The Entranceway

the potatoes roll in through the doorway in a line
roll not walk    not quite balanced
because they’re not symmetrical 
but they’ve found out they make fries here
and they can’t stand not missing the action

the line extends past sight
going back to what was once defined as a farm
it’s rush hour    they’re going
as fast as raw potatoes can wobble
the cook’s wrists ache in anticipation
the deep fryer bubbles like a fulfilled stomach
the music roils hotly    in their heads
they dream they can dance to it
and that wealth will come to them
when they’re cooked gold and toasty

from Some Coffeehouse Poems (2022)

Sorrow Post -Trump

maybe tomorrow
the four solar appearances we’ve missed
will appear in the same sky
in the same hour

maybe tears
will become rain again

the hours you spent hurt    crunched
can fold in time to memory
with only the pain    of a cut hand
in memory to remind you

the skin of a scar is light and silvery
a road to a new firmament
where the stars show silvery and bright
each star    itself    a sun

from Trump Tics (2020)

After the Election (2028)

after the plague had passed
halloween was over

the suits of disease walked empty
no survivors wanted to fill them

streets no longer grew mad cars
and the seeds of abandoned concrete began to sprout

    see that dog?
    he’s enjoying the excitement of a walk
    so full of scents of mystery

    who owned this car?
    why are all these people so happy?
    the seeds of concrete finally erupt as sculpture
    and it’s up to dogs to figure out
   which survivor planted which one

A version of this poem appeared in Trump Tics (2020)

Style

sometimes his style of communication
gets in the way

when he says he wants to kill you
you know
you have to interpret that yourself

from Trump Tics (2020)

Avoiding Being Overheard

the one waits at a table by the far wall
looking at nothing for at least ten minutes
finally the other one comes in
nods greeting    gets coffee    sits down
and they start talking in short sentences
in a language i think i’ve never heard
i ignore them then start to understand them
it’s english    all the words backwards

the sun is out it’s gonna be hot
all four women at the table next to mine
are young energetic and excited about something
that’s lively enough to be gone tomorrow
i can’t catch exactly what they’re talking about 
the dictator has been in power for three years
the two by the wall talk slowly and sparingly
even language can creep away

from Trump Tics (2020)

Plumbing's Revenge

i must have looked manic
searching    all over the castle
for the manuscript that held captive
the last words of count dracula

i knew they were mine to find
even in the dimness of night
because the ooze of centuries can’t take away
the phrases everyone needs to know

trump looked for his most meaningful phrases
all over the white house    mar a lago
the former environs of everyone he’d ruined
the throbbing ecstatic insides of his cellphone
the slimy grit of his intestinal mind
but he couldn’t find them at all
and decided they must have been abducted

but they still clung around
more real than the statement of a fictional vampire
bright day or dim night
in the pipes leading from his golden toilet
to the soft muddle of his dismal mind
and back again    flushed    over and over

from Trump Tics (2020)

The Dictator's Radio

the coffin that sleep contained
a car buzzes by like its eyes are closed

i remember the obvious
i hear something like a broadcast voice
i remember the dream last night
that told me to wake up
that predicted this morning in terrifying clarity

my eyes ache from the shrill light of dawn

    eyes drift down the sidewalk over
    paper cups of coffee    let’s hope
    that bloodshot eyes will remember themselves

    the dictator’s radio hangs from your ears

    each step cold    as if made in ice water
    your shoes coffins    your destination frozen

from Trump Tics (2020)

Donald's Pot Luck

donald trump
took a bag of poisoned potato chips
to the potluck

the bottoms of his shoes
sucked all the colors out of the carpet
making it as white
as a k k k hood

meanwhile his minions
added a layer of nazi-made bricks
to the walls of the house

now that i’m here he pronounced
this event is yuge
everybody is happy

but he was the only one there
because everyone else had fled
as the bricks leaned inward
and even the roof
he’d held up with hot air
started to collapse

from Trump Tics (2020)

Astronomer of Truth

it comes every day
the inexact night
when the stars cluster more approximately
than the constellations they taught you to see

other days you think you remember
as so much different from this one
and the dog down the street should have told you
but someone    maybe him
has been moving his bones around
to where that future won’t find them

your teachers should have told you
your apple should have told you
the flute that leads the dawn should have told you

the stars themselves should have told you
they’re all liars    and now you’re looking at them
wondering what they have to teach you next

from Trump Tics (2020)

Plea

almost toxic
the kind of stuff taxis roll by
my lawn is covered in make believe right now

statue leans meaningfully
on her hand as trucks roll past her

tires that have been everywhere
lend scent to a dog’s sense of meaning

    in the middle of all this there’s a dictator
    who is so evil and powerful that he cannot
    be taken as anything but literal
    he lives in a mansion three thousand miles from here
    but even his grin affects everything
        to deny this is to chance
        shortening your life
        and everyone else’s 
        by decades

from Trump Tics (2020)

