Late night.
The Babylon line out past Long Island City.
“Lena, I think I’m ready for God to die.”


We cut through a smokestack’s milky gash
in the bright expanse.
A little moon like a smudge
wolfed up by a hungry city--
it’s taken the sun through its teeth,
housed the homeless pieces.

All night I dream of men
with peeled potatoes for heads.
Worse than dreams are rumors
and newspapers.

But my mother houses saffron
in a cut-glass box.
One thread yellows the pot.
Our bellies are heavy.
In this light your mouth is like Brodsky’s mouth,
violent, rapt with praise
and small singing.

You say dobrie vecher.
Me, I’m frying livers in pork fat
plump pills, they smell hot,
scattered with translucent onion.

But you’ve been married for ages.
You brought gin under your arm.
A book that snows dust down your coat.

You kept your father’s trophies,
remember dreams you had
when you were eleven—ice, a steep hill,
lights—I make you kasha.
You pinch it with your fingers
and hold it on your tongue like caviar.
Dobrie vecher,
the snow settles between stems,
under the roots like hollow bones, set and white.

All we did for years was listen to the Sex Pistols
And drink Bombay gin while our parents were sleeping.
I spoke Russian, you spoke Ukrainian--
We were so close, as if we lived in the same family
but not the same body.
We liked to pretend alcohol ran in our veins
Instead of blood,
A clear soup, held in a great still
until the moment of birth.
We were restless.
But when we holed up between the redwoods
we didn’t have anywhere we wanted to go.
We thought a sloth two stories high might lumber past us –
“Friend,” we would say,
“we have seen your bones in a museum.”
“That’s all anyone could hope for,”
he would reply, through his mossy snout—
he never came.
But your belly was tight as a drum
packed in with cardamom
and your skin white as skimmed curd.
At your lips always a ready word.

101

The fish drain down the channels of the sea
like silver clots in innumerable veins,
down to the dark wells and cataracts
that open endlessly, like mourning mouths,
slight bellies doused
for a moment with sun, then gone,

as a bird-flock cleaves in two at sight of a hawk
and rejoins, a black mass like a grain-sack,
ripening under the hissing husks of wings.
Swift patterns that collect and die
seething with light.

Beside the cormorants drying
their wings at the riverbed
dusk carries me in like a paper fan.

CENTENARY

I have written one hundred poems
to Damocles, my brother,
to spikenard doused in dew.
To lintels, bones, and trophies.
The wind that slouches through.

I will write one hundred more.
I will hang them in the cellar.
I will pack them in with camphor.

I'll add another hundred
like the kisses of Catullus.
Deck the figures on the mantle.
I will gird their necks and ankles
like my heart, girded by Lowell
and Guillaume Apollinaire.
As dew sloughs off my garden
into the earth and air.

new hope avenue.

All the time we lived on New Hope Avenue
we watched winged shadows
through tinted windows.
The gourds we hung caved in
and showed their pale teeth.
Ripe as grenades, the spiked chestnuts - low.
The sage held on under mounds of snow.
You told me your dreams but I forgot them.
You handled me like an old gun.
It was right to—I spat fire,
grease. And you a yellow oilcloth
draped on the divan,
paper-thin man,
a hollow glass.
I wanted to drink you and break you
and swallow the shards.

All August my father held a flashlight in his mouth
like a bobbin or pearl, and gathered crabs with his hands,
the dark, mealy beach, frigid sand,
the serge waves lapping in the strait.
Father, with my hands I only write poems.
Out in the night the buds furl in
and the wind pitches fits against the roof.
The moon, a child with catarrh, wanes
plaintive and white.
I strip spruce canes
down to their split green hearts.
The black boxer pods furl
like so many skeins of film,
I want to remember everything I can.

notes from the jewish autonomous oblast

On the roof of our house
a shingle breaks like an old tooth.
I light up on the porch.
Wind knocks at the balustrade.
In the summer my father grows creepers here
the sun's bright hair.
This time last year
he buried an ear
of corn whole under ice.
My sister gets drunk
and carols to our snowman's homely ears.
When she slips
she puts a bruised hand to her hip
and her mouth lolls in a pink O of surprise.
I dipped my russet ears in the bath
to dim the shouts.
Dusk crouches like a beast
with our house in its mouth.

something a little different. thanks leelee!

