I’ve heard that animals can run over the desert without damaging the ancient top layer of dirt, but humans only break it down. Our culture tilts us toward the loud: the rhyme of noise with poise misleads us and so we may trust the decibel over touch. I once touched a man’s face and it wasn’t loud and he didn’t shudder and I could have cried if not for knowing that someone might walk in at any moment. How do you tell that? Am I telling it now? But you weren’t my fingertips. And you don’t know his smell. I knew this man for many years and we told each other things inane and things momentous, and I touched his face one day during a season that told us nothing of where we were in the year. Are you listening? There was no telling. You’re not hearing me out loud, and yet you still may hear. I’m speaking to your brain: I touched his face. The dirt in which we sleep is dented. But it will hold.
A Visitor for Brunch Day 12 (Misha).
In Vermont he writes
Without you
I would be muck,
a listless slop;
in you I rise,
now crystallized
and in New York
it snows and snows.
Brunch Poem Day 11 (mine).
The chainsaw saunters in at seven
in the morning. The street has eyes;
it plugs the gutter holes with noise.
I turn to you and laugh because the day,
again, is ours to ridicule. We’re fools
when faced with many tasks: the timeliness
of haircuts, clothes that suit the function,
the godforsaken broken sink. We press
this weekday’s love of minutes to the wall
we’ve punctured with our stalwart predilection
for the east. In your hair I’ve found two dozen
reasons to remain and the kitchen, in its grace,
has yet to ask us when. The pan is hot.
We disobey the workmen’s noise.
Brunch Poem Day 10 (mine).
How can we gesture
toward the gifts
that cannot be nestled
beneath a pine?
Can we repackage
what was intended
for us in order
to save
someone else?
How can we proffer
what we’ve learned
so that others
will know to pull
at the ribbon?
Where is the adhesive
than can press
a flap of paper
to the crest
of a forehead?
At what time can we begin
to slide a fingernail
beneath the fold
of what we’re told
was meant for us?
Who is the arbiter
of who gets
to open what
first?
What is the shape
the scent
the nom de plume
of sheepish
thanks?
Into which tank
shall we be funneled
so that the liquids
of the year
mull correctly?
Is this really
not
a test?
Brunch Poem Day 9 (mine).
Oh bollocks thin
tight pants & suede
boots! I’m not prepared
for these parts & yet
we will ourselves
into a winter leisure
on the grass, the ground
not quite cold enough
to sprint from but also
not quite dry. It’s 9pm
when I voice my veto
for the glasses—it’s time
to swig and if not now
then when can you drink
straight from the bottle
with a friend who shares
your name? And so with drink
in tow & hats on ear
we fiddle down the His Side
of the street where pavement
squares aren’t as angled
by the roots. Hoo! the night
is colder than a witch’s
chest exposed to currents
and a swift eclipse & even if
the nightsky fails its task
to teach us of our smallness
& the exigence of whittled
mornings shared in bed,
we’ll have numbed the toes
of longing for this place
& named mistakes which now
in low degrees will be briskly fed
to desperate winter birds
like bread.
Brunch Poems Day 7 (mine).
In and out of sleep
like a polar bear content
never to paw ground
*
Check out the eclipse,
baby he says though the words
had to travel here
*
A neverending
font of dishes in the sink
Geography lies
*
Empty cinema
Grey fedora as a shield
I hide like a child
*
It rains on the house
we’ve deserted, black roof tiles
bellyup on grass
*
Car brimming with girls
Dancesong tuned on high
I still look sixteen
*
Walking up the street
grayed by products meant to melt
the ice that floors me
*
Bark balls, lemon squares,
crescent cookies, sugar ones
All of us like dough
*
Cell phone on the sill
clock set to San Diego
My heart, a commuter
Brunch Poem Day 6 (mine).
for Colin
He’s the historian he’s
got tallies stitched behind
the floorboards of every
lore he spins, nick names
& scoreboard shame
punches thrown
& homegames blown
up until the dirtiest
of mismatched details
quits its job in mall store
retail and hightails it
out his mouth like proof
of some uncouth and not
quite legal brand
of smalltown microscope.
But blue eyes, there is hope
for you the joke’s of course
on whom your brain
elects to memorize and you
my cornered friend are
slightly borrowed, slightly
prized and altogether
heedless of the tonnage
of your fulltime occupation
you’re just a new york boy
with piss poor circulation
Brunch Poem Day 5 (mine).
On one of the shortest days of the year,
fuel
a savory pastry (goat cheese & figs)
two porcelain mugs of coffee beside an old blue stove
and travel plans for March of twenty-twelve
found
not the scarf
not the one brown glove (god dammit)
the photographic nose for street level Manhattan
a doll-sized shopping bag on the partitioned wood of the subway station
forgiven
the six months in between (immediately)
8th Avenue for calling itself Hudson
the scrape of winter through hand-me-down stockings
formative
the sung August revival on a rooftop
the making of the song itself (on central grass, of course at night)
filibustered
no cabs on 14th and All I want
is one Yuletide Bullet is that so much to ask!
formalism
Edward Hopper painted Paris & some humans
though he was awkward with his French & missed America
and it not the patrons of the small café that had the grace
it was the trees
fortune
is like Formica
and we call it
passé
finally
In the middle of the night Sam awoke
to find us faced in to each other, almost
fetal, like two seahorses defending
their tiniest of spines & snouts from the current
of a larger fish’s tail: four hands clasped
together as if holding to the railing of a ship
whose lower decks are full and we
(above & not protected from the sea)
must bare the spit & throttle of the hours
until dawn. And in retaliation we spit ourselves
back at the black & grip until our knuckles
denounce blood though the swill of Sunday’s face
is fast to call us shameful, call us rash.
Brunch Poem Day 4 (mine).
for Kathryn
Stefano in weekday chinos
waits for the first of three trains
to Queens after a day in an field of work
deemed dying or dead & his partner’s at home
cooking better Italian than Stefano’s own Italian
mother & the train is late & there’s a rat a minute on the tracks
& tomorrow’s not even close to Friday & it’s bloody hot or freezing
in the blue-black tunnel of steel & epiglottal noise & poise appears unfeasible
& everyone around is pissed off or pissing indiscreetly.
And as for the pleasures of the flesh,
you’ll have to forgive me: they remain
unsullied in that midnight slab of brain, where you
and I restrain nothing but the urge to dance, and not even that.
Stefano performs his dance. He taps atop the subway’s thickset platform. And the noise
is like cutlery confessing to cement. And the train
arrives fast, opening all its silver doors
at once.
Brunch Poem Day 3 (mine).
Between two and three am we go
upside down: his feet flat
on the ground in a splay
of yogic yes as my mismatched
socks slide farther down my ankles,
heels for all to see. From between
my legs, I watch him rise
into a slow headstand, hands
at his ears, elbows two points
of a triangle. It looks like he’s swimming
and he looks straight ahead. The speed
at which he lowers down is like
the pace at which my grandfather,
eighty-six years old, eases himself
into the pool. Later, much later,
near nine am, I dream he gives me
unremarkable objects that hide
inside their seams three hundred gifts,
accompanied by a letter in his capitalized
scrawl. I awake without having read it,
though I trust it is inscribed in the air
between the headstand and the floor.
panache, perhaps 