in
(when we aren’t birds)
If somebody the world should have hardened
Remain(ed) soft
for so long as if to melt
Into hard wood floors
Red, red Virginia clay
Grey, brittle cement
They would have won
The game of taking taking taking
And never breaking
people soak up sadness
when they spend time together
the way trees take CO2
out of the atmosphere
and return oxygen
From inside the bus I can see through the window:
the laborious process by which the young bus
driver helps the elderly woman get an
arm through a camel colored coat
Her right: it is a clumsy but surprisingly
robust wing that emerges – missing the hole
for an arm repeatedly but eventually becoming
that which it always was
finding grapefruit gems in the bowels of my hard drive…
One morning in Maine
I discovered that grapefruit
Can be eaten
With brown sugar
This was in the same
town in Maine
where I discovered that grown men
whistle at 12 year old girls
Yesterday I told myself
to claim the fact
that feminism is a key research concern
in my work.
No more hiding
from what I have known
there comes a time
when we are done.
New York
Is a mug of hot cocoa balanced precariously on my hip flexor,
deep psoas, not yet sore from class
with Bryan Strimpel, as I listen to George Strait on Pandora and I read Patti Smith talk about New York, over 30 years ago.
She dropped different names (John Coltrane John Lennon) and took her jelly doughnuts with coffee.
But perhaps in some ways, it is still the same city.
Proof of existence is where there is nothing
but this marshy
field
and a ghost of the future