Outside the Gas Station

last night i dreamt
that i was leaning up against a gas station wall
the stars spun themselves into a pattern
that formed the skeleton of piltdown man

i felt all of my energy    driven out of my veins
like blood seeking refuge in nothingness

the new sky stood almost fictional
like the moment between pulses 
when you feel the possibility of death

    bones    even bones that never existed
    even bones described as ancestral and sacred
    by the mouth of a petty dictator
    the stars seemed dried as dessicated wood
    i wonder if my very own bones still glisten
    if the world still pumps alive outside of sleep

from Trump Tics (2020)

His Welcoming Smile

when the fat dictator smiles
why do we all feel like skeletons
gathered around a desolate fire
that will gradually dry
the last of life from us?

from Trump Tics (2020)

Catullus Thinks of Donald Trump

"Spaniards/ use their morning urine/ for tooth wash." -- Catullus

it doesn’t bother me at all
that you clean your teeth
with piss as orange as your hair

    rome is a republic

clodia right now sits watching the street
waiting for me
by a window on the second floor of her husband’s mansion
she does not think of you

    rome is a republic

here    settled in my favorite seat
in an outdoor theater watching an awful play
about gods i barely believe in
i do not believe in you either
o one of puffy eyes and hair of rotted straw
that would shame a wild animal
or even a barbarian    the true order of things
i do believe in that   precludes you
who would turn crowds mindless enough to riot
before your games and after you came to power
who think that the world is made for yourself
while even my loves    all of them
do not think it is made for me

so here i am    watching some idiot on the theatre floor
instead of writing love poems to my clodia
she who may be the one who murders me
before i’m thirty    before the name caesar
is anything but a family name
before anyone with orange skin and hair
of a texture that almost defines disease
seeks by his presence to defame the name
of anyone from any old roman family

    rome is a republic

from Trump Tics (2020)

Within Sight

i wonder how to keep alive
in political fogs like this

try the bright eyes
within clouds

you need to remember
your own bright eyes

that they can live like fire in grief
for you to be able to see

from Trump Tics (2020)

The Election of Death

how could you even
pretend you had life on your mind
when you voted for this guy?

atmosphere that is deep and inscrutable 
humidity of your own anger
your own tears

from Trump Tics (2020)

Post-Election Fog 2024

windows blindfolded
waiting for the execution

even the sky is closed in fog

the music on the radio
is turned so low
that no notes can get through

there was an election
light lost
a ball of dead lead
sits unsighted
where there used to be sun

A version of this poem appeared in Trump Tics (2020)

Exchange

last night barry i saw you
walk past the glass walls of the diner
and in through the door as i talked with my boss
who excused himself as you and i 
recognized each other

you still looked twenty-three
after these thirty-seven years
yellow shirt     brown jacket
cowboy hat and the hair still almost yellow
and delicate where it was bound in a ponytail

you nodded     got a coffee
sat at the table where the boss had sat
you were still twenty-three
clear skin clean eyes robust self-assurance
i was sixty and imagined myself desiccated

i couldn’t imagine what to say to you
we used to talk for hours together
you sprawled and set your legs parallel to the table
played with your mustache and took another sip
been years     you said

here i was at the edge of old age and
what had i really accomplished since i was young?
here you were     still the age you were when we met
all future     all coolness     all good humor knowing that the gods
still held you as their darling

what could i say to you?     what could you say to me?
i finished my coffee and said i was due elsewhere
over due really     and you nodded and put your hat on the table
i said good to see you then walked out the door
you were still at the table     snow crunched under my feet







from Yew Nork (2014)

Epaulet

i caught sight and was on my way
the building looked familiar appearing on doors and guys
zones of affluence and poverty     say
my old neighborhood never looked so prosperous

restaurant at then     too
store across the valley looking small crowds in their twenties
it’s no longer the house of fire i remember
laundromat and a small motel asleep calling it lunch

	my consciousness is made up of storefronts
	i go to a different one every night     the haze
	seems static that way     i like to stay there
	i stay on the same block for the rest of my life
	buses go by about three blocks from here
	my passport crawls     up my sleeve to my shoulder

from Yew Nork (2014)

My Ripped Shirt

a herd of crabgrass
an elephant snake sneeze
a philosophy of parthenogenesis
from the collected giggle in your pocket
a collusion of laundromats
that the sneeze not be narrow
that its path be epic and tropical
that the word laugh be named specifically as law
and that your satchel be not named chicken soup
	no murinated mountebank minnesinger
	imaginary amphibian hitchhiker
	entanglements of the liberty of roadmaps
	open decanter of the dilemma of mixed certainties
	let me sneeze as cosmically as i want
log    fossil    cremation    blue star    octopus telegraph jibber jabber
conflagration of hot work bench sweat
sunset lawn chair of mouse and rat torsos
trepidation of false furs at the counter of dimestore truth
hilarious explosion of tea kettles at the last word of the gettysburg address
the crown princess’ ruffles at the furthest edge of her dynasty’s solar system
	these petroglyphs are written in english
	ants swimming in fossilized water
	you’ve been singing them since babyhood
	my ripped shirt is having an anxiety attack
flags wave wildest when wildflowered apes are waving them
into their armpits and declaring it everybody’s national holiday
as fireworks invent themselves out of sawdust
and castle towers spurt glory openmouthed
excitement and lust are mere curves on your roadmap
their voice beyond idiocy
their truth beyond believing

from Yew Nork (2014)