The Tower of Babel rises
like a gold almond cake.
A little sun turns the mortar
to a confit of roses.
Jackdaws trill
beside sweat-slick backs.

The thirstiest tongue of lightning
turns the whole beach to glass.
Like a rain of yellow raisins
bricks scatter in dust.

Above this the head of cloud parts a little way.
The sun, pushed to its seam,
fills the air, a hot phial,
and the sea birds rise.

I go back.
A rusty sun pierces the bus
and it lunges on.
I go back.
Our drive veined with ice
between salt-gutted bricks.
The lamppost a cup of darkness.
Wind playing a rag on the holly
its berries heaped with snow.
We leaf through photos.
I was a kid once
wall-eyed, wild. Then I grew and went.
I lift a bruised gas-ripened peach
up to my teeth,
I go back.

what? last shitty examscused poem.

All the young gentlemen played lyres.
All the young ladies started fires.
The sun stamped on in red boots.
The privets trembled in helmets of ice.
The cobbles rattled loose.
The poplars croaked.
Everybody drank beech rotgut
while the fires licked at letters
on gauzy reels of parchment.
They danced until the day
lopped itself off at the kneecaps
and the night burned clear and dry.

did i mention, onslaught of winter imagery?

I'm trying to have these poems reflect the reality of my days more.
Incidentally, 7 more til 100, 2 more days til I am HOME FOR BREAK WOOT



Dec. 19, 2009

The river white as glazed fat
or frosted glass. The last runners
hot-footing it up the bank.
News of a storm pulled up the east
on a gurney of wind, snarling
planes, sinking its teeth
into the hapless grilles.
The air here clean, slumped grass
hung with frost. You say, “Poor birds,
they're outside all the time!” And point
to the poufed tweed and red tie
of the robin sidling down a crabbed bough.
Shrunk berries draped
over a stone urn. The sky blushes dark
towards a night of rank weather.
Through a window
myrtle canes in a glass vase,
hot light poured
over a woman's palms.

a story of december 18th.

the brighter the lights winked
the slower my heart beat.
even the bricks seemed to shrink
like cold teeth. i ducked into 'india
palace' and sucked handfuls of candied anise
in the foyer of the all-day buffet.
once i boiled tamarinds
into a garnet jelly.
put a dried citron to my mouth,
touching its budded husk.
now i smoke
skullcap and licorice root,
restless for nicotine.
at night you play a jaw harp
you picked up on a whim,
and i wear stripes with stripes.
you cradle my skull with your palm all night.
i kiss your heels
under the flyspecked sheets.

change of pace?

All night I dreamt
I fished the inlets of Corfu. Heart in my throat
I slit a gasping bass, threw
its shorn fins back. Drank ouzo neat
and trilled tis tavlas through my hair.
What a thing! To drink with mes
semblables, hollow a roast potato,
lever a spoonful of caviar into the white gut
and hold it, salty, mealy, on my tongue,
and the clear spirit, burning. I recalled
even in my dream how you rent the cod’s breast
with your tongue, perspired,
kicked out your heels, sang
under the baritone of taxis.
You never lifted your voice, even
to question me, even whetted
with arak rayan
in the bowels of the Spianada.
I wanted to drink with you until an aureole of light
slunk round the city, icy and new,
to half-carry you,
put almond cakes
to your open lips,
while the sun wheeled,
a slim, tender disc,
over the old fortress.

