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Andy 1 min read
poetry
Numb
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I can't decide anything these days: sonnet or free verse;
to read on the couch or spend my son's brief nap putting

away dishes as if dishes could ever stay clean; hope or
despair. Once, before our lives became a chore punctuated

by slivers of respite, before quarantine and insurrection
sprang from dusty textbook to the evening news, I asked

if my poems could make your heart sing, and you said yes,
but my heart has been numbed by time. Not long after,

I had an infected wisdom tooth pulled; refusing anesthesia
--in truth, I feared not waking--I was given laughing gas

and Novocain, and the doctor went to work with his drill.
I must have clenched my jaw, torn the muscle: back home,

after the medicine had worn off, pain shot from my ear to my
neck like a line of fire ants chewing through nerves, the worst

pain of my life, days of ice and opioids and crying for it to stop.
I think of that now, how badly I wanted not to hurt, how sweet

the relief, how no matter what we choose to numb it, agony waits
like a coiled snake in the heart's tall grasses, how our feet bleed

on the flaming sands as we run to the sea. My dear, I worry if you
do not hold me against the salt's incessant sting, we'll drown.

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poetry

Diary

Ages ago I kept a diary in a hand legible to
none but me. I read it on my knees as just-fallen

rain clings to pinecones like wet feathers,
the evening slips into its velvet gown,

and starlight pitter-patters on my head
like drops of gallium. I am thankful

the day is dying, for I have forgotten how
to live. Who wrote those words belongs

to an empire that collapsed under its
own grandiose weight, its high priest

· 1 min read
poetry

Enlightenment

I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself
flapping against the sky and recalling that I am sky. Once,
the book well-thumbed and creased and read twice over,
I felt an ant crawl the length of my arm like a nagging
sense that

· 1 min read
poetry

Foul Weather Friend

I am a foul weather friend, dear poetry.
I have paid you no mind when spring rains
wash clean the marble statues of gods
and a cheery sun
reads aloud your sweet inscriptions,
nor when awed children skip through museums,
nor accordion-song fills the subway,
nor a stranger does another stranger
a kindness,
nor blueberries are so ripe they bleed sugar,
nor velvet chocolate cake knocks you dizzy with love,
nor, after making love, my wife’s perfume
clings

· 1 min read