no beggar

I feel our bond is breaking 

Like a trampled flower

Before it even blooms

The truth is

We were a bastard seed

The truth is

You were born to poverty

Twice over

And I 

I know the wealth I hold

Under these pauper's clothes

I thought I would gently undress

Lest my riches blind you

Lest you feel unworthy

Because no one is worthy

But you are a strange sort of thief

Who would not steal my heart

Not when I gave it to you on a silver platter

Not when I wrapped it in gold

I suppose I'm to blame

For wearing a disguise 

But alas

I am no beggar 

therapy

If these tears could speak

What would they say

He asked

Before the torrent 

Continued

To rage

Before he uttered 

I give up

Before I realized

My tears never spoke to me

And I felt my own

Betrayal 

to the italian coffee vendors on the birth of their son

Today at the farmer's market
Rolled-out-of-bed as I was
Sunglass-clad despite the grey mist
I witnessed a sight better than church
Or more like it
The Greek man who sold cheese
Came to hug you
Like a brother's was his embrace
The lesbian mothers
Offered you their son's outgrown clothes
Exchanging motherly glows
My aunt brought heart-shaped cookies for the girls
Who huddled under the booth
Their makeshift cave
Passing Italian whispers between nibbles
Everyone missed you last week
And everyone knew why you were gone
I wish I could capture their joy in a bottle
And drink it on the day my soul runs dry

scratch

The skin on my face is burning
Like small red fires
Encamped in pleasant places
My lips
Still stinging
From your beard-pressed kisses
Some kind of lovely pain
You scratch into my being

prayer of disorientation

I've been bruised in Your holy places
Been wandering in Egypt
That desert
Where my prayers never return from captivity

Or am I so blind, deaf and lame
That I cannot hear Your
Still
Small
Voice

So come to me in the burning bush

legacy

I come from a line of dead women
Who did not reproduce
Except in name
And my lot
Will be the same

migration

Last week I swallowed a flock of butterflies
And at the sound of your voice
They shift and turn around in my body
North
And south
They fly
Drinking all the air in my lungs
They won't grow tired
Until they have left me breathless

my world will not revolve around you

That will be the way our friendship goes
When you shift the cosmos
All of those perfectly ordered stars
Each moon in mirrored brilliance
To orbit
All
Around
You

train station revelations

Then one day
Finding myself beside a row of empty chairs
In a nearly empty station

I thought

There is a worse thing
Than being alone and feeling alone

I was thinking
Of feeling alone but being with you

subway

I fell in love with your face
Millions
A million times
Never to see you again

thank God

"I would never let my daughter do that"
Said a woman who
Thank God
Was not my mother

free advice

Not everything that is free
Is worth the price
Your opinions
Fly at my heart
Like daggers in the dark
And leave me fragmented
Like a run-on sentence
Like a question
I never formed
Never asked

la fiamma

You kissed my hand
Like some outlandish lord
And spoke my name
Like a favorite song
My cheeks were aflame
Endearing
I know
But no water
Would put the fire out

a good problem

You are the reason
I cannot write a happy poem
All those words
Too small
Too lifeless
To contain the magnitude
Of my delight

welcome

Our world is a womb
If only we saw death
Like we see birth
The pain of the dark channel
Swallowed up
By the vast expansion
Of life

Welcome