I’m Ulaanbaatar

It’s May I’m out of register
it’s the cherry blossoms I’m quick and dirty
I need some means restriction
a mistake seen from afar
Maybe it’s the lilacs I’m mindful sex
I’m back of the envelope I’m Pearl Square
I’m a baby near a boiling kettle
a tiger on a calendar
Could it be the apple tree I’m instamatic
I’m back of the house I’m your city’s lake
There’s restless agora within me boundless
I’m street antibiotic I’m Ulaanbaatar
It’s May ferns forcing the forest floor
I’m an epidemic alphabet I’m your rabbit
the wind the rain the newly-opened window
it’s very late I’m still awake              a door ajar

~~~

Let Me Be More Imprecise

 for Yuval Grossman

I’m too feverish for the funeral. Lock the door; pour hot water over the mint. You are eagerly inside me, you call my name from far away; you are leaving always, back to your mean dusty home. I examine your wild contradictions; the fog of tea rising into humidity. Long ago you planted this mint, an untamed weed inside your heart. In English, can not and will not are not the same.

~~~

A Memorable Instance of Forgetting 

Eighty years ago,
she placed her hands on the keys
and forgot what came next.
It was Chopin’s Death March.
A child’s recital.
She felt the yawning gap of nothingness
open beneath her feet.
She took a breath, raised her hands.
Lowered them. Began again.
No one ever said a thing
about her frightening moment of absence—
not her brother,
smug in his bar mitzvah suit,
not her mother,
nervously rubbing her temples,
nor her father, leering
in his cheap suit and un-shined shoes.
Though unacknowledged,
she knows—really knows! All these years later!—
that it happened.
And I believe her.

~~~

Elegy for Elliott Smith

Tired of being taken seriously,
October turned abruptly on its heel
against the golden light,
toward the wordless night,
where no explanations will be necessary.