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.