hmm

So I hit poem 90 on this blog... I am having a bit of a crisis of purpose. This is sort of independent of the generally low quality of work I've been producing throughout reading/finals period. Part of it is being rejected by publications both on and off campus, I'll admit. I mean, part of the problem is that poetry is in a lot of ways subjective. I think really good poetry is easy to distinguish and really bad (and even pretty bad or just bad) poetry is easy to distinguish but sometimes it's hard to tell what's mediocre or borderline bad and what's better and what's genuinely good. And what I'm trying to say is being a poet is something intricately bound with having an audience (it's, you know, the bardic art still, even if modern poetry has departed from that in a lot of ways) and so what people think of this stuff matters to me, even if ultimately (given that it's work that's not likely to be published) I am the only one to whom this stuff is really salient. And, you know, I've heard a lot of really harsh judgment of poetic work lately that I thought was pretty good, and it's just made me question a lot of the fundamental assumptions I bring to the table. Picking such an audaciously performative medium to promulgate my daily poetry, a lot of which I will freely admit is not, you know, up to par, means that I feel particularly vulnerable to criticism... which I definitely want, but, like every poet, harbor mixed feelings about... what I'm basically saying is, I'm pretty afraid that this blog is adding up to fundamental suckage &/or worthlessness as a poet, which is something I would very much like to avoid. But at any rate. This is a long introduction to a poem that... does not break the trend of mediocrity, shall we say. Guys, I swear there will be a streak of better stuff -- I have big hopes for J Term.




Sallow kid weeps under a plastic shade.
A man's arm skews in sleep
braced on the pole where the men who dance
on the trains flip with their caps out.
On the platform, frigid wind
scabs my knees. They step out too
still blaring MJ. I huff gusts
of air rough with coming snow.
My mother told me I was too weary
even to weep when I left her thighs--
my sharp-chinned sisters wailed.
The sick odors of the city, lights
dulled by cold,
by heavy waters. Wind
pelting its briars at me.
They moonwalk to keep warm
to dulcet MJ, hats
at their feet,
so the lights of the oncoming train
can drench the brims.

We smoked catnip in wax paper
put our lighters to the birches
said we'd scorch them into paddles
and we'd glide on down the river
so Orion panting swaying
shoots his arrow to the bottom
of the boat where we'll be playing
dirges ballads til the morning
flushed alarmed wavedappled fevered
sometimes singing sometimes baying

The June I was eight I sat under a kumquat tree. Unsettled evening swept a big, unfamiliar sky. I was far from home, white house, perpetually extinguished lamppost, frost-gutted bricks, windows specked with soot. Here the little vans seemed to cave in under the force of the night heat. And during the day, molten plastic seats fierce against my browning calves. This far from home, I felt my wrist often, watched the little blue bead of vein, and my sisters' lips as they bickered and sang. A black bird whooped and sank its beak into a kumquat. Out in the blue salt night paws speeded up, stilled.

oy

The new rain thinned the ice last night.
When I prod the gemmed pool with my boot
down under the black water
I see Pyramus and Thisbe,
white swimmers specked with blood.
Thisbe opens her mouth
into the flood,
and the ice-sheets close.
Somewhere in me
a mendicant soul stirs,
braying for its keep.
The ice rasps as it moves
under hushed stands of pines.

i will revise this in the morning

I see all the women
covering their shorn heads
with wigs or hats. Kerchiefs,
wimples. I want to hold my lips
against the seam of the scalp,
shaven, re-shaven
for the long-fingered God, lifter of cloths.

weak with exams

This morning I saw a funeral procession pass
flanked by cop cars blue
with lights and sirens I was late to class
hot with impatience while the little flags
whipped on the hearses

The rain froze to flat sheets
last night, now the clouds are thin;
the earth clenches itself tight
thin grass in tongues of ice.

all day my breath smoked out my nostrils
as if I were a bull in a dream.
I strike match after match on frozen moss hard as horn
on a flint street fringed with rigid ash.

please please just bear with me through reading period

they'll get better, i promise!!!

-
Winter’s giving out its poor largesse
and I write poems everywhere,
sluggishly, gumming up tissues with humors,
skin raw as new iron.
All the little claw-trees gesture
hung with fitful lights,
and all night I sit in a drafty room
watching the girls pass on the salted street.

"i have never and will never wear loafers."

I am writing a poem for you
and your new-shorn hair,
that mass of fur on the barber’s chair,
And you, sullen, in your plastic cape,
the sun outside
capping your red ears,

letterman jacket
sour with dust,
a hunch, a frayed cuff,
errant arms big with lust,

eyes winsome, neck ruffed
perpetually with three days of scruff.
Sloven in your sweet daze,
I want to see you again
through glens of quilt-down, heart-
wrenching knees, white
slice of gut--
I could beg
for big diadem you with a parched throat
until the white houses folded
their shingles down, opened
their lips, and sang.

i really hate writing papers.

