My dog died a couple of weeks ago,
I guess.
She's sitting in a small box in my mom's room now
with a small statue of a mischievous fox
and a photo of her golden snout
on top.
I didn't go to see her the last
several times I was in town
which means I didn't see her at all
for months before she died.
Maybe that's why
I haven't cried until now;
I don't deserve the consolation of sorrow.

I call her my dog because I was
the youngster that necessitated a dog in 2000,
nothing more.  
But Mali was my dog.
I had to google map it to remember
where in Africa, but Mali was a good name:
A trite sound with an unusual source.
In the end it was too appropriate,
An arid name for a sandy dog
that died too weak to get water
and too alone to have it brought to her.
For days.

When we brought her home all drugged and tiny,
with Dumbo ears and lion paws,
I wouldn't leave her side for days,
eating and sleeping next to her on the floor,
until I started feeling down.
My mom told me it was like postpartum.
How stark a contrast between her coming
and her going!
She still looked like a puppy to me
the last time I saw her,
though she moved more slowly.

Whenever I see home again, months from now,
We'll take her ashes to the creek
and avail them of the wind
and the water she loved.
My dog and my Park,
both long neglected,
relegated to that past that
you can cry for but never reinvest in.

Passing Tweetsie on my way home from work.

In the Food Lion, low-calorie chicken soup
cans under tinny lights.
Sick-green avocados and riding-hood bacon
celebrated the day all your shoes moved in.
Can't we pair those together again?

The blank space on the floor
like a good friend's face seen
without glasses,
washed out.
Frustratingly,
the smell of my own laundry.
mi colada es su colada
Ha!

By the pond, the gazebo we never spent time in
but might have.
The dusk-dark evergreens with delicate lace tips
like spidery lingerie
leggings ripped wide open,
lingering,
recovered from the trash can.

Rainbow polka-dot gift wrap
on my light-blue chest,
flagship of her left-behinds;
A tawny feather earring, the lonely fore-mast
lacking a mate

and

Demure winter-cabin-smile, framed:
green scarf turned seaweed,
the face-down figurehead drowns.

Lean out and contemplate the Empire State.
After all, there's nothing else left to you.
The spider-web paths of the city
Branch out too often to form the whole
picture in your head more than a few
stems out.

Where do your lost hours go?
Is there a heaven for the good ones?
The ones you spend reading Harry Potter
in Spanish?
As if it's really so much better than reading
trash like 1Q84 or Plato's Republic
for 1200 page-intervals of excess language or
A bunch of questionable assertions
backing up logical conclusions on the most essential questions,
Respectively.

When I sit with the bright light in my eyes,
it triggers the breakdown of melatonin molecules in
my blood,
Among other things.
Will this restore my Brooklyn Majesty
in swells of lightwave tides
Or will it lack the broad spectrum necessary
to push my half-developed form out of the tidal pool
to make a swim amongst
frail men in shark suits?

from this morning

We're at a party, sitting crowded
at the edge of someone's bed
watching a TV.
We sit as usual: arms casually, warmly brushing,
until the first thing ends.
You flip for something else until
you find a *Seinfeld
featuring Bugs Bunny and company.
Live action Jewish hair mixes with
cartoon-flat bunny fluff tails
like a blue-toned cousin of
Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
You stop the search, sensing
correctly that this is also my choice.
We stand and you press close
behind me, peering over my shoulder.
I should be surprised but am only elated.
You breathe purposely
on the back of my neck.
It's the goose-bump breath of a heater
on bare wet skin after a winter bath.
Like a well-timed puff on a
nest of reedy tinder,
the freshly struck fleeting flint
grows at the center.
The expedition is saved for one more night!
A sparkler sends
the hottest shower down,
Warm glowing Goldschläger flakes
cascade in whorls,
the turbulence encountering no resistance
save for the tightness of my capillaries
burning pleasantly at skin's end.
I look around at our friends and
recognize distantly that this is becoming
too obvious.
You hook your arm around my waist
and Gabriel gives us an affably
shocked smile that seems to
ask a question.
But the admonition comes through a
wall of drowsy fascination,
too muffled to take effect.
I feel myself smile bashfully
as if to say *Hey, whadamituhdo?

The cradle of men
Was a ladle of sin.

Why?

Bury your head in the fallow field.

I will come later, when the leaves have fallen
to cover you whole in a fertile cloak of yellow-orange.
I will find you, sniffing like a dog
for your sweet scent in the mustiness.  

I will **** you gently until you stir,
alert and ready.  
I will speak in tongues of what I do not know;
suggest things I cannot give.  

We will walk,
your world reduced to a searing red of capillaries
Under the low Southern sun.  
With blind faith you will know
that my eyes are also closed.  
I will absorb the nectar of the sight of you,
falling on me like dew.  

I will lead, though you walk ahead,
into the field of poppies.

2.
I'm sleeping in a house, not my house
or any of your houses.
But it's my house, in the South.
Maybe it's my queer uncle's estate, Fagoli.
Narrow french doors open onto a snowy balcony.
Moonlight or streetlight filters through and falls,  
making diving boards of the white carpet.
I wake to a sound, probably in Brooklyn.
There is a shadow at the doors,
someone rattling the handle.
The innate, illogical guilt of sleep
snaps me out of bed to the door,
having left someone waiting
in selfish slumber.
Hand rests on **** and I lock eyes with a killer.
I'm a ripping-tight knot
of adrenaline'd blood and organs.
His head is down, facing the lock as he picks it,
but he raises one eyebrow and looks into my eyes.  
His mouth is a tight line, turned up at the corner.
My hand slips from the ****,
I back up a step and freeze in panic.
If I turn to run,
he will open the door in that instant.
I face him as the door rattles
more precariously.
I think of my dad, the black wooden billy-club
hanging by a leather cord from his big headboard.
Over and over I try to call him
but my voice is as frozen as the balcony.