I.
In the beginning
God was,
And the blackbird
Was not.

II.
And Adam called it a blackbird;
And that was the name thereof.

13 Ways to Cringe

1.

We met under a glittering ball

at the drop of the song

I told him not to fall in love with me



2.

We were swallowed by the city

and when he craved me and wings and beer

I had to marry things like ketchup



3.

We tried again in Chinatown

the club with the ***** girl at the bar

who tried to dance her way into his lap



4.

Eventually I spent a night

but that stupid 9-5

it’s like we didnt even talk



5.

He wanted wings again

I snuck him beers

He was always a good tipper



6.

I remembered his address

a door so nondescript

I wound up forgetting again



7.

We talked on the fire escape

watching people is cool

because you get to skip yourself



8.

Matching robes one morning

we had to play divorce

while his roommate intruded



9.

There were four of us at night

two got married

two got lost



10.

When we dance in a group

half the time we spend losing it

half the time we spend finding it



11.

I try to sleep on his sailboat

but I gotta ***

and my beds down the street



12.

We play BINGO with his nieces

to want the babies to win

is an inky dabber to six cards



13.

His dad calls me his

His mom shows me new shoes

He is petting his dogs

how time flies
in the blink of an eye
you were gone.
my firefly.

Wallace Stevens
Wazzup?
With the widows and the maidens?
The name
dropping
the distancing vocabulary that
we scurry to look up
look up
train our eyes
train.
If I came into your office, in downtown
Hartford a city
I knew framed - as my father grew up in
Wethersfield always said
be careful –
downtown Hartford is
not a good place to be alone.
So I saunter, prink, and
perambulate
plonk myself
past your receptionist.
A widow?
And she’d holler:
-Mr. Wallace I asked her to stop!
And your desk which you requested almost 15 years ago
already looks out of date in too heavy oak is
caught between us, a horizontal surface filled
with paper.
There will be one sentence.
And one exclamatory remark.
-Wallace, you’re only human -  you put your pants on
one leg at a time.
-No!
he says, jumping up from his desk,
-Watch!
He undoes his belt, he drops his trousers
he steps out of them –
He steps out one leg at a time.
BUT
Wallace Stevens, god bless him,
arranges his pants carefully on the floor of the
Hartford Accident
and
Indemnity Company
just so.
And grinning,
hops into both puddled legs
at the same time.
Then bends over and hoists the waistband
the belt dangling
in triumph.
Lesson learned.
Learned, schooled like
St. Ursule with her radishes
Just another lady
Just another confabulist
Just another story.

Petty theft of pretty poetry so
taut like my buttocks when I was twenty
and did not appreciate the ripeness of my
flesh.
Or this – about an orange peel –
the white is bitter the spits of oil
not iridescent as oil might be
lazed
in a parking lot puddle.
Try for size the heavy fur of
winter cottages, blah except for
holiday wreaths and the silent exhalation of
smokes snaking from their
top.
Translate this grapefruit that is both
sour and sweet
and fulminates
loss.

I’ve never been so glad to come home at night to hear the television blasting

This time it wasn’t cheerful voices from the home shopping network belting out about a product

It was a live Cat Stevens concert and it made me shiver to listen to someone whose voice sounded so real.