Today I saw the sky dim slow
through the dense florets of snow
in the library window

Shilling for mouthfuls of facile ideas
hour after hour "up against it"
flat teeth
in a paper maw

Give me your burnished red hand
hirsute knuckle pale wrist
knock thrice on the blondwood table
to lead - me - out!

Trembling, sullen
before the goad,
I drag my feet
in stitched skin
over stone,

drenched and animal
through new ice
kindling light
under the trees,

all gunny-sack
thighs, tongue ransomed,
hiding from that slick
half-slitted disc
in cloud,

bleating for you,
hot guts, shorn
fur,
reeking of warm
ordure.

poem. after four hours of studying midrash rabbah for a divinity school seminar.

i'm a belzer granddaughter:
before the war
i would have been a princess
with a gutful of bloody snow
and now my ears and teeth are caught on the jug handles of letters
in dense choirs in dark homilies in you little book
I am a shade speaking
with heavy breasts weak ankles like the women in pinafores
in the photos who brewed up feeselahs and burned by the ton
little book I kiss you when I close you
minefield of axioms and abbreviations
forbidden to me and bidden to me by blood
yours great-uncle meshulum of yeshivat volozhin
and yours little rina who got three cries out and died
under hundreds of thin trees that pricked the moon over galicia
and now the little book hungers for me to stroke its dowdy spine
homely bound like me restless against my palms

You picked up half-price cuff links
spread your stained shirt with baking soda
there we were the provincials
greeting the seasons in darned shirtwaists
our hearts thrilling
with secondhand sorrows
from novels with covers
like wax dolls in embers

we puzzled over a cummerbund
“this clasp is like
the clasp around the Torah”
I was afraid
I wanted to grasp your ankle
and pull it close damp thing full of pulse
the snow just above the street
restless in a horn of light

six line poem. which i cut down! and deliberated over!

like a mother holding
her obese son

so am i
in my two hipped body

under a white sky severed
by murmuring turbines

what

i've been writing a 24-hour play for 6 hours. don't judge me.

-

hey
the moon rabbit is on his way
he is jumping through the orbits
let him kick over our stewpots
let him rummage through our bedrooms
let him eat all the things that sprout
that we could not live without
when he raises his head high
he blots out the western sky
let the big big rabbit come out*
let him come



*this line stolen from the mountain goats song iztcuintli totli days

the lawn spreads a humus
dark and peaty under my feet
i've been writing and writing with my little belly pressed against the table
poems and again poems into the same air
that pushes my limbs close against themselves
writing and writing into this body
crushing my own bones with its heavy stuff
ah if i could sing my way out of it
i could make a chapel out of this gorged earth

blatantmountaingoatsimitation

i packed up my valise
you packed up your bag
you had ten white T-shirts and a black do-rag
we were going to huntington where the snow settles down like ermine
what the future holds for us we are too young and too hungry to determine

you put on your smile like a sable cape
i couldn't help but wonder if i was making a mistake
a little snow starting the sky sealed like a drum
I kick into gear hear the engine hum
when we are inscribed in the book of fate
i hope they glue a photo to the page

i had to wrestle with this one

is anyone still reading this? *crickets*... ... ...

-
I had a dream the lyrebird did a little singing
and retired from my four-foot room. Ten paces square.
I had a dream the blue wolves grasped my hair
in their teeth, and screamed,
and scorched the earth. For what it's worth
I haven't smoked in days, or called you.
I've been eating apples to the core,
swallowing the pips, a little cyanide.
In the pan I disrupt yolks
with my little fork. When I looked last
the sky slumped white at my window,
now it's lustrous, blood-red.
When I take to my bed
I listen to songs by a man
whose lung collapsed last year.
I want to die in a big pile of blow
or smoke until my nostrils sing like chimneys.
It wasn't supposed to get this bad,
the white sheets pressed with yolk-crumbs,
the windows lined with terrible dusts,
like the wounds of the big cement Jesus
fixed above the bargain-warehouse door.
I saw a man there singing to his blistered hand,
white petals of skin glazed with ooze.
The cloudbank hangs like a dark whole bread
scattering the crusts of a few black dreams.