TO LOUISIANA

I cry because of
how much time
we lost of my childhood
not singing in the front seat
of the white truck yelling
swing low
sweet chariot
coming forth
to carry me home

OLI

paranoid grandma calls me back
after the phone call drops
to tell me “they’re listening to us
I can’t stop thinking about it
I thought you should know”

I think fuck death! fuck winter
fuck you Alice everyone struggles
fuck the catholic church and
fuck all these poems
that do not sound like poems I like

paranoid grandma calls me back
after the phone call drops
to tell me “they’re listening to us
I can’t stop thinking about it
I thought you should know”

DEAR AMANDA

This morning I fixed a pot of coffee
and drank the whole thing —
it is something I am good at:
having enough of something
and then exhausting it.

watched Last Year in
Marienbad, cup in hand,
and thought of how starved
of waiting one must be not
to get it. The man says to the woman:
“You’re like a shadow
and you’re waiting
for me to approach,”
but then she just keeps
slipping away.

wrote a letter to Nelle,
I said: “For love I just get
lost in it.” I received
a package yesterday
of impossibly wrapped
fall leaves. They came
uncrushed I felt freaked out
by it I

don’t know

what in me

is always looking

for things to

fall apart

DETROIT

not to shrink away
from loneliness
but to BE with it
eating hot dogs
with mustard
alone at the bar