18.08.2023

 Fallen leaves

Dessicated in the 

Late Autumn's cold winds

Crumble to nothing

They crumble so easily. 

04.08.2023

I've been tempted to check on my ticket

To hold it in my hands

Take stock of my inventory

But a body in motion tends to stay in motion

Unless acted upon by an equal 

And opposite force

Something I'm severely 

Lacking at the moment

"She's got a ticket to ride

She's got a ticket to riii-hiii-hiiide

She's got a ticket to ride.."

But unfortunately 

She still cares.

03.08.2023

I envy the wild orchid

And wish I too 

Might bloom for six to ten weeks

then lose 

My head, and quiet- like a stone, lie 

Dormant in my bed

Of cool, soft loam

To bloom again

and begin anew

When the days are agreeable

And the cold skies 

blue.

17.04.2014

An old piece I wrote many years ago. 

.....

G

You were

snail paced walks round the

Botanical Gardens, 

creeping cacti and 

     alien orchids–

unlikely as painted plastic

You were

Intimate coffees 

on Broadway 

& on 9th Street

Trepidation and excitement at the thought you might touch my arm

You were 

a thoughtful gift 

from Trader Joe's:

chocolate covered potato chips I'd once proclaimed should be covered by Obamacare 

But you were also 

A party-size, blue bag of

Cool Ranch Doritos

eaten numbly 

by the handful,

Stuffing down hurt as I

Stuffed them down my throat,  

in my car, parked on Park Avenue South

and

You were 

my regret:

a failed test for my 

fledgling boundaries

and a mistake from which 

I'll do my best not to learn.

22.07.2023 II

 I'm suicidal

And so I write, 

And so I edit, and 

Edit again

Until my thoughts lose shape

Until my lines lose meaning

Until I'm so sick of my

Moribund thoughts

That bored

I roll over

And go to sleep. 

22.07.2023

Thick, warm

Like Mother, the voice 

Says “It’s time. You're tired. You should rest now. 

Rest.”

Half asleep, 

And with aching hands,

I type

Against the glaring light of my phone's screen 

These notions might lose some of their loft

But left alone

They might lift me from this bed

And carry me off

On compliant legs. 

 

Memoir (this is a work in progress.)

With the advent of mobile phones and social media, we’ve learned to externalise so many of our memories;  Instagram and Facebook, and the omnipresence of cameras within our phones have granted us an expansion of our very minds; these devices have become, in and off themselves, sense organs, and archives. 

Having grown up in the 80s, there are precious few pictures of my teen years. My parents were far from fond of my aesthetic choices, and I never had enough pocket money to invest in the taking of pictures, or development of film. 

My inner images of myself from that time are all that survive, and they all have wavy edges, prone to the kindness of idealism, or the cruelty of internalised judgements from others.  There is one picture that does exist, one taken with a phone some 15 years ago of a TV screen, whereon was playing a VHS tape:  I’d been filmed one day for the news, because home Karaoke had just been invented: I was in the 163^rd St Mall, and a local news station was doing a light hearted segment on people’s reactions to the device which would allow anyone to “feel like a star in their own living room”. I sang “Singin’ in the Rain”, because that’s the song Alex and his droogs sang in “Clockwork Orange”. Punk rock man. 

Anyhow, the picture is of a 17 year old me: I’m smiling, and looking down. There’s a microphone cupped in both my hands, and my curly mohawk has fallen over my eyes.  I look particularly gentle, I think.  Soft. Vulnerable.  Contrary to the image I strove to project, of an angry, toughened, punk rock psychopath who’d shoplift earrings from the Woolworth’s, and stab them through my ear on a whim; I wanted desperately to be seen as someone not to be messed with, because at the time, I was someone everyone messed with.  I was a veritable punching bag for every bully at my school, including teachers and faculty who’d never outgrown such tendencies.

Sometimes I wonder what it might be like if I were able to travel back in time to those days, to observe myself in that context; perhaps even more revealingly, to observe those who took delight in tormenting and bullying me; I wonder what I might see in them. Their bullying was brutish, never sophisticated.  I wonder what I might be able to perceive in their faces; what might their microexpressions reveal?  Was there really such hate? Was there fear? Was there helplessness and angst desperate for an outlet, any outlet? 

Was there guilt?

I reach back with my mind, but those images are even fuzzier than those of my own face. In fact, if pressed, I doubt I could even name a single one of my tormentors: not the jocks who called me “faggot” as they beat and kicked me while I lay in a fetal position on the floor, trying to protect my face, not the vice principal who then brought me into his office, pulled down my pants, bent me over his desk and paddled me for “fighting”. 

I remember the small revolver revealed threateningly to me one day out on the front steps by the metalhead kid who often threw raw eggs at me, but I don’t recall his face or name. Like some perverse version of Proust’s tea soaked madeleines however,  the image of any similar gun on the news brings that moment back to me in the kind of clarity only one fearing for her survival might experience:  his face, blotted out,  but the gun, an image as clear as my mental image of the phone on which I’m now typing this memoir.

.....

On the morning of my eighteenth birthday,  my mom bade me to drop out. She and my dad had been called into the office enough times to witness the way the students behaved, and, more concerning for my mom, the way the faculty and staff spoke to the students. She saw the inherent violence on it all.

.....

I found the picture I’d described in my Instagram,  and it’s somewhat different: rather than looking down, my face is slightly downturned, but my eyes are looking up, and my smile looks almost... menacing? 

This is the fallibility of memory.  Perhaps in my previous description, I was

Describing how I might have seen myself at the time, were I granted the time travel opportunity I described above. 

Then again, maybe the shot I’d captured was a split second after I’d been looking down, smiling sheepishly. It’s possible.  I can envision the two expressions, and they flow together organically.

.....

 

Sometimes, in the midst of that strange, dreamless sleep between dreams, an image of some random object that was a fixture in my parents’ house pops into focus, and my body jerks violently awake, short of breath, heart pounding. 

All gone.  

The enormous “I’ll Drink To Anything” mug that held two regular mugs worth of coffee, the green, oval cigar tin from the middle section of the downstairs medicine cabinet, the enormous, wooden headboard in my parents’ bedroom that made a specific sound I’ve never heard replicated each time it banged against the wall whenever someone sat on the bed...

Gone. 

All this familiar ephemera–

Elements of a world I once knew with my skin: mundane things affixed in time, place, soul...

The world I find myself in now can only be characterised by the absence of familiarity; I reach out in all directions, trying to snatch “home” elements from the ether.

They cost so much, and none of them are the same.

.....

I burrow deeply into nostalgia, like a worm, grasping at objects that lie along the way: that chrome, “snowcap” bottle-cap pin I wore daily in the eighth grade, the two- tone blue Vans I wore until they had holes, and my parents begged my therapist to convince me to throw them away, the khaki safari fedora from Merry-Go-Round that I was so proud of...

And of all things, it’s now an image of the roughly woven, off white, textile curtains that hang in what was my father’s office, (which used to be the family room) in the Miami house that now pervades my thoughts; this specific, and unimportant thing,  that witnessed the daily, evening family ritual in the early 80s, when we’d gather after dinner on the roughly upholstered couch to watch that day’s episode of Guiding Light on the VCR, that- once turned from family recreation space into my father’s office,  hung silently behind my mother’s back on those sleepless nights she’d play Freecell at my father’s computer while softly listening to Schubert’s “Trout” on CD; that witnessed my father’s endless frustrations, cursing over computer, after computer, after computer down the years that he could never manage to wrangle to his will..

Those curtains, like the details of the corners of the produce section at the Winn Dixe across the street, that I used to visualise like a meditation on hot, lonely nights when I couldn’t sleep seven thousand miles away in Kfar Habad...

Artifacts are witnesses.

When all is threateningly unfamiliar, it seems to be things that are specific and trivial, even mundane that offer a feeling of safe familiarity.  Maybe this is the lure of nostalgia; we’ve already survived this past; the only thing the future promises, is that at some point, we won’t.

.....

The house, and all that it contained is gone. I’ve been paid off.

