Tonight

It's these nights, everything still, every rustle of the sheets deafening, every time I open the door like the beams will give out.

I feel like plummeting.

I feel so melancholic.

I feel like nothing is sincere.

The window is open of course. I couldn't stand these nights if the windows weren't open.

And of course there is him or her, which is so sentimental.

A loud noise, so inappropriate that the house should settle now in between refrains. Or a crumpled plastic cup should relieve itself of its crumples.

At least everything smells as it should and I can smell everything. The lamp chain wavers if I choose to notice it.

There is something on my desk that has been there so long I don't see it. A small television my mother bought for my aunt in the nursing home. And I can't help but think about the bedsore. And her spine. And the shadows are so long for the hour. And not even the crickets. And not even the cars. And not even the dogs.


And of course no music is sad enough.

Untitled

Against the pregnant sky
the trees look more like oil paintings than frescoes
stucco branches bud in the womb
of a steady drizzle that chokes the gutters
that line the shingles
of all the houses
that line the street

Remembrance

50 people entails a killing field
the newspaper said
in Berdichev, Telsiai, Belarus;
boundaries drawn
for the purpose of a Yad Vashem Study

A generation or two
that passes into the pogrom
of I.V. drips and respirators

take their cues about
whether to live or die
from sterile strangers who
shuffle languorously
from waiting room to waiting room.