Charlie

doesn't have time to waste, I guess
He took my hand to cross the street
but he did it wrong, crossed his left hand
over my right
but I didn't correct him

When he kissed me goodnight he missed

and I'm a little confused as to why he
kissed my forehead before he left
and what about me made him nervous enough
to respond "You too" when I wished him
a good West Coast tour
because I'm definitely not going anywhere

and he's leaving in three days so

The Last Morning in New York (after Frank O'Hara)

At seven-thirty I board the 5 train to Wall Street
wearing knee-length jersey dress in an effort to look
like perhaps it was casual Friday
I sit kitty-corner from a tall thin
quiet-looking black girl with green hair
and a black gemstone in the middle of her forehead
and I think, "Thank goodness people like you
still exist in New York" (but not enough to make me
stay) "and I hope you are as genuine
as you appear to be"
She is ostensibly the only other person
in the car not headed to the office
and I think about all these people
going from subway car to cubicle to
subway car to studio apartment
and I look forward to the afternoon
by which time I will be in the expanse of
the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts
where there are a lot less boxes

The hotel turns out to be pretty bougie
so I walk through the revolving door as though
I have been staying there for several days
and know where I belong
Thankfully I ride the elevator alone
I consider taking a selfie in front
of the hotel room door (1705)
especially considering I have been standing here
for at least three minutes (but I'm not sure
how long it's really been because
I smoked a joint in my parents' empty apartment
before coming here) contemplating
whether or not I actually want to be here
and when I finally knock on the door
I know he's standing on the other side
staring at me through the peephole
doing the exact same thing

Thirteen

Everyone I have ever slept with has told me that my watch ticks too loud. On my twentieth birthday my boyfriend traced our initials in wet cement and I thought about wiping them out because they were crooked. I have scars on my fingers from putting out candle flames. My dentist pulled out fourteen of my baby teeth and asked me questions with his hand in my mouth. I wanted to save all of my baby teeth and make a necklace but I lost most of them. I have fainted twice: once in the shower and once during night class at NYU. When I was three my dad told me that John Lennon was dead and I sat down on the sidewalk and cried. When I was six Alison Heller’s mother wouldn’t buy me french fries from Jackson Hole and I sat down on the sidewalk and cried. Alison Heller’s mother calls me every three months to ask me where she is but usually I don’t know, and when I do, I don’t tell her. I never told my parents about the open container ticket or that the cops made my friends box each other and took pictures with their cellphones. When I was eight I cut my own hair and my mom kept the clippings in an envelope in her sock drawer until I asked for them back. Our dog Sadie died in the trunk of the car on the way home from the vet’s office and I dug her grave with a plastic shovel.

For Leona

When I finally went,

you held my toe and told me

“Well, Ralph,

now I can crank up the AC

and you won’t complain”

The big black dog cried

and the Jamaican nurses cried

and you read Kaddish in transliteration

from a sheet of printer paper

Your mother did not roll over

in her grave, though you thought

she would

The grandchildren remember how

I hid the afikomen in the same place

every Passover (under my chair)

and they remember my suspenders

and starched shirts, how I never bought smaller ones

even though I was shrinking

Please remind them

that I used to sit at the head of the dinner table,

that I took them sailing,

that I told them

I loved them

even though I thought it might be

too late

(Oh, and the big black dog

His ears wouldn’t point like that if I hadn’t

wrapped them in medical tape for

his first few months

home, you know

Please tell him I’m sorry

I couldn’t take him to the park)

And Leona,

I knew

from our first date when I slipped

on ice on 43rd Street -

found a diamond frozen there,

brushed off the frost with a warm glove,

never would have found it if I

hadn’t fallen

So even though it might be late now

like it was those last few nights I slept

in a bed next to ours

I would like you to know

that even though I was your rudder

for fifty-four years, I will always

be your bay

Ghazal for Archie

We buy our first bed.

We eat honey in bed,

fuck between sticky sheets,

get stuck in bed.

We set off smoke alarms

sharing cigarettes in bed.

From the second story window

we watch moles burrow in the flowerbed.

The sun casts longer shadows.

We can’t stay here in bed.

You trace my lips with a hangnail.

I clip your nails in bed.

Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, Morris Plains, NJ

A grey New Jersey morning
woke up topless in an ex-boyfriend’s bed
just to go to some abandoned asylum
Drove for twenty minutes and crouched
behind cars and bushes,
scampering to the busted deadbolt
although the security guards probably
didn’t care all that much
I was wearing a red hat
They could have seen me
if they wanted to

Ginsberg, let me tell you,
I have been to Greystone’s halls and they’re still
foetid, the paint is peeling,
the floors are puddles,
it’s empty mostly
I looked for your friends in the hydrotherapy tubs
just found debris and old moss
Climbed out of my skin
and into a glass box
no bottom  –  Cold,
barefoot,
posing for
flashbulbs,
goosebumps (they show up
on camera), flashbulbs,
crawled out ten pounds thinner
crawled back in
found five dozen white-glad rotators squeaking
along linoleum, wheels over the soft moss lurking underneath
squeak over able arms and legs, atrophied,
my magnetic knees collecting
nails and rust, flashbulbs,
goosebumps
glass
pamphlets
anything
my fingers
can wrap around

I laid out in the parking lot
a doorknob, a deer skull,
easter egg lithium pamphlets,
crack them open with my teeth, like a sailor,
like someone who has never been told no,
you’ll break
your teeth
that way.

The First Day of School

I. Me

I was among

the last of fourteen (ten went home

before third period

but not before we filed past

Ms. Bateman clutching the phone

and crying)

Ten fingers

wrapped around my mother’s arm

walking the two blocks home

she told me

and then

the smoke

and paper

and I smelled

it.

II. Him

Light-up sneakers kick under the table

His eyes on my mother’s

fingers peeling

egg white from yolk

And he says

to the blonde lady with the nice purse

“There are bombs downtown.

You’ll die.”