Alphabet City

Tonight the statues come alive – we dance!
Flesh on alabaster

Chagall 2019

In my dream I finally turn lucid and
realize I just don’t care about flying

Chagall 2019

I release a bee, caught between screen and window,
crank open the glass; it takes him a while to finally trust
there is freedom beyond the pane.

Good stories and times at the hive tonight.

Chagall 2019

In summer she’d sing through the window fan
to embellish her own vibrato

Chagall 2019

At night, with my eyes inured to the dark, I flash the lights on.

Photons converge to blind me, parade to illuminate my optic nerve,
a flare – I am a film negative, colors inverted until I adapt and am
once again rightly defined,

trillions of sucking pulsating vortices,
the pointillism of the actual corrects itself;

in the time it takes, in that gap, I am postured, the interim, neither.

Chagall 2019

In the reruns
the Towers still stand
each and every
episode

Chagall 2019

I blow on the body of the tiny moth
attached to my screen, watch its body
turn to talc; the night breeze ripples
and lifts the remains away. In my mind
is a soft gray stain.

Chagall 2019

Glorious sun in the sky this morning.
Today is my birthday – thank you, Mom.

Chagall 2019

I open the window and summer rolls in,
but not this summer, instead it’s one
from many years ago

I can smell mom’s cooking on the breeze,
and hear my dad call to circle under
the towering pop-fly he’s thrown

Air brakes of busses long gone to scrap,
the perfumed girls of then, I close
my eyes to journey

Behind my lids
I see light fade
then brighten

I pretend to need
to be home at six

That’s when
supper’s on

Chagall 2019

The only cultures alive today and worth their weight, are my own,
namely: my kimchi, my sourdough, and my heirloom yogurt.

The rest, who cares?

Chagall 2019