• We put the car in neutral

    Your face looks different now
    Cast under the shade of time
    Instead of under the curve of my hands,
    You can see it plainly
    That your life is a pinprick
    Or a quarter for a slot machine,
    That we’ve been breathing in fumes
    All this time and never noticed.
    The house shifts on its loose plates
    You lick your lips in the kitchen
    Chapped, forgotten things
    We don’t know what to do with the stove
    When to add the salt, or how much
    But here we are, making a memory
    Here we are, making a home
    Here we are, thrashing like two fish,
    Throwing ourselves onto the deck
    Wondering where our bodies went.

  • La habana

    I make a wish on the blue night,
    On a star named « havana »
    It’s all the light I’ve ever known,
    Hanging there by one hypnotic thread

    Stray cats sun their skeletons,
    The men wave their brooklyn caps,
    While we walk along the malecón
    Speaking indifferently about love

    The heat gets into everything,
    Finds the soft spots,
    Lays me down to rest at night
    And reveals the allure of a new morning

    You would be beautiful anywhere
    Elaborate and rich with ruin,
    Faces surrounding you with the same questions:
    How long? How much? How?

    I pray to the city, I pray to her
    When you are the light I am bathing in,
    The light cast by a fixed star,
    Tired but pulsing, alive

  • Seasick

    My mother
    Reaches for my hand,
    Holds it for an hour, maybe longer,
    And I want to write about these moments,
    But there’s always something in the way.
    Right now, I’m seasick,
    Snorting dramamine and sweating,
    Stuck on the morning you left me alone
    In your house, TV on mute,
    Blinking like a noiseless siren.
    I am rocking in the belly,
    Dark tide betraying my mind
    And there is your face in the doorway:
    I didn’t know if you were coming home.
    All I can think is, I’m here
    And here is where I’ve always been,
    Numb on a reupholstered couch
    Waiting for sound.
    In this version, I am seasick all the time,
    Predicting motion
    At the exact wrong time.