our pasts lay dessicated
tangled pasta nests
in glassine windows
waiting to be saline,
salient, pliable grist
as coal miners we emerge from black dust;
you add the rendered events
rough-cut jowl
and the pecorino
romano
of umami’s
imperfect memory
and make fat silk threads
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
I live for a decade
near the six-unit building
where my antecessors
(bisnonna, bisnonno) live
upon arrival at the turn
of the 20th century.
Sicilian cafe nearby
perpetually empty evidence
of some Italian in what’s now
the 83rd Precinct (note:
English) is once
the 18th Ward of Brooklyn,
is earlier little town
in the woods or heavy woods
depending on your source
is before land of the Lenape
and before, glacial.
Do my antecessors know
that the 83rd Precinct
grants them whiteness within
one generation? Can they even
imagine, when they leave Regalbuto?
The great wooden horse
becomes flesh in the new world.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
I.
There is no
stopping
this kind of devotion.
A bar-tailed
godwit just flew
12,000km without
stopping to rest.
In the middle of
a storm,
I open my mouth
for water.
How do the sun
and stars
look to a bird’s
eyes?
What are the
spells
to ward off
longing?
II.
Thank
you for drinking
the
medicinal bitters:
dried angelica,
dandelion root, and ginger.
This poem doesn’t follow
the recipe.
I pat the back of
your heart.
This must be
where the spirit enters.
Early morning, a
spider crawls out
of Rumi’s
ghazals.
III.
What
are lungs, but sacs to carry
a
risk of drowning.
With water wrung
out,
coat pockets are
deep enough
to hold a face or
a myth.
Meanwhile, a
woman jumps
into the river, becomes a siren
on the rocks. I am dancing,
wearing
songs like different coats,
a
tassel dangles at the end of every nerve.
IV.
These wings are a
soft blow.
How we speak to
one another
is smooth and
rubbed.
Sometimes, I weep
while speaking.
A stone
holds a mayfly
fossil.
Everything I’ve
ever pined for is here:
watermark of
abdomen, stamp of carbon.
When I die, will
anyone notice
my tiny spirit?
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
