2024 poems

Happy Mother’s Day, I Promise

Despair rarely harbors itself here.
Keenly aware when someone is not a worthy match.
A mindful boxer who relaxes the gloves
to let his opponent stagger
and sway,
considering if the occasion truly calls for another strike.
Or maybe, like blood moon skies in this aging universe,
I am just too
preoccupied to notice
when someone is turning out the lights.

Today,
it’s the single-blade razor
leaving an ingrown hair on my cheek,
and the fact that someday no one will remember how my
legs once tread against second city streets.
And the conversations those passing faces shared
about home winemaking
as if they were the first
to unfasten stems and split open grapes.

In that same way,
as I trim and prune these poems and pick
the plump, unscarred words
The ones that nearly release themselves from the vine.
Avoiding things like corner bakeries
And Christmas at Macey’s
I want more, but I am less
If you feel lost in what traffic is left,
just know
that at one point
there was so much more of me.

Like the crumbled church on Jefferson
that came down tonight without a soul knowing.
Architecture composed a century ago
Welcoming a century’s worth of sun
Through stained glass windows
that witnessed
So many despair and grow
And stand
and drink down grapes

It’s hearing her state
in the past tense,
“I always was a pretty good actress.”

And the similar desperation that washes over me like decades
when I think about weeds reclaiming brick sidewalks.
The doom of paint chips flaking from pantry shelves,
pared off like splinters from knives
Shawn and I used to whittle in the woods.

There, between the trees that you loved
With an affection that glimmered in each tear
Shed as the timbers staggered
And swayed
After a century of
Daylight filtering through their limbs
Striking the pages of letters you wrote before there
was anything of me.

I have always wanted to love like you
to have fallen
not far from those oak branches

And there’s still time to learn
because,
you’re not even young yet
and your sharp eyes needle the whisker free.