Poetry

We have come together, the Board Chair begins,
for obvious reasons. In a time of great division, this table—
he raps his knuckles against the oak
for emphasis

Please scream / inside your heart: hold / your terror, your errors, your // regrets apart / from those around you.

They call it kneading / as in dough or massage, this act // of pawing at my bathrobe / by kittens.

Sometimes, a teacher proposes / we write about something / insignificant, or a friend requests // that poems and posts not get so  / political.

In the Old Dictator’s obituary, a charming anecdote—

When the Old Dictator was a boy, his father saved his wages
for a month to buy his son a watch.

My daughter learns I’m there / even when I am not. I name this trust

We understood it / to be suffering, its beak a little open.

With the right sponge and brush, you could / paint these walls to look like marble. In the two-story / foyer, the previous owner left a giant painting / of southwestern pots.

When we moved with our first newborn / into this ’70s raised-ranch house, / I pretended some benevolent ghost / could soothe him.

Of course they sing—/ we have given them / no other verb.