What a weird chapter.  I feel like a character torn from the pages of a book that’s been my entire universe since the day I was written, and now...

Now that every copy has been thrown on the fire; I’m adrift in empty space, bereft of plot, setting, history. A mirror reflecting nothing.

.....

The other day, a friend posted on Facebook, asking about people’s first apartment; mine was in South Gate, Los Angeles. 

It was 1988, and for 120.00/week, I got to sleep in a roach infested one story row motel, next door to Samsam’s Liquor, where the bathroom window wouldn’t close completely, and I had to sleep in socks, sweatpants and a hoodie with the hood pulled tight around my head and a bandana tied over my face to keep the roaches from crawling into my ears, mouth or nose. I lived on Night Train from Samsam’s and quesadillas from the burrito truck and I thought life was amazing, because I’d escaped the hell of suburban Unincorporated Dade County,  Florida.

I’ve lived in several crappy apartments. 

There was the motel in Key West,  where my friend Meredith fell through the rotting, wooden floor one morning on her way back to bed from the bathroom.  It was another motel, and we shared not only a single room, but a single bed as well, although I ended up sleeping on the beach most nights whenever she had a trick. 

There was the “closet” on Dor Dor veDorshav Street in Jerusalem, that was about 2 sq metres, and then there was the place in East Harlem, on the third floor of an old walk up,  where the stairs had a literal depression in the middle from a hundred years of foot traffic; it was over a 24 hr car wash, and I had 6 roommates (2 of us per room). The Brasilian landlady  kept a fermented crab in a bottle on top of the fridge, and I later learned, she’d routinely go through my things while I was at work.

This place, the one that Carrie and I shared for 18 years, is the nicest place I’ve ever lived; it’s the first place that’s really felt like “home”, albeit less so in my love’s absence. 

And things are changing here. Last night, I broke a small ceramic plate.  It slid out of the cabinet and bounced off the stone countertop.  Until it exploded on the floor, I’d maintained a vain hope it might survive.  It was one of two survivors of a set that’s lost members over the years in various ways.  The two had nested comfortably atop the pile of pasta bowls on the lower shelf of the cabinet for years. Now there’s only one.

.....

When,  in 1987 Sinéad O’Connor’s album “The Lion and The Cobra” came out, I was instantly obsessed. She was everything I wanted to be: powerful, beautiful, vulnerable, so unflinchingly herself.

I was an awkward, traumatised, bullied, 18 year old punk in my father's black combat boots, and a grossly oversized, loud, polyester old man’s suit I’d bought at “Red, White and Blue Thrift” on 6^th. I was also seen by most people as a boy, although even the gargantuan suit in which I hid fit far better than that designation.

I was sensitive, suicidal, friendless, and the favourite target of every bully in North Miami Beach. 

I was also carless, and so, daily I’d take the 9 Downtown bus to the 163^rd St Mall, to break out of my suburban isolation, to see people and be seen.

A favorite way to pass my travel time was to fantasise conversations with Sinéad.  I just knew that if somewhere along the bus route she happened to board, being the outlandish, punk rock beacon I was, she’d see me, with my shaved head and many piercings, and surrounded by the conservative nightmare of 1980s Miami, we’d become instant friends.

And so in my imagination, she’d get on at the stop after mine, by the 7-11. At first, we’d talk shyly to one another: she’d tell me she was in town visiting family.  She’d ask me if I had an extra cigarette, and what there was to do. I’d suggest we walk down to “Open Books and Records”, or go Thrift Store hopping; there really weren’t many options.  She was 3 days short of 2 years my senior, but it didn’t matter; we were of the same tribe, and I loved her fiercely. I wanted her to become my older sister, my protector, and I wanted to protect her. I imagined her standing fearlessly between me and my bullies, and I imagined quiet moments of emotional intimacy. I think many big loves of all kinds might be born this way.

.....

I’m tempted to check on my ticket

To hold it in my hands

Take stock of my inventory.

 

But a body in motion tends to stay in motion

Unless acted upon by an equal

And opposite force

Something I'm severely

Lacking at the moment.

 

“She’s got a ticket to ride

She’s got a ticket to riii-hiii-hiiide

She’s got a ticket to ride..”

But alas

She still cares.

Resistance takes up so much space, and all of my energy.  I’m constantly worried I’ll run out, and of course, the inner dialogue is constant:

“Why are you bothering? What do you think could possibly change?”

“I don’t know, but I’m afraid I’d end up leaving the party right before it gets good. “

“But you’re tired. You’re so tired. And everything hurts. And the bills are mounting, and the city is starting congestion pricing. You won’t be able to afford to even leave your neighbourhood anymore, you’re going to be more isolated than ever, and what will you do when your funds run out?”

“I don’t know. 

I don’t know.”

I finish my coffee, and return to bed.

 

23.05.2023

So the demon is once again on my shoulder

Telling me again and again 

Of the weightless softness of nothingness

And of how,  in fact, 

No matter how wonderful these

Odd compensations

They are still

Compensations, unable ever to be more. 

I'm so tired of hearing

"It will get better", when 

Even when it does, 

It never stays that way. 

Right now, 

My breath itself makes me anxious

I long to put my

Diaphragm to rest

No

Nothing new has happened

There is no fresh injury

This is just the way it is

This is how it has always been.

22.05.2023

Pay attention. 

To now. This moment. 

I promise you

Whatever you're going through

Good, awful, or mundane

One day, if you're lucky enough to still exist

Nostalgia will strike

And you'll try to recapture 

What you were wearing

What you were feeling

What the weather felt like

What slant of light, 

How your father looked, sitting at his desk in his 

Ben Gurion shirt and khaki pants that

No belt could ever hold up 

Above his slender hips

How your mother's students sounded

On their toy- like violins, playing

Variation after variation 

Of "Twinkle"

Which dog, 

Or dogs were alive at that time

What you ate for dinner when you gathered around the 

White formica table that night

After your mom's last students for the day had finally left

Once your father had been a

Woken from his 

Afternoon nap  

And since

We still can't Google 

Our own intimate experiences of things

Pay attention

I promise you

There will come a day you will 

Want to recall 

This now. 

American Road Trip

Sundress n old docs  

Too dark gas station sunglasses with the

Cracked black plastic frames

Cigarette ash flies back in 

Open window wind 

The past year fades with the FM reception

Push in the tape

Let's shoutsing a new song. 

13.04.2023

While you've been away in your

Cool dark grave,

Summer has returned to 

Our Yorkville street: 

The boisterous birds

Crowd the branches of green Gingko

The women walk past in

Sundresses, or shorts

Even the Brownies writing tickets

Have uncovered their arms. 

I have unearthed my

Canvas camp chair,  

Returned to my second floor perch on the catwalk

Unlike me, the 

City barely notices your absence 

One day, my own will be

Just the same. 

28.03.2023 : Brainfog

Murky

Muddy head 

Head of bees buzz

Head of staring– confused 

At my 

Weekly     pill    organiser

(AM or PM,

        Yellow or blue?)

Head of 

Puzzled preparations I've done a million times :

Coffee

Toast

Head of helium and stone

Head of aborted poems

20.03.2023 II

You read to me the words

Of Marina Tzvetaeva

As much for the pleasure their shapes make in your mouth

As the sound of your voice 

Does my ears

But you can understand them: 

A luxury I can't afford

Only can I watch your face

Suffuse with the pleasures 

Of nostalgia

And that alone for me is enough. 

20.03.2023 I

The pleasures of lying naked in bed,

My Hitachi cools from her labours 

     beside me

Late afternoon light 

Through

Dirty white curtains 

Stain blue, 

     white walls

And through open window

     children's voices 

Scrapes of plastic bigwheels 

braking on concrete 

Basketball percussion 

Spring symphony.

17.03.2023

Of all things, it's an image of the roughly woven, off white, textile curtains that hang in what was my father's office, (which used to be the family room) in the Miami house that haunts my thoughts right now; this specific, and unimportant element of nostalgia, that witnessed the daily, evening ritual in the early 80s when we'd gather after dinner on the roughly upholstered couch to watch that day's episode of Guiding Light on the VCR, that- once turned from family recreation space into my father's workspace,  hung silently behind my mother's back on those sleepless nights she'd play Freecell at my father's computer whilst softly listening to Schubert's "Trout" on CD, that witnessed my father's endless frustrations, cursing over computer, after computer, after computer down the years that he could never quite wrangle to his will.. 

