Category: poetics

Yom Kippur

We sin against you when we sin against ourselves.
For the sins committed against you:

For believing in superficialities.
For moving so far away.
For garrulousness.
For forgetting to tip.
For committing to what I knew I might cancel.
For not leaving enough time for the love at home.
For not calling when he died.
For not calling.
For hating to vacuum (for not vacuuming).
For not correcting assumptions.
For misremembering summer birthdays.
For unrealistic expectations made up in dreams.
For hoping what I give out will be returned to me.
For relying on someone else to do it because they always do.
For losing track of the line between humor and cruelty.
For grabbing onto the less-than-perfect parts and tugging.
For interrupting.
For gossiping out of boredom, or worse, out of need.
For stealing food and books.
For painting the picture all rosy.
For too much truth-telling at once.
For liking you less with a new haircut.
For piling myself all over the house.
For needing more than one.
For scoffing.
For enjoying adoration.
For not wanting to share.
For being aware of amounts.
For misinterpreting, and liking my version better.
For believing even the smallest of my sentiments deserves to be heard.
For being more honest with strangers than with those closest to me.
For not expressing my gratitude to those who deserve it most.

For all of these sins: forgive me, pardon me, grant me forgiveness.

Notes From A Pioneer On A Speck In Space

Few things that grow here poison us.
Most of the animals are small.
Those big enough to kill us do it in a way
Easy to understand, easy to defend against.
The air, here, is just what the blood needs.
We don’t use helmets or special suits.

The Star, here, doesn’t burn you if you
Stay outside as much as you should.
The worst of our winters is bearable.
Water, both salt and sweet, is everywhere.
The things that live in it are easily gathered.
Mostly, you can eat them raw with safety and pleasure.

Yesterday my wife and I brought back
Shells, driftwood, stones, and other curiosities
Found on the beach of the immense
Fresh-water sea we live by.
She was all excited by a slender white stone which:
“Exactly fits the hand!”

I couldn’t share her wonder:
Here, almost everything does.

Sonnet’s Antonym

Some days I might as well drive alone; you’d
frighten at a crash, but nothing less. Or:
everything less. On days like these I could
ride toothless, slugged, hoodwild, skin leaking from
burst buttons; I could moan in Russian, wrench
a gull through the windshield, eat my right wrist
with hot sauce. And you would signal right, check
mirrors, obey signage. We arrive at
the cliffs where spray meets your sideburns like a
sentence. Me: Look at that stone; how’s your toe
-nail; remember pogs? Hand on your back to
leave behind some cells, though your shirtheat spurns
me like you with a towel, seaside: Why
does the sand always have to land on mine?

42

I am in love, hence free to live
by heart, to ad-lib as I caress.
A soul is light when full,
heavy when vacuous.
My soul is light. She is not afraid
to dance the agony alone,
for I was born wearing your shirt,
will come from the dead with that shirt on.

Thinking of you,
watering the dirt
where your venus flytrap once grew.

Thinking of you,
pushing aside the heat
hair builds upon your forehead.

Thinking of you,
kneesocked
and saying your goodbyes.

Thinking of you,
with the little mug
refilled.

Thinking of you,
planting eyeglasses
at the riverbank.

Thinking of you,
on a bicycle
amid all those impractical shoes.

Thinking of you,
snipping the dreadlock
from the back of your head.

Thinking of you,
scooping the last curls of tea
from the tin.

Thinking of you,
moving straight-backed
down your street.

Thinking of you,
finally dismissing
the parentheses—

3. Teeth

Out of my desire to be

related to my sleek young dog, I ate

her puppy teeth, all of them I could find, white and

crisp, each one rolled in a

pad of bread. I was not, consequently,

related to her. But I say this:

in any life some failures are nevertheless

achievements, and this one, in mine, is by no means

the least. God help us if

we make this world only out of bone, and not the greater weight

of admiration, whimsy,

somehow i cant figure itout fierce and unspeakable love.

Supper

Tuesday. An idle rain so sparse
and distracted it might be brushing its hair
by a window which nobody passes.
So much of life is spent in a vague
readiness that when we catch ourselves at it
we’re a little ashamed, and pretend
to have been thoughtful. Good thing the soup’s
been on all afternoon—the beans releasing
their starchy fetor, and the onions, limp
and nearly translucent now that the rain
has stopped and the first scents of dusk
are following soup’s good news upstairs.

The poems wrote their grandmother a letter, but their stamp was out of date by a penny.
The poems let the strawberry preserves get moldy and were scolded (it was home made!).
The poems antagonized each other because they loved each other fitfully and had to keep their hearts on the defensive.
The poems performed songs in wire but they remain unrecorded.
The poems looked so much like Denzel Washington they got kidnapped for ransom (3 million).
They poems became raw food vegans; the poems lost all their friends.
The poems pushed the cobbler’s price so low that after they left he considered early retirement. (But the poems’ moccasins have thick soles again.)
The poems filled out a March Madness bracket too early and got booed off the stage.
The poems mined their lungs for hymns.
The poems read “Into the Wild” while on summer vacation and now they’re out there…somewhere.
The poems could not decide who they liked more: Andre 3000 or Big Boi. The poems don’t know how they will ever decide.
The poems got lost in a canyon tunnel. Did the rats eat the poems?
The poems asked Eoin Cahill if you have to be tortured in order to be an artist, and he said, “If you’re not suffering, you’re not paying attention.” The poems were sitting shotgun. And nodding.
The poems expelled air from their orifices and were called Quite Crude.
The poems shaved off their eyebrows and broke a friend’s bed.
The poems enjoyed themselves by sharing a Dark Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in the car while listening to Ray Charles.
The poems made verbs out of infrequently-used nouns.
The poems missed dead people so much they found it difficult to talk to the living.
The poems succumbed to the constancy of Facebook and updated their status.
The poems wanted to get kissed like lovers but got slapped like thieves.
The poems imagined a ship where all their trinkets would be stored tightly and well, and she arrived in their harbor.
The poems reenacted the last scene of “Grapes of Wrath,” and some ladies were scandalized.
The poems partook in crawdads, but against their will.
The poems pursed their lips and therefore missed their mothers.
The poems wore their helmets.
The poems slipped everyone a love note when leaving, but no one ever wrote back.
The poems broke it off because she wasn’t Jewish.
The poems grew like figs on trees, but were ripe too quickly, and all at once.
The poems surmised that air conditioners were a major cause of the current lack of friendly sociability.
The poems picketed against their estrangement.

The poems picketed but they forgot their signs and the poems couldn’t find any paint to make new ones and it started to rain and no one was listening anyway and all the crows gathered around the poems like the Sharks or Jets from “West Side Story” and the poems threw up their arms and showed their unshavenness and missed the stopsign graffiti of their hometown and the minor loves they never nodded to and the smell of running through a sprinkler and the poems went home to put their heads on their pillows and did not wake until it was dark, until around the hour when everyone they loved had decided they would lay their heads down, too.

Charoset

 

You start with two granny smiths, or, you know, another hard, tart, apple-type. I do all the Making and your grandpa does the Chopping. So two granny smiths, walnuts, raisins, or this-year-I’m-using-cranberries. After it’s all chopped you add the honey—I have some cinnamon honey this year—and some cinnamon sugar if you have it and then you add a little sweet kosher wine. I always have a bottle of sweet kosher wine around so you just add that in. Then you mix it all together, all chopped, and you should put it away for a little while if you have time, because, you know sweetie, it gets better sitting with itself like that.