February 2025
Bio Note: I'm excited to have a new book of poems coming out this year from Fernwood Press! It's titled Russian Honeymoon, and it's about the 15 months I spent in the USSR as a new bride. "At Nineteen" is one of the introductory poems from that collection.
At Nineteen
There is no one like the one who shows you how.
Who wants you to stay all night and every night.
Who wants to know everything about you.
Who says that first night I think I’m falling in love
and believes it (even though you don’t).
Who says that the divorce is not final but
it doesn’t matter.
The one he was living with has gone back to her husband.
The one he met last semester in Leningrad understands;
she has a husband to go back to, too.
It’s all about you now.
He talks so well, loves so deeply – he leaves you no way out.
And he teaches you things.
He knows so much, and you are so new to the world
you take it in; the more you learn,
the less you know.
And he’s a brilliant man. Deliciously profane.
He sees your intelligence and raises it.
And oh, he knows how to love!
Too much at times.
He can roll a joint with one hand.
He can smoke that joint, put his hair in a bandanna,
turn on all the lights and clean the house.
Then, he can sit at his desk and write a brilliant paper.
While the rest of the party is drooling on the couch
he lectures them on geopolitics, paces the living room,
straightening.
He sees who you are, wants to nurture your spark.
When you plead for some space, just an hour or two,
he begs you to stay. He’s a little, fatherless boy at heart.
He needs you. Only you.
When you take him to meet your parents, they are thrilled.
At last, your father tells your mom,
our daughter has met a real man.
He can reason you out of any hesitation.
He is destined for greatness.
He gives you no choice but to love him.
forthcoming in Russian Honeymoon
Worn Stones
I remember being in love.
I remember wanting nothing
more than you: here, here,
here, and here—everywhere
and always. I remember
how a kind of magnet
seemed to draw us close
to one another, how
we fell in together
like something that had to be:
my protons completed
by your neutrons.
That was the way it was.
The electrons are tired now,
the ions losing their charge.
Still we shuffle our way
toward the worn stone
of one another, drawn
like sun to horizon, every night
another splash into the sea.
from my book Moraine
Old Glory
I wish I were in love with you
again: blind to your blemishes,
joyful in your charms. I want
to live anew in the bright land
where fault does not dim
your vibrancy, see you once more
as a herald of strength and good,
lit up like the moon by the glow
of the world's admiration. Instead,
I remember you wielded
like a bludgeon; see you,
tattered hostage, made to fly
from car windows and pickup beds,
smothering in the arms
of a legion of false lovers.
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