Those curtains, like the corners of the produce section in the neighbourhood Winn Dixe I used to visualise on hot, lonely nights when I couldn't sleep in Kfar Habad.. 

When everything is threateningly unfamiliar, it's trivial things– specific and trivial, even mundane things that offer a feeling of safe familiarity.  This is the true lure of nostalgia; because we have already survived the past, and the only thing the future promises, is that we won't.

Meital

Meital shifted her weight on the hard crate and looked at the tall, covered mirror her mother had once stood in front of, shifting her weight from this foot to the other, tugging this piece of her blouse and tucking in that bit; always making sure she was "just so" before walking out the door.  

The neighbours, who weren't Jewish didn't know the customs of shiva, but they did all they could just the same; Mrs Fitzpatrick had brought over pizza the first night, (with pepperoni,) and Steven, the Super had brought up Cadbury chocolate eggs and yellow and pink marshmallow peeps, explaining that his wife had cleaned out the shelves at CVS after Easter, and that "everyone likes sugar!"

Meital agreed and swallowed the eggs like a starving dog once everyone had gone home.

Now,  the sugar craving hit afresh as she sat, alone on the green crate and wished she hadn't finished the chocolate so thoughtlessly the night before.  All that was left was the two packets of peeps. 

"But they're so cute" thought Meital.  "How can I eat something this cute?"

She took a yellow one out of the packet and held it in her hand.  "Ok," she said out loud,  "when I bite into you, you'll be born some place else, but as a real chick!" Meital had played games like this with herself since she was a girl.  It was the only way she could bring herself to eat animal crackers.  She ate the peeps, one after one and sucked the sugar off her sticky fingers. 

"I wish that when we died, we could be born someplace far away but in a different form" she thought. 

On a distant world, a new baby opened her orange eyes for the first time, as vague memories of someone named  Meital quickly faded like a dream.

12.03.2023

You 

Are stone—   stuck

Where throat turns 

To chest;   I

Can neither swallow

Nor cough you up. 

11.03.2023

Unquiet, the yellow sun bursts excitedly through my window, 

Already, in mid-March,

At April's softened slant; 

She beckons me to walk 

Down by the old churchyard

Count the shooting crocuses 

Impatient as adolescence

But I cannot oblige her,  

So, as if in consolation

She sets to fire all of the 

Exuberant flecks of dust 

That dance above my floor

In the cold, late Winter's air.  

06.03.2023

It's bright outside:

The seasonal slant of light has shifted again 

Blue grey, to green gold

Already preparing us for 

Early Spring bulbs to burst 

Through hard ground

I sit sideways by my yellow table, eating 

A crisp, late Winter's apple

The still cool air slips in under the lip of the window that won't quite close

Over the dusty rows of books lined up on my sill,

Like a younger lover, insistent I walk with her down to the river

Perfumed steam from the first floor — someone is doing laundry.

04.03.2023 Vignette 1

"I love other haunted people," she said, pouring our sixth cup of tea, "people who refuse to hide from their own ghosts, I feel like I can trust them."

I nodded and sipped from the small, heavy cup I held unnecessarily in both hands. We'd finished our meal what felt like hours before; the tea had grown strong, and ice cold. Outside, the snow was ankle deep. I asked the visibly impatient waiter for another pot.

28.02.2023

The day my dad died

I ate my breakfast quietly 

No Podcast, nor music

There were no radishes for my tartine 

Afterwards, 

I showered 

Shaved my legs and washed my hair

The day my dad died

There were so many calls to make

The rabbi wanted me to write something up for the funeral

I couldn't remember my parents' anniversary

The afternoon of the day my dad died

I sewed shut the broken zipper on the side of a skirt

Put new laces in

My black shoes

Got the mail

Wrote a grocery list

On the evening of the day my dad died

There would be no seven o'clock

"How was your day?" 

Nor "Did you eat any dinner?"

And no "I love you"s

The day after my dad died

We buried him

I watched it all on zoom

Men respectfully covered his grave 

From a mound of dry, grey soil 

The Rabbi spoke of my dad's smile

Intoned prayers

Bade me tear my clothes

All the while

The dishwasher purposefully hummed from the other room.

An apple core oxidised on the table before me

And outside my window

A few white flakes fell from a 

High, grey sky. 

26.02.2023

The old familiar birds nest of your thin bones

Bones that nursed your cancer— 

Carefully, like eggs, 

Until hatched, it consumed you

Liver and spleen,

Now burst you out from that

Chalky cage. 

25.02.2023

How can I pull the

Warm light of day 

Back into the darkness 

Of these atrophied cells, when

Packed under layers of 

Cold, wet earth

I'm already becoming

Blind like stone?

18.02.2023 ●

 

There is a reason we

Compare grief

To a black hole :

It's so massive

Inescapable

It has a gravity

All its own. 

14.02.2023

"Strong" is a trap. 

"Strong" is a lie.

"Strong" denies the cracks in the foundation. 

Were I a house, I would be condemned, 

Not told how the cracks don't show,

How the clumps of crumbling plaster are "normal" after what I've been through, or worse, 

Don't really matter at all.

I am not strong,

Nor am I weak; I am 

Hollowed out, decayed and infested with the blackest mould crawling up my walls. 

I am imploding;

Sinking into unstable ground.

Demons have taken up residency inside my

Derelict walls.

I decay where I stand; that is, 

When I'm able to stand at all. 

Mostly I sit,

Still as old bricks,

And wait for the earth

To reclaim me.

11.02.2023

Old igneous crumb the earth has coughed up

Adrift in black and airless space

Even the stars were a 

Broken promise

Cold

White and

Beautiful corpses.

My Submission to NYT Modern Love

 

Last month, my beloved partner Carrie passed away while I held her hand after a lifetime of severe illnesses. I buried her two days later on what would have been our 18th anniversary. 

Today, thirty three frought days after I lost my love, I turned 54, and so naturally, shortly after I finished my birthday mug of hot chocolate, I broke down and began quietly sobbing in Max Brenner. 

It wasn't loud or particularly disruptive, but if someone happened to look at me, they'd see that my shoulders were subtly shaking, and while my long hair obscured my face, when the waitress asked if there would be anything else, my voice audibly cracked as I asked for my bill. 

Just across the way at another table, two tourists sat and unabashedly stared while they whispered to one another. Rude! 

Ours is a crowded city. I can't count the number of times I've been in a Duane Reade or Gristede's and some young woman in Uggs (always in Uggs,) was on her phone crying, or fighting with someone, and nobody nearby so much as batted an eye. Why? Because in this crowded city, we understand the need for space, for invisibility. We respect one another by not making one another self conscious, by not bothering one another. This isn't because we don't care; on the contrary, it's because we understand. It's because we share so much: space, culture, fate, needs... 

When tourists come into our communal spaces and contravene our cultural standards it's intrusive. They are the proverbial "ugly Americans", regardless of from where they come.   

So I beg of you non New Yorkers: come enjoy our beautiful city, but learn something about our customs and culture, and please don't treat us locals as spectacles. We're just living our lives, and sometimes, that means we are publicly messy.  

Ignore us. (Except when we're trying to pass you on the sidewalk; then, for God's sake, please, get the hell out of our way. )

28.01.2023

Have you seen these

Slight bones of mine?

Riddled and porous with disease

You may think of them as

Well buried treasure, 

(I'm sure that even the worms wait with bated breath!) 

I may be pieced together with

pins, screws

Even staples in places

But I'll tell you something about this broken body :

I have stolen the mantle of Atlas,  

And granted Sisyphus leave from his labours

And you 

You look at me as though the weight of your discomfort alone should knock me over. 

