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The Golden Boy
The golden boy is as blond as a bumblebee (which is to say not at all) and when he slips that black Irish smile he makes boys into astronauts and girls into candy hearts. The golden boy speaks Russian. He can make blue crystals grow in jam jars with his sister’s abandoned home chemistry set. ...
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Strawberry
A student in a sweater with rolled-up sleeves has class in a room with leather armchairs. On the first day he forgets himself, and falls for his professor. They read Neruda aloud together. The student writes himself into a love story: The professor appears in the cafe he works at, and flirts with him over ...
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Cassandra
You are something in nature pre-Raphaelite and strange. Your body is composed of two circles and a bird’s neck, your stomach skin pulled flat and soft as moss grown a hundred years still young. Your eyes are the particular foam-surf green of the satin you wore the day we rode the bus and went museum ...
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We Should Go Outside
The day is sweet like gulab jamun, so sweet it hurts in the cracks of my teeth, sweet where I nibble your edges on the edge of the bed dropping sheets on the floor, dropping sheets from the balcony railing, enormous rose petals flip flapping. We should go outside, sweet. We should eat gulab jamun ...
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He Is Like Direction
My boy has legs round as rubies, round as rubber balls, monkey toes, long, grasping, narrow, little frog fingers, skinny, the knuckles pressed together in strange places, the pads thick white, like silver coins. He makes me pulverized and strange. He stands with his belly bowed, he sticks out his stomach, He scuffs and turns ...
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This City
For your visit I sparkle like the Times Square sidewalks, like the chandeliers at Lincoln Center that light up for the opera. We come together like the crash of yellow taxicabs on Riverside in late October: earsplitting, sudden, silent. We eat from Rosa Mexicano on Columbus. The waiter grinds fresh guacamole with onions right at ...
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Little Brother
We share chai in the late white hours when the studio smell of nostril burning turpentine and sticky linseed almond wheat fades before the taste of night. You drop the brushes and your eyes are shadow-ringed in midnight blue. I have whispered in your ear ‘I love you’ when you crumple from exhaustion, painted cheek ...
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Walking A Diagonal Line
I remember walking a diagonal line across the back yard of the house I grew up in, waving to the house, which is painted brown with teal shutters, the roof thick with snow. I am wearing a red snowsuit. I am pulling something heavy behind me. Take this memory, the tale my mother told me, ...
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Nan Woke Up
Yesterday my Nan woke up. This time she knew who I was. On her bed we drank wine and berry margaritas. I held Mama while she cried. I’m moving. Nan is fading. Everyone is leaving. We laughed a last small while. Mama said maybe I shouldn’t unpack right away, I might have to come home ...