More on: Poetry

Children practice first person
by choosing

between red and green,
dog and cat.

Holy Tuesday, a bag of dried figs
left with our stroller

She wondered

if two sips of lite beer had ruined her
lip gloss.

But somehow I caught on, a matzoh crumb of hope,
a teaspoon of charoset sweet-and-spicy on my tongue.

if God was the Blank that washed the world so clean

then I was crouched inside the carapace

Mother didn’t teach me how to slice a cucumber so thinly that you could see through each slice, a world looming misty and gentle.

chopsticks diving
deep into the bone

As a kid I remember trying
to watch myself fall asleep.
Trying to observe that precise moment
when I was no longer there.

In a Weigh Down Workshop once I was taught to recognize true signs of hunger. They taught me to stave off those feelings— with a half glass of juice and a little prayer. They said what I felt was spiritual hunger, that I must learn to be fed with spiritual food. I lost thirty-six pounds.…

Ah! That honey-baked ham.