27.01.2023

The world has presented me with

An ultimatum: either I must divorce myself from it, remain on friendly terms, or separate from it completely ; for now I choose the former :

At last, no rage 

At dying light, 

For restless futures, no more fight

The world has won:

I set it free

I've signed the forms

I am at peace.

25.01.2023 I

Poor philodendron,  

Cut off from your mother's roots

Even in your clean glass jar

With plenty of air, and water and light,  

Your sad leaves lie 

Curled on my table: resigned

I think I'm a bit like you 

I am motherless too

Fatherless soon as well

And a widow now, to boot

But dear green friend, as yet, 

I hold out more hope for you

Your verdant days are not over

Your time in the sun, not through

Even now, above your limp, rolled leaves

New growth— green and bright

Reaches forth, against all odds 

And searches for the light. 

22.01.2023 II

Tired addict

I have laid out my final supply

Haphazardly as road salt

Hope! (Treacherous drug) 

Once I have consumed your 

final dregs 

I'll never touch such horrid 

stuff again. 

22.01.2023 haiku

Soft thing, 

with broken wings 

Stapled to your perch

20.01.2023

And in the end, you 

Embraced me like an old friend you hadn't seen since college

You'd touched my arm twice

It was awkward, but it felt good 

For once, to touch another heart's blood

Heart's skin, and when 

At 86th Street

We said farewell

I watched you descend into 

The bloodstream of the city

Emptied, I  wondered the 

Aisles of CVS 

Bought unnecessary mascara

And eyelash serum

And then sent you 

My accurate shadow 

To keep.

21.01.2023 II

Floating over leaden feet out from hospital halls 

An automaton.   Your jeans, and bra 

Crumpled into the bottom of a white, plastic bag

I felt like I carried your sad body in that bag, 

I moved— not quite walking 

Head down hung mouthed

Fallen faced in crowds 

I needed the world to see that I was broken. 

"There's something to be said for widow's wear" someone told me, 

And so I wore your last breath like a black veil 

Over everything I touched

And allowed the discomfort 

Of waitresses and taxi drivers 

To lie across my body like 

Grey assuagement. 

21.01.2023 Hunger

If only it were permissable

To beg you to fill me with yourself

Obliterate this barrenness 

Eventhough, I've no ready-made future on which to sell you

I recognise the request is preposterous  

Offensive even, but look

These are my hands

Aching                  Empty and 

This is my mouth

Alike                       In want

My pockets as well are now empty—

I bring nothing from before

The stones with which I had

Filled them have all been

Repatriated

And I am here, ready to share

Their mean country

Won't you pluck me from this dust

Set me upon your cool mantle

Amongst your candles

Dried hydrangea

And special things? 

20.01.2023

19.01.2023

At three-and-a-half, a surgeon's knife 

Carved my future from my belly 

That was the first I learned that even 

My body is not mine. 

At eight, alone, I staked my claim 

When I opened my wrists like early birthday presents.

Triptych #3 : 18.01.2023

I

To hell with your false bravado

Your obligatory resilience, it bores me to death

Show me instead, your

Injuries,  your

Soft open hand

Show me the stubbornness of your trust

And I will open to you like a tasty wound.

 

II

A broken bone, improperly healed

Must be broken again to reset correctly

I break myself open

One hundred times a day

I'll never heal correctly—

I make certain of it.

This is my demonstration

Against your bootstrap imperative

I hoisted my sign the first time at thirteen, lying half conscious beneath the

Head cheerleader's mother's wheel

They said I might lose the foot,  but

Instead, I gained a gentle new thing

Softness, it turns out, can be stubborn too.

 

III

Each time I think of your last days in that horrible bed

I'm haunted by your

Swollen blue hands

Toward the end, they'd tied them down so that you couldn't extubate yourself.

The finality came, your stone hand in mine,  I watched your chest heave

Artificially

Long after the screen told me that your heart had stopped.

17.01.2023

17.01.2023

We who subsist, one foot in the ground are 

Powerful growers; our 

Branches might even blot out your sun, 

Steal its harsh light to feed our own 

Leaves. Forgive me, please, for this brief narcissism

Will you now hate me for my admission?

15.01.2023

Suicide is a drug, and I 

Am addicted

Each dose fixed slightly less carefully than the last

I watch my own ritual, over

And over

One day I'll drift off into the sweet sleep of overdose

I imagine the elements of my life as detritus—

the granny cart that was Carrie's "from the Queens days", with one wheel now held on by a corrupted bobbypin

My brass flask

(Will it be discovered empty, containing only the vague scent of brandy?)

Will the unopened bottle of Chanel N°5 in the back of the fridge 

Find a new neck to perfume? 

Will the thousands of books that crowd my apartment find their own lonely tomb, or

Will they live again? 

I miss smoking. 

Well, why shouldn't I? What's the use in abstinence now? This crass charade that

If we behave virtuously, we can live forever? No thank you. 

I imagine myself as a memory

Or a cautionary tale—

"Poets almost never end up happily, become a plumber, instead!"

Suicide is a drug, and I am addicted

This taste of sweet freedom the tongue can never forget.

14.01.2023 II Love Note

What better thing could there be than to be

That soft spot where you might land

When all the worlds— 

both inside and out 

have assailed you with calloused hands?  

14.01.2023

It's day again.

Awakeness again.

This brash returning to me

I'm never ready.

My angry, growling neighbour is shouting and slamming doors again

The wall between our apartments shakes

A raucous chorus of sostenuto horns break through my thin windows again—

Other exasperated people I'd never ordinarily have to know are stuck in traffic on some impassable block

And now I know them

I know them too well

It's intimate

My tired body has been penetrated by someone else's impatience again

But now, the buzzer sounds–

FedEx is here again

My phone rings,  

It's Citibank again

There's no time for a gentle awakening

No time to meet the day slowly, on softened feet

The things that others

Seem to accept as a precondition of the world

Assail me

Day is an impatient dog with unkempt claws

Scratching up my tender legs.

13.01.2023

Apparently, I missed my morning pills (which include my prozac) 

Everyday this week until today. 

Last night, I was feeling so close to giving in, that 

When I came home from my doctor's appointment, I downed half a bottle of brandy the moment I'd dropped my purse on the sideboard

Harm reduction

My doctor is doubling my dose 

I suppose it would help more if I remember to take it

Yesterday was also my final session with a grief counselor

I was allotted eight

Eight forty-five minute sessions 

Spread out over nine weeks 

For the loss of my love 

Of eighteen years

Yesterday was hard 

I almost went looking for my cache

Today, so far is slightly easier; I don't trust it.  

Sometimes the killer is inside the house

When mine gets bored, he stands over me with ultimatums: 

Poetry or pills?

Be wary, I guess, if ever I go silent.

12.01.2023

 Never have I swum in gentle creeks

Only torrents wild, arroyos, shallow and quick to anger have bathed me

I drowned a hundred times before I was three

That was the summer of my surgery

Recovering, my mother placed a donut for me on her dresser—

Pink frosting with sprinkles on a blue and white plate

If I wanted it, I'd have to get up from their expansive green bed and walk 

Seven feet 

Cross the ochre, shag carpet

Heavy guts tumbling out from fresh, red and yellow sutures.

10.01.2023

Some mornings

Like this morning

As slowly I rise, a phoenix from sleep

I forget that I'm alone in my bed, I dream

A partner who's impatiently awaiting her coffee

A dog who needs me to let him out to pee

A mother I have to call

Even a mythical kitten enthralled

Hunting invisible bugs on the wall

When finally, I catch up to reality

It's a shock; I go through 

All my recent losses

And the grief begins anew.

11.01.2023 I

11.01.2023 I

Suspiciously, slightly less suicidal this morning

Though I've learned to mistrust this absence of drive

That old and comforting, familiar friend; I've known her since I was eight: the first time 

I opened my wrists on that rust pitted blade broken 

Off from a red, plastic pencil sharpener. 

She's kept me company through my darkest epochs, some lasting days or weeks, or years. Even decades. 

She's only ever an aching palm away 

Close as my own fingerprints.

Maybe she's just gone out for groceries. 

