Poetry

Up ahead it’s white. Snow animal,
I’m running at your back. I’ve failed to tell you
I’ve been hungry all this time, to tell you 

Everywhere I look I see him,
I have a right to fear for him, 

though I have no right to claim his color.
His blackness is his to own and what will

my mouth say of that sweetness.

1. Dad, Don’t Be That Guy

2. Dad, Quoting the Wikipedia Isn’t Gospel

3. Dad, I’m Going to Take Those Away

4. Dad, I Warned You

Flagged to a halt by a woman in boots
and an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her

orange flag on the highway yesterday in
the first flurries of the season and watched

I’m docked at a lake that

the people don’t attend. 

Machete on my hip to 

make a devil cough up 

I was participating fully in Life,

or so my calendar said,

when I had the spiritually extravagant

gift of being heart-struck,

standing before a painting.

Give me memories as 

slow to leave as snails. 

In foreign    and perhaps 

fragile years    I’ll still be able 

It must be so hard to be Miles Davis

and a ghost, and to sit in my kitchen

as I squeal along on a dime-store horn

A paycheck. A nadir. Hired as accompaniment
for sequined swimmers in an amphitheater in Queens.
To keep the band working. A footnote.