Decision

On John Lennon’s birthday,
a flood of tributes and grief. I keep
my it-could-have-been-worse relief
to myself. True, any homicide’s a tragedy, the loss
of a great talent even more so,
but it was Bowie who gave my odd
teenage self permission to exist,
hot starman I both lusted for
and yearned to be.
The killer got his list down to those two.

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A War Is Coming

I

. A scream on the border of consciousness. I feel the desire to vomit. You only talk about yourself, they say. I want to say something tender, but something else comes out (desire, vomit). They hang up on me. That’s the first time they’ve done something like that. The time between us grows unbearable. I wonder how you can go, in a month, from ineffable love to even more ineffable estrangement. You feel an instant and incandescent recognition, and then: a slow heatdeath of the heart. I go to the bathroom, look at myself in the mirror, hit myself in the face until the room starts to spin, dry heave into the toilet, reapply my eyeliner.

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Monsters, Bees, Desires

The boy fears monsters, things that creep at night.
Beds half-empty, the widows weep at night.

I walk with my mother through a moonlit
town only accessible in sleep. Night

holds its prisoners tight. So does guilt. Too
much vodka – our clothes in a heap that night.

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Linguistic

Sometimes I regret teaching you words,
my daughter laments when I use kin
and stan in a sentence
about Emily Dickinson. One perk
of having kids is stepping
into culture’s river at its current point,

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Poems from “The City Among Us”

There have been more poems in recent First batches, thanks chiefly to Alison Stone whose work and way in the world has brought other poets to us. That efflorescence, in turn, has made me think I should try harder to bring attention to the poetry of my late friend Robert Douglas Cushman. What follows are poems from his book, “The City Among Us.”

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Poem for July 3rd (& Larkin Poe’s Covers)

hearing larkin poe ‘wade’ before seeing
being with them before knowing them
we was blind as willie johnson
………….(a hundred years ago)
………….(in the arms of Our Mother)

hearing what Studs T wanted me to hear
“ALL her uncles is musicians”
so how could we be [“culturally deprived”]
in the cotton patchshe won’t even say the words

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Again

The Ten Dead Adults In The Supermarket
Are Pushed Aside By Nineteen Children

who smile naively from photographs –
Her proudly-raised Honor Roll certificate,
his “Change Maker” t-shirt.
For Christmas cards, politicians
pose their families with guns.
The guns shine. The guns are bleeding
the children again. Again
and yet again, rounds spent in endless repetition.
That church or concert hall. This classroom
with floors bleached, swept clean
of hair and bone. What needs to be done
not done. “The school had too many doors.”
Holes blown through their hearts, the parents
buy wood boxes, carved stone.