Maybe she's off on holiday.  She rarely says when she's leaving or 

For how long she'll be away

However, kind friend that she is, she knows just how to anticipate my need for her; something

Happens and Bang! she's right beside me once again.

09.01.2023 II

How often I want to ask you

Could you love me

Could you do

What I need you to do? 

Could you stand beside me while I dance this daily danse macabre

Could you abide me even as I rob 

From you your afternoon light? 

The hydrangea with which I've bedecked my mantle

Arrived already dead

Not wilted but crisp and warm brown in their winter sleep

A bit like me

This "elegant skeleton" who

Stands here before you, still

Possessed of beauty in my place between the worlds, asking

Could you love me? Could you

Love me loving you? Could you

Tend to my grave after I've passed through? 

Could you adore this thing that insists to cling

To sides of cliffs

Stubborn goat

Who- all too aware the narrow ground is 

Even now crumbling beneath her cloven hooves?

Who refuses her place in the Ridiculous parade for 

Those vainglorious warriors who maintain 

Some futile hope against entropy—

Could you love me? 

Could you accept me loving you? 

Could you even 

Dance with me, or simply bang the 

Timpani while I do what I do?

09.01.2023 I

 Diminished by your loss,

Only slightly there

I hang on by a gold locket of your silver hair

Or a whiff of mysteriously perfumed air– 

Egyptian musk, that 

Haunts the small hall 

Outside our room—

Is that you? Are you there? 

Why won't you come in, wrap around me again? 

I don't understand,  

Are you there? Are you aware? Or 

Are you no spectre at all? Only air? 

If I go on to find you will I too dissapear:

A collection of recollections

A cautionary tale? An occasional whiff of Chanel N°5 

Which no one but you would attach meaning to? 

"Old Lady Perfume" you called it

And you were right

I am older than the dirt that covers your white 

Coffin, on whose lid I left my 

Red lip mark

One last joke whose punchline will hang over you forever. 

You hated to kiss me when I was wearing lipstick

I loved to torture you 

That same way. 

"Blech! Blech!" You'd swipe at your lips by back of hand.

This image, more than any other I fold into a small square

And tuck it neatly inside my brassiere. 

07.01.2023 II

The hydrangea corpses hang on in my winter garden

Still beautiful in death

Elegant skeletons

We have something in common I suppose

I still receive compliments although I too am dead. 

Still, 

Nobody picks my brown blooms for their mantle. 

07.01.2023 I

My life stretches out behind me 

Like a rat's tail; I cannot shake it. 

Before me, an interminably high and broad 

Wall: solid and grey as slate. 

No way over or around it, 

Only thing is to join with it:

Become carbon again!

Compost compressed 

Time immemorial

What a wonderful word: 

Im. Em. Orial. 

Time will not remember me, 

Will not recall my soft thoughts or deeds— they'll dissolve

Along with my flesh; my

Cheeks and breasts, 

Belly and thighs, a 

Delicious repast for the

Microbes and mites

Calcium will be the final discernable element— the only fossil or record of me. 

How wonderful to become 

That wall before me. 

Twenty-Six Green, Thirty-Eight White

 The vile of green sticks, and the 

Bottle of flat, white 

Pills scare me.  Too easily swallowed with a glass of brandy

Impossible to forget, and far too handy.

They wait me out, just out of sight

I count them out on Friday nights

Twenty-six green, and

thirty-eight white.

06.01.2023 I

 I've always been a little in 

Love with death;

She's gently teased from my first glimpse of light

"Come hither to safety you tired, wary babe,

Come rest your head upon my breast."

She is mother, father, and lover as well–

Even as she claims each for her own.  

Oh death, how your great, broad 

Curling arms call me 

To lay myself down by the roots of trees;

How your promise of safe, and dreamless sleep warms me

Even as I in your cutting wake freeze. 

 

05.01.2023 IV

 My eyes are so much worse than they were even nine months ago;

the last time I had a vision exam. 

I've had surgery since then, for a detaching retina.  

It's made little difference. I

Still see the strange, bright white flashes of light

I still can't read the cable guide

In fact, 

I'm having so much trouble reading much of anything. 

I went today into Cohen Optical to

Ask about a new vision exam

A new pair of glasses, explain how the old ones are 

Worse than nothing at all. 

"You'll have to wait until April" she tells me, either that or

Pay out of pocket.  

Five hundred dollars, minimum it turns out. 

I'll wait. 

Just three more months. 

After all, I barely drive anymore

And who needs to read, anyway?

05.01.2023 III

 Maurice has a hernia.

He lifts te many layers of his sweatshirts to show me. 

"That looks painful" I grimace

"It don't hurt. If it don't go away in Febyooary, they gonna take care of it in March."

We talk about the dangers of surgical mesh ; I decide not to tell him how it slowly murdered my mother over 24 years. 

He asks me if I'm married. I decide not to tell him I'm a widow. 

As I'm getting up from the bus bench to leave, he asks me for a hug. There are giant, gloppy tears falling from his right eye. 

I hug him twice per his request. 

He asks if he can squeeze my ass.

He asks me if I'll be his friend.  

But he wants more from me than I have to give

Even to myself.

05.01.2023 II

 The world can't sustain its interest in tragedies.  

Past the point of titillation, beyond the opportunity for heroism, where chosen responsability and hopelessness collide 

Lies irrevocable fatigue.

I must be very tiring. 

(I exhaust myself.)

I feel myself becoming a forgone conclusion. 

It's a comfort 

Of sorts.      The circle grows smaller. 

I'll spill my guts until they 

All slip away on the offal mess. 

It's a leak that no

Matter how I try, 

I cannot seem to plug. 

05.01.2023 I

The candle upon my yellow table

Why won't its flame stay still, and calm? 

There's no swift current of air passing over it

Instead, too aware of its vanishing dawn

It gambols,    it bounds, 

Awild 

Unrestrained

A polyphony!   Its internal law. 

04.01.2023 III

 

What can we learn from poor 

Unica Zürn

Anne Sexton 

And Sylvia Plath?

That being a poetess is bad for one's health!

04.01.2023 II

 Homecoming is a predatory, corpulent child

Not patient to wait 'til I've undressed and eaten

But pounces upon my tired, sore back

Shouting "giddyap, giddyap, giddyap!"

04.01.2023 I

 When Emily Dickinson wrote of

"Hope", 

 As "a thing with feathers that perches in the soul", 

She neglected to mention its terrible beak

And talons for tearing into the weak

Hope is no gentle, cooing dove,  

But a hungry and treacherous beast from above. 

03.01.2023 IV

This pain behind my collarbone that

Snatches away my breath

Comes sharp, un-preannounced

A rather indelicate guest 

Who I'll invite to stay nevertheless

Such pain is only comfort

As from a workman's calloused hands

I will not make him leave

Regardless of the requests

Of all my other snooty guests.

03.01.2023

 When I– relieved

Go on to join 

The tree roots, and weeds, I 

Do not go clean or white as a bleached bone

But silted and sooted and properly burned

For losing my world has left its scorch inside me.

02.01.2023 III

 Nothing is ever wasted;

there's nary a thing as waste:

Whether a meal for entropy, growth, or mirth, or the 

Hungry worms that till the earth.

02.01.2023 II

Somewhere across the concrete yard that gives 

Pause 'tween the teeth of my Yorkville block

Someone is beating a nail into wood

Tap, tap, bang

Hammer nail two by four

Monotone marimba

Unfortunate concerto

And I– I linger in bed

'gainst open window cold

Covers yanked up 

Around my bare breasts

Whilst an impatient January morning 

Circles like a wolf

Eager for a fallen scrap of meat.

02.01.2023 I

 This dreadful thing,  this

Opening to consciousness,  to

Light and

Consequence

And hope

The latter of course, the most treacherous of them all. 

Yes, this grief is sweet

But is no recomcompense  for your absence. 

It has taught me many things, this grief, like

How to manage bills, and

How to get through milestones such as

Birthdays, and

New Years Eve

(Light candles, drink too much wine, eat pizza and pretend it's just another day) 

And yes, as Rumi implied,

Missing you is sweet, 

But how saccharine, I think, 

I'd so much rather have you next to me 

Watching the Twilight Zone in bed, 

Eating "cruds" and crackers and brie 

Assuring one another of how

Unimportant this day really is

Because we have each other

And what could matter more? 

