​​Marginal Lives 


For all we know, or can suspect,
these love lines aren’t worth the paper 
they were printed on a dozen years ago--
when “Robert” underlined certain scenes 
for “the sexiest trooper in New York” 
and underscored their anticipated significance 
in neatly Inked notes drawn in the now-musty 
margins of this paperback detective novel 
we come across on the bargain rack 
at the second hand bookstore on Hamilton Street.

“All books all books this shelf twenty-five cents,”
the sign advises, neglecting to say 
there are mysteries between these covers 
that the author never contemplated 
and we will never solve.

Originally published in Memoir



When the Plum Tree Blossomed


No one saw the plum tree this year ease
into its cloak of springtime blossoms
in the same week the forsythia 
proclaimed the sun, in the same week 
the hospital demanded all the living 
we could live muster. No one watched new buds 
prepare for lace in the ironic promise
of fruit that will not come in later spring.
There was a year when plums formed and 
dropped from this isolated, barren tree
despite the certainties of borrowed science,
and there have been years spent far from 
the hospital and far from ironic promises 
of a spring that never stops arriving, 
each time to blossom and bear fruit against 
familiar probabilities. No one saw the plum 
tree come into full bloom this year; 
Even so, it remains our godly gift 
to watch over it while each petal falls 
and each tender leaf searches for its shape.

Originally published in Cyclamens and Swords



The Stadium


This is no game, remember,
Because the elevated rumbles still
Through the kitchen smells of each
Wave of ever dark-eyed strangers
Ever cooking up strange dishes
Strangely spiced, and all the while
Slipping strange words
Into the spiced atmosphere
Hovering over 161st Street
To rise above the
Train's insistent jazz,
To swell into an unequivocal
Roar that will be joined by ghosts
As surely as forgotten ancestors
Will never let us go.

America is dark-eyed, too,
Against all its wishes,
And speaks in tongues,
And can't subdue its hunger 
For a common language.

Originally published in New Verse News