Armweary Traveler

the statue of liberty is much less impressive if people wear hats in front of you
those eyes that remember everything that happened
from the point of some choice that you made when you were twenty-two
you the platform     the laundry blesses you as it hangs across the torch
and there you stand wearing california around your neck like an amulet

it’s strange having california hanging from my neck now
and it’s so huge you can’t move     speaking those accents
emotional threads wide as a treadmill obscuring every other direction
then you’re big     you’re supposed to choose
then disappear

the statue of liberty is much more impressed if you see it before it sees you
then she looks     then you think you’re so small you’re invisible
so you carry coney island around in your pants pocket for your last day here
she’ll spend her life in thrall to that image
as you wave your torch in celebration and sink knee-deep in concrete

and the statue keeps staring     staring
and blessed are the subways     their clattered tempo slowing
to become your heartbeat
she’s been my friend most of the time since i’ve been back
whatever of that beauty goes into your walk is worthwhile
you’ve made your choice     now you can’t get out of the way
so please come back with me to my hotel room night doesn’t set here
it made that decision when it first got out of college
the city’s lights redefine night any time of the day
and any day still sits still just west across the water

from Yew Nork (2014)

Moos

le t’sst art
le aw ake with th
e cows in theb ranch
es the irs ong
	the hope that
	though they sing
	none of them 
	lands on your shoulder
theh opet hough that the ysing
the ru mor sin the moo sic
the mosaic chat terof it so perating sy
stem lou den ough tos
sing the moon
	the quiet     relieved ex
	halations of birds
such moos
to hear it
so lightly
	its vert
	i calm e ado ws

from Yew Nork (2014)

Fast as a New York Sonnet

down this horizonless sidewalk of coffee
the buildings are supported by the doors of coffeehouses
the sidewalk runs as fast as caffeine will carry it
each step each stride each dance step its very own

some day     some say
the free music will end and you’ll have to pay the piper
for all the shoe soles you’ve worn out on these walks
but you’ll only have to teach the piper a new tune

	noah’s ark landed in washington square park
	it landed there over and over again
	at least every five or ten years it landed
	but lots of times it rains and washes the old footprints away
	people forget about that even with coffee
	that’s why this place is so wonderful

from Yew Nork (2014)

Notes for Auto Bio

i take my pasts     each
examine them
each in a sepia of its own dust
through which i can see
only when i look away

    one was college     natural but sometimes it stressed
    once my father called me
    a communist drug addict
    and generations of hands came down
    in the flick of a half second’s time
    and decades later i found myself asking
    exactly whose political mechanics i’d betrayed
    and how many of his own ancestors
    my father was betraying

in another i slogged on through thirty years
of full-time work on the gravity of nothingness
my fingerprints are all over its surface
but the box seems completely hollow
all but the details grown over
by layers of mechanical dust
seen through the stone age of my imagination
as on the mechanical back of someone else’s android hand

and the lifetimes of memories of people i’ve loved
    of your lives entangled with mine
    so many of you freed now
    in the mechanics of what could be called fate
    but is only a weird form of temporal physics

and my rage that time’s just another machine
with my and everybody else’s living meat
throbbing like pain momentarily held within it

from Auto Bio (2010)

Listen

listen to me    
i’ll listen to you
i’ll try to listen to everyone
who isn’t me
if you will too

so know    then
that we are all different joints
on different fingers of the same hand
and that there’s another hand as well
that we have never heard of
so listen    listen
if you speak i will listen
so that both hands can speak
and listen    and move
as two hands together

Written in late 2023

Invitation (for Judy)

so walk with me along this     ocean’s edge
the island     springs and rocks along the beachfront
the cold wind houses noises      makes the long walk reminiscent
of other seasons     when flowers sprang with faces
of bedeviled carnivores at war      have you tasted the ice cream?
smoky clouds still numb away the horizon
quicksand and a sputtering ocean     knick-knacks lined across the harbor
to talk about dream is silly as steam evanescent in the warming weather

someone has been bouncing bare toes on the beach
someone has been making sea lion sounds at the hot dog stand
someone has been celebrating weather by reinventing it
a long leap for landmass and a lush dance of sand
a trill a thrill a leap of words and bodies
a reanimation of the whole soul hallelujah i love you so

from Auto Bio (2010)