Except that now,  of course, 

We don't.

We walk hand in hand round the grey reservoir, 

Or on rain-soaked cobblestone, slippery sidewalks, 

'Neath soggy, cold and golden trees

Note the patterns in the trodden on leaves

Dodging loud tourists who block our way

Staring lost at their phones, looking for the Met

This is our time, our city, 

Our space

My melancholy 

And me.

 I am, I suspect, in danger of falling in love with my grief, so predisposed have I always been to melancholia.  

It's the most suitable substitute for my lost Love I've yet to find: always present, safe, and warm, a generous partner to hold against me in a cold, expansive bed. 

Were I to buy into the paradigm that we somehow choose our fates, I might even believe that I went into this relationship fully, so that I might fully experience losing Carrie, and the subsequent violent dissolution of my entire universe. But I'm not a fatalist. I did not choose this.

And yet, I've little choice but to embrace it with my whole being, which includes of course, finding the immeasurable beauty within it.  

This vocation is my love letter to Carrie: even if it's a letter she'll never read.

Into a winter's afternoon sleep

Eyes shut tight against the light  

Images of fallen, yellow gingko leaves 

Coating the wet sidewalks and streets

Their curled edges: sparkling shards 

Of facetted amber in the 

Slanted golden light.

 I realised something last night whilst on a particularly lovely date; we were talking about what it was we were each looking for, and at first, I'd said something along the lines that I was hoping to find a friend with whom I could share physical intimacy,  but then, as I thought about it more, I realised, I'm not as interested in hookups as I'd previously thought.  I really do want some kind of actual intimacy that's expressed through many ways, including (but not only)  sex, rather than simply sex itself, for its own sake.  This may not sound revolutionary, but for me, it was revelatory.

I don't miss coming, nor even making someone else come; I  miss the excitement that comes from the slow peeling away of the layers of artifice we all cultivate in order to survive this world, both from myself and from somebody else, allowing our true selves to meet, and the warmth, the friction and melding that occurs as a natural result, when sex is simply the closest tool at our disposal for bringing our bodies along where our souls have already gone.

I've been desperately hurrying through the grief of losing my partner,  because part of me is convinced I will never again find the easy kind of intimacy the two of us shared, and it's true, I may not; this is a terrifying thought. I've been subsuming my grief in the process of trying to slake my physical hungers, but with this realisation came the understanding that those hungers aren't only,  nor even mainly physical.  I cannot run from this pain, and, I no longer wish to.  Instead, I want to grow toward something. 

This process has been, and will continue to be painful, but it has also been, and I hope, will continue to be beautiful.  This is metamorphosis: the dissolution of a previous self in order to emerge anew, and I'm here for it. I'm here for all of it.

Oh, to feel, 

Indeed, to BE unhurried again

To have the time 

To take time,  to

Shrug off this weighty mantle of desperation;

This, alas, is the privilege of the young, where 

We who've seen 

Fifty (plus) years

Who've lost that which we were

Once so able to take for granted, must

Pressed by time and the march of Entropy,

fev'rishly rush to secure our nests, to

Bolster our stores

All the while, too aware of the approaching winter.

 Theoretical me I to theoretical me II : 

"Honestly, I don't know whether I'm coming or going these days. "

Theoretical me II to theoretical me I :

"That must put quite the damper on your dating life."

Even the winter buds hide their eyes in anaesthetic sleep on days like this, 

But I,

Foolhardy bear, hungry for beauty, 

(or distraction,)

Venture out from my warm and well appointed cave

Not nearly layered sufficiently, 

My bones split and splinter in the cold. 

It's 3:08 AM, and the cold emptiness that woke me is creeping up my inner walls, filling me full with Nothing.

 Today, when I broke down, quietly sobbing in Max Brenner, the reason I was so upset that the tourists at the next table were staring at, and whispering about me, is because it was a direct contravention of New York protocol.  

Ours is a crowded city.  I can't count the number of times I've been in a Duane Reade or Gristede's and some young woman in Uggs (always in Uggs,) was on her phone crying, or fighting with someone, and nobody nearby so much as batted an eye.  Why? Because in this crowded city, we understand the need for space, invisibility.  We respect one another by not making one another self conscious, by not bothering one another.  This isn't because we don't care; on the contrary,  it's because we understand.  It's because we share so much: space, culture, fate, needs... 

When tourists come into our communal spaces and contravene our cultural standards it's intrusive.  They are the proverbial "ugly Americans", regardless of where they're from.  

So I beg you non New Yorkers, come enjoy our beautiful city,  but learn something about our customs and culture, and please don't treat us locals as spectacles.  We're just living our lives, and sometimes,  that means we are publicly messy.  

Just ignore us.  (Except when we're trying to pass you on the sidewalk; then, for God's sake, please, get the hell out of our way. )

This wound that you left in my life

will never heal;

It's edges, 

Crusted, dried and inflamed still itch

And burn

And ooze all over everything:

Our bed, 

The yellow chair

Even my favourite wrap dress is ruined

I will never 

Wear it  

Again.

Note: the following is not a suicide note.  It's simply a reflection of my daily struggle, of the omnipresence of ideation I've lived with since I was 8, and particularly since my love passed away.  

I'm a poet; I often write for the purpose of catharsis, as a way to exorcise certain tendencies.

I'm not a danger to myself, and in fact, I'm committed to doing everything in my power to stay in this beautiful and terrible world.  

...

Today marks one month without my Carrie by my side, 

And as I sit here in my deep, soft velvet reading chair, 

My breakfast of a 

Quartered apple 

And a bowl of coffee on the Little Yellow Table before me, 

Showered, and perfumed, 

Dressed, and shod,

I can't help thinking that today, 

This moment

This spot 

Might be the perfect

Day

Moment, and 

Spot 

To crack open my father's bottle of Oxy,

And down them with my morning coffee. 

There are two stones on the living room window sill,

I don't remember how they got there;

I suppose I found them somewhere, and their smooth roundness was pleasing to my senses. 

I have always collected things. They hang around, long after their provenance is forgotten: it's a sort of death of its own I suppose: these objects bereft of their meanings become like carcases. 

There are two stones on the living room window sill; I no longer remember from whence they came, nor why I held onto them, but now, I'll keep them nonetheless.  

After all, on their surface may still linger some stray molecules of your living breath.

There were so many plans:

We were going to buy a new bed, one that didn't slope on my side

A wardrobe, and dresser (I have "way too many clothes") 

One day, we'd go on a cruise; I've never been on one before, and you told me how black and impenetrable the night was out at sea

I wanted so badly to one day show you MY Israel, the way you've shown me YOUR New York. 

There was a future, already written

whose pages have now been torn from their spine. 

 You'd even offered to try

Sleeping without tv

In the silent darkness that always scared you

It reminded you of death you'd always told me 

And your frenzied mind wouldn't stop, so you could sleep

But you were willing to try

If only I'd come home

To sleep beside you

Get you your water before bed. 

Lemons

The lemons I'd placed in this bowl have dried out

No longer yellow and soft

The spider plants have all died,  their

Dessicated leaves folded in surrender 

The blue rug lies,

Just where I left it

But the northeast corner, no longer held in place by your exercise chair 

Has flipped over, leaving a 

Right angled ghost

In the dust on the floor. 

This house is a mess

There is chaos everywhere

Fruitflies drown in my bedside water at night

It's cold, 

And the heavy comforter is slowly collecting into a pile on the floor by my side of the bed

No warm body next to me 

To halt this entropy.

I will sit alone on my cold terrasse at my little yellow table and drink my wine 

I will look for patterns on our sidewalk in the fallen yellow gingko leaves

I will walk to the churchyard and talk to the small flowers that bloom only in the winter

And I will continue to ache for you

I will sip my chocolate slowly, holding the warm cup in both my cold hands

I will dive headfirst into De Beauvoir and Bataille

I will enjoy the sting of the cold Fall air in the back of my throat

And I will continue to ache for you

I will get up each morning and weigh myself, marking each increment toward my shifting goal

I will walk our neighbourhood, discovering new things to tell you about

I will date, and I will kiss and I will fuck and I will love, 

And I will continue to ache for you. 

