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Flagged to a halt by a woman in boots
and an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her

orange flag on the highway yesterday in
the first flurries of the season and watched

Bridget is on her way to Mong Kok to buy a goldfish. She’s been told that they bring good luck.

I’m docked at a lake that

the people don’t attend. 

Machete on my hip to 

make a devil cough up 

A paycheck. A nadir. Hired as accompaniment
for sequined swimmers in an amphitheater in Queens.
To keep the band working. A footnote.

It must be so hard to be Miles Davis

and a ghost, and to sit in my kitchen

as I squeal along on a dime-store horn

Venezuela’s Stalled Revolution

Give me memories as 

slow to leave as snails. 

In foreign    and perhaps 

fragile years    I’ll still be able 

Mount Vernon, NY, summer 2001

Sitting on the concrete steps in the back of my grandma’s house, 
our dad shows us how to burn paper 
with a magnifying glass. Says people kill ants this way, 
how cruel it is. It was true: the magnifying glass...