# data[].attributes.body
04/04/19

Q&A

And what kind of man did I need to be marrying?

My dad said: boys come much later than 17 years of life, so stop talking.

My mom said: anyone you want, just not white.

Last summer said: you better move out of Oak Park if you ever want to get married.

But sometimes no one said anything.

And my best friend and I bond over the fact that boys do not have to be

marriage proposals.

Can be as simple and easy as the cashier at 7/11.

He knows your one medium mediocre coffee at 8am before you go to work,

and the chocolate donut you pick up for your brother on the way back home.

# data[].attributes.body
04/02/19

Up In The Air

There is something about airplanes

that no amount of yoga sessions can fix

for my mother.

Something in the way the liquid in her ear

will change pressure

and always gives her a “mom” expression.

Eyes closed, lips creased, eyebrows

wrinkling from attempting to hold hands.

She says this is the way she looked

when Christian fell out of his friend’s treehouse.

When Cam cut his ear open.

When I was born.

There is something in the way your mother hurts

that is different than any other hurt.

# data[].attributes.body
04/01/19

The Streets at Dawn

Are the same color I think she wishes

she could always be.

Not the color of Dawn itself,

but next to it.

A reflection of melted pink and blue and orange.

Give the beholder something to interpret.

My cousin has always named colors

in terms of nature,

whereas I’ve only thought about it in terms

of coffee.

My skin is either macchiato after you stir it,

or the pond when you toss in a handful of earth

and mix it with a stick.

And I think this is why she is the only one

in my family with blue eyes in a

leaf pile of brown.

# data[].attributes.body
>>>4/10 - "Junk Mail"

# data[].attributes.body
>>>4/9 - "Dancing around a secret"

# data[].attributes.body
>>>4/9 - "A Good Day"

Sitting on the train
But tingling through a new world,
fondling the details

# data[].attributes.body
>>>4/5 - "Roadside attraction"

It takes an hour
to pass Elk Mountain
cruising along I-80
in early January
on the way to
my second family,
a rolling witness
to a familiar
and unfamiliar
America, hoping
the snow fences
hold.

# data[].attributes.body
>>>4/4 - "10 Things"

1. That poem that showed how one word can work on five different levels.
2. That poem with that devastating parenthetical expression in the last stanza
3. That poem where, when it broke the line, I fell off the cliff
4. That poem about the flowers that was really about the power of memory and imagination
5. That poem with the woman in it who was alone and liked it that way
6. That poem where you made it clear I didn't understand your poetry -- or really anything about you
7. That poem about a dead deer on the edge of the road.
8. That poem you wrote from the trenches that shamed us all
9. That poem
10. This poem

# data[].attributes.body
>>>4/3 - "Ask/answer a ?"

Wandering the halls
of the house I have always
lived in, I try to rearrange
the furniture one more time,
but it only changes the positions
and perspectives, not the rigidity
of the foundation.

Give me a jackhammer,
but I am afraid
my arms are too weak.
Give me explosives,
but I am afraid
I will blow myself up along with it.

I would move, but the house would
remain, haunted.

So I think,
if I can get up the courage,
I'm going for
a gut rehab.

# data[].attributes.body
>>>4/2 - "Up in the Air"

On bright brisk
early Spring morning,
I look up
at the sky.
An airplane contrail
rips across
the blue.
I remember
as a child
I used to think
those markers
of progress
were so cool.

# data[].attributes.body
>>>4/1 - "Streets at Dawn"

My morning horizon
is cut by tracks, elevated.
My first sunrise is
the Kimball-bound Brown Line cars
letting me know I need to
pick up the pace. I hustle
by sleeping shops and empty
crosswalks. I look up at "Loop ... Due," glowing from the one
monitor hanging over the street,
under the tracks. I race
through the doors, pat my card
on the sensor, and turn into
my transitory commuter world.
I jump up steel steps, two
at a time and hit the platform
just as the cars are moving by.
I jog to my usual spot, three
cars from the end, slide into
the window-facing seats, open
my novel, and start my journey.