I will seek joy

I will find beauty

I will embrace the malaise that permeates my nights

I will continue to converse with you if only in my own head

And I will forever continue to ache for you.

 I still remember how the skin of your upper arm felt under my tracing fingertips, the way it felt to pass my hand under the sleeve of your t-shirt to touch your cool back.  I remember your scent and the gravity of your body beside me in bed. How, back to back, we'd press the soles of our feet together, sometimes even interlacing toes. 

How this new aloneness is real is beyond my comprehension; I reject it and search for your ghost.

The waking world holds no light for we the grieving 

And so we sleep

And sleep

And sleep 

by whatever means available

And try to dream our missing selves into Lightedness. 

 "Widow":

the word fits like a too tight, comically ridiculous black velvet hat, but it also feels right.  I want the world to know my world has been cracked in half and left bleeding.

I want strangers to be soft with me, waiters and clerks and cashiers to understand and speak gently, make no demands

Because right now, the glue that held me together is gone, and the tiniest bump will shatter me into a million shards.

27.10.2022

 We New Yorkers are experts at staving off loneliness, so long as there's a 24 hour diner nearby our apartment, so long as we can afford to avail ourselves, (at least for the moment).

The girl in the booth across the aisle from me is talking to her male friend:

"I'm really hungry! I think I'll get the panini ala vodka. Ooh, with chicken! But they have broccoli too. I like broccoli."

Her friend doesn't correct her and the waiter suddenly shows up at their table. 

"I want the panini ala vodka" she says. 

I lean over: "I think you really want the penne ala vodka" I say, smiling.  She laughs: 

"Oh right! I'm really drunk" she says.

"Good for you!" I say,  "I just didn't want him to bring you a pressed sandwich soaked in vodka."

Until

 The panic attack rose while I was in Whole Foods like a wave of nausea I had to keep down or I'd collapse into a screaming, sobbing ball, punching the sides of my own head in the spaghetti sauce aisle. 

"Have the two of you discussed what measures would you like us to take in case your heart stops?" 

It was a routine question, but the way in which it was asked...

The young doctor was almost apologetic, nervous.  She'd spoken as if the question wasn't really "if", but "when". 

Carrie, of course, wanted all possible measures taken.  The young doctor tried to dissuade her: "You know what that means?  That there will be a breathing tube as well as compressions,  and that you'll likely need to remain on the ventilator until..."

The unspoken end of her sentence was the loudest sound I'd ever heard.

Inertia

Nothing so crass as pills or opened veins,

Neither rope, nor belt tied o'er the back of the bedroom door

No

If I lose you, 

I will sit here, 

Neither eat nor drink

Fallen prey to inertia

While the world decays around me

Buries me in its weighty detritus

'til my roots rejoin the earth

My constituent parts 

return to the soil

(My "self" will be already gone)

For who am I, to 

stand in the way of

Entropy?

After all,

It's not personal; 

(Nothing enormous ever is, is it?)

It's just the natural order of things.

This is a strange and different country, this grief, over the things that are 

Promised to leave me.

Although I've been here before, I know only very few words in the local tongue, and 

Barely any of the customs.

The cuisine too is strange 

(and potentially poisonous)

But nonetheless, for now, here I sit:

A polite guest at my host's table 

Fork and knife and spoon in hand.

Homecoming, 30 April 2022

In my childhood's room where you and I once shared a narrow mattress perched precariously on broken box spring;

(Did we fuck on that mattress? I can't remember anymore.) 

Well, that bed, the one I grew up in, is long gone now;

Likewise, the back breaking, broken box spring.

Instead,

What was once my room in this house now holds:

A few unimportant books, 

My mom's clothes, 

and the too soft, plastic covered mattress she slept on in her rented hospital bed 

in the middle of the living room when she became 

too weak to make it upstairs anymore.

Now it lies on the floor, 

And I, on it

Neath leopard print cotton sheet I once stabbed and slashed in a fit of my own young rage 

(Was I 17? It's such a 17-year- old-me kind of thing to do.)

And instead of you this time, only the cold ghosts of my own past lie pressed beside me,

Skin on skin,

against my 

naked back.

 השורשים שלי נשארים תמיד 

 גם כשרגליי אינן שם

 הראש שלי, הלב שלי עדיין

 .והארץ שלי היא נשארת בי

Tzror HaChayim

 A poem I wrote many years ago: 

(This poem now has a title, after nearly 20 years, thanks to Philip Ohriner .)

Some people live in a perpetual state of exile

But exile is not always

imposed by place

There are those who are left there by the

passage of time

and those who were simply born mis-

fits into this world

All who are in exile however

have something in common: 

we carry small pieces of our

native worlds with us

like pebbles

(some are worn smooth,

some remain tenaciously jagged and sharp) 

We carry them in our pockets

or sometimes in our shoes.

 I had a dream where I remembered suddenly that I'd been using the space between my toes as book storage,  so that I'd always have certain books with me,  but then,  I realized that I shower everyday,  and started worrying that maybe the books weren't in the best condition anymore,  so,  I took them all out from between my toes,  (marveling at how long my big toes were.. they were like 8 inches long! Afterall,  these were full size books, ) and looking through them,  and saw that they were absolutely fine! In fact,  one of them,  (it was an old, green,  "everyman's library" type hardcover book) when I opened it,  the old black and white pictures in it of a polar bear and very fluffy white dog,  were still moving.  

But what does it all mean?

Radio off, we drive in silence 

She beside me, we listen to cricket gossip 

I, driving, write this poem: 

The Kerhonkson roads have a smell in late summer 

At 62 Farenheit, and 70% humidity, 

They smell of old wood houses and 

wet green roadsides 

ancient trees with porous bark 

Occasionally, skunk (a smell I like.) 

My t-shirt sleeve grows wet by the open window, and 

slow motion moths change direction before the windshield 

white wings blue in dashboard light

We round a bend where 3 local boys died 

truck split in half on a telephone pole

(the newest ghosts of Samsonville Road) 

I hold the wheel a little tighter, we're almost home

"There's a pickup behind us, better signal early, so he doesn't rear end us" -my practical wife pulls me out of my own head 

Inside now,  "remember to put the ice cream away before you sit down to write" she says as she disappears down the hall.

So we're headed into another heatwave it would seem, which is obviously the perfect time to FINALLY receive the heavy leather motorcycle jacket I ordered off Amazon. I chose it after exhaustive research, vacillating between the one with side laces and the one without, calling the manufacturer to ask the weight of the jacket, having immediate buyers remorse after checking out because maybe I should have chosen the one with the laces afterall, oh well, or maybe I should have gone with that one that had the braided detail oh god what did I just spend a hundred something dollars on what was I thinking??? When I was a 13 year old suburban punk kid living in North Miami Beach, Fl, I washed so many cars at 5.00 a piece, going door to door after school everyday until it was dark out and I could no longer even see whether the cars were clean so I could buy my first leather motorcycle jacket out of the Sears catalogue. It was a hundred dollars back then, (which was a lot more than a hundred dollars is now,) and even though the South Florida heat was oppressive, along with my combat boots, I would wear my heavy, leather jacket which I'd made even heavier with all the band pins on its lapels every single day, (because I was THAT punk) eventually ripping out its lining in a misinformed attempt to make it slightly less hot. It eventually fell apart, because apparently the lining is more integral than I knew, and I wouldn't get my next leather biker jacket until many years later when I was living in New York. I've since had several; some of them painted and studded, some left plain, but here's the thing, they were all men's jackets. They all fit my body, or more accurately, failed to fit my body in very boxy, awkward ways. I've never had a women's black leather biker jacket until today. When it arrived this morning, I unwrapped it from its grey, plastic bag and unfolded it, laying it out on the bed. Unbuckling its belt, I unzipped it, and immediately unzipped the winter weight full sleeve liner and removed it. It's SO much lighter than all my other jackets, some of which, I kid you not weigh 20 lbs. I put it on, and stood in front of the full length mirror we have in the bedroom. It stopped where my hips began. I zipped it up. It closed over my chest like it was made to. I lifted my arms. The sleeves didn't cover my finger tips, but stopped at my wrists, where, sleeves are supposed to stop. "Please don't paint this one" Carrie said, and I laughed, as I turned this way and the other looking at myself. When I'd bought all my other jackets, I was trying so hard to be something I wasn't, something I could never really be, and they fit my body in ways that constantly reminded me of that fact, which is to say, they didn't fit me at all. I'm so glad I'm able to stop pretending. This fits me so much better.

To be a Jew who is, generally speaking,
a leftist,
or more specifically speaking, compassionate, empathetic,
soft hearted, etc,
is to have a heart that is
layered in scars,
broken, superglued and stapled back together
so many times you can't even count anymore.

To be a Jew who cares about her fellow humans
is to be reminded again
and again
and again of how disposable you are,
why your struggles
"just don't matter that much right now"
"are distracting" or "derailing"
"you're taking away from the real struggles people are facing!"

To be a Jew, generally speaking,
is to keep fighting anyways
even if nobody fights for you
holding on to hope
that if push comes to shove
"They'll come through in the end"
(whether you think they really will or not.)

What if I told you that those fire kites and balloons from Gaza are just readying the land for a new crop of beautiful wildflowers and that the rockets that fall on us are really full of seeds that will one day sprout all kinds of vegetables and fruit- tomatoes so delicious you'd think God had tended them with her own hands, the sweetest, reddest watermelon you've ever tasted, peppermint and garlic and even peaches and plums and figs will grow from the dewy, fresh field that's been prepared by the loving kindness of our cousins who've worked so hard and sacrificed so much to send us those beautiful kite and balloon lanterns, like stars or promises floating in the summer sky.

There's a mustard yellow, velvet chair that's deep enough for me to put my feet underneath myself when I sit in it. It's next to our living room window, and it gets alot of light on sunny days. It's where I often sit when I have phone sessions with my therapist, it's where I used to sit to meditate, and it's where I like to go when I need some time to myself, to read, to write, away from the TV that's always on in our bedroom since its on/off switch broke off. (It's old. )
This past Saturday was a freakish 77°F, and mostly sunny. I'd known about the forecast since Monday? Tuesday? and I'd been looking forward to possibly getting out somewhere in my powerchair to enjoy it before the return of our regularly scheduled 40°s and 50°s rainy days. Unfortunately, the night before, my heart rate had stayed hovering somewhere between 102 and 118 bpm for hours, leaving me dizzy and with the worst migraine I'd had in weeks. On Saturday, I was still wiped out and didn't get to go out to enjoy the weather. Instead, in the late afternoon while our south facing window still filled with Springtime light, I sat in the gold chair, my legs folded beneath me, my lap covered in a burgandy throw my mom sent us years ago.
Chronic illness has a way of reconfiguring our desires. Three years ago, maybe two? full of the urgency of a first hot Spring day, I would have been on my way to Riis beach with my bestie, a backpack of snacks and my usual Riis look of a short skirt, a bra and my punk vest. These days were the days I lived for, the chance to see and be seen by the Riis Queer-noscenti, and to feel the warmth of the sun and of the community.
I still miss this world so much, but it's become so much harder to access. I rarely have the spoons to be social anymore, even though I miss my friends. Even more, I miss myself. I know that sounds corny, but I miss being the Sarit who goes to shows, who goes to Fat Femme Clothing Swaps, who works (I don't miss sex work itself, but I miss so many things that it gave me, ) and who goes to Riis.
My world has become small. Being able to shower, get dressed and take my powerchair to the supermarket up the street feels like a huge outing, and tires me out like a huge outing.
I've had short periods since I got sick where I felt honest to goddess close to normal, and I've learned to never take them for granted. When they come now, whether they're a day, a week or a few hours, I treasure them and do everything in my power to make the best of them. But they're rare.
For now though, I look forward to warmer, sunnier days, and I'm grateful for my velvet chair by the living room window.

"May the bridges I burn light the way"
-Dylan McKay, Beverly Hills 90210
...
May the bridges I burn be well selected for burning.
May I have done due diligence, checking that they might not have- with some care and repair, continued to serve as good connections.
If the above is satisfied, and only if,
May their embers float harmlessly into the sky
never to burn me or trouble me again.

Today is yom hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day.
I was born in 1968, 23 short years after the end of the Holocaust. (For comparison, 9/11 was 17 years ago. Think about how close that feels.)
I grew up surrounded- and I do mean surrounded, by living survivors, some of whom were younger than I am now, hearing their first hand stories of life and death in the ghettos and camps. None of the movies I've seen, and I've seen pretty much all of them, even came close to touching on the horror of these accounts: the violence and egregious sadism enacted upon women, children, men and families is somehow uncaptureable on film.
I've heard first hand tellings of infants ripped from their mothers' arms, and literally, physically ripped apart by laughing SS guards before their suddenly silenced bodies were tossed onto a pile; I've heard first hand accounts of witnesses who watched as a young SS sat casually on the edge of an open pit, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he fired a tripod mounted machine gun into line after line of the naked bodies of Jewish fathers, mothers and children who held hands for the last time.
I carry these and other painfully lucid memories, many of them as if they were my own. I am a child of these stories. For those of us who are aware, we're watching what looks alot like a repeat of what led to the first Shoah.
This is why we say #NeverForget. #NeverAgain.

I've made and worn punk vests since I was 15.
My first, a bluejean jacket I'd cut the sleeves off of, thick layers of acrylic paint stiffened the back until caked with South Florida sweat, it would stand on its own, leaning lazily in the corner of my North Miami Beach bedroom.

Recent vests have been yellow floral, blue pokadot, blue or black denim, trimmed in lace at the collar and pockets and/or pierced with pyramid or arrow point studs, and held together with silkscreened canvas patches stitched on in dental floss. My most recent was half of a 50.00 gift card, bought at the Fulton Street Macy's in Downtown Brooklyn. It's black, has been kept relatively unadorned except for a back patch that says "Believe Survivors", one pin that says "Black Lives Matter", another that says "I can see right through your bullshit" and a third that simply says "End Violence Against Sex Workers".
It has pockets, allowing me easy access to my phone, my wallet and a knife without having to go into the backpack on the back of my wheelchair. This vest is largely utilitarian, and I almost always wear it because of that, even if it doesn't quite go with whatever else I'm wearing.

Today my therapist and I were talking about survival. I was talking about how ill at home I feel in my sick body so much of the time. About how I spend so much of my time dissociated from my body, especially when I start to bleed heavily from places I shouldn't be bleeding from, or when my illness becomes apparent on my skin in visible rashes like the Bartonella rash I have right now on my left tit.
I recognize my own internalized ableism in this struggle, as well as the privelege and costs of living with largely invisible illnesses.
We talked about the time two or three years ago when assaulted on 6th Ave, I spun around and for the first time in my life, smashed the nose of the man who'd violated me, and we talked about the very different kind of vulnerability of being in a wheelchair, strapped to the floor of a bus when a man with beer sweat and visible and triggering masculine anger demands my attention. We talked about the particular kind of vulnerability that existing as a Femme in a wheelchair in the world entails.
We talked about the way that for most of my life when my agency had been violated, I'd disappeared into suicidal ideation or attempts, and how- now that I've decided to survive, to make it to at LEAST 50, that's no longer an option or a comfort. We talked about how scary that is.
Today, she told me I was one of the most resilient people she'd ever encountered in her practice.
While my imposter syndrome did acrobatics to argue and disprove her assertion, part of me felt seen and validated. I realized that I am resilient.

At 15, my punk vest was my armor. Its stiffness and weight were reassuring to my queer, autistic, depressed, trans, extremely sensitive, scared, scarred and embattled body.

Tonight, I wrapped myself in my therapist's validation. This feels like the most fitting punk vest I've ever worn.