left uninspired by the crust of railroad earth

03.24.2026 -

in traveling letters from you,
I feel that we too could visit Barcelona,
or a far off European museum
filled with righteous Athenian romances;
in lieu of studying the curves of their form,
we’d rather find ourselves taking in our bodies,
yours being far more
interesting.

04.01.2026 - new skin for the old ceremony

do you remember how thin
the light was in the middle of your
january? tell me again of the body
culled from the creek, how your calves
stiffened at the thought of
me. each spring
I remind myself of your neck’s
porcelain and plum scent,
rosewater cheeks, how I watched
their colour machinate with the light
of weeping bottlebrushes.
a gleam of honey
glosses across our faces,
and I consider the cattails
holding you back before raising you out:
hair half in air, hair half spread
underneath. for a moment,
I imagine myself jealous of them.

Spoiler

I can tell you that she has a lure, so that if you met her you wanted to know her. she is friendly but private. it is a privilege to know her, like, to have her let you know her. that’s the insular part; you have to remember that you are not entitled to someone’s interiority.

04.02.2026 -

you weren't the poetic one,
but I read Kaddish and thought of you:

of a 2005 beach photo, Sussex somewhere,
as I remember you, a bit younger;
of sweet peroxide blonde, hiding brunette. I was
naive to the dye until I saw you in Rembrandt light,
or the family portraits, with you, aged seven,
in a dress and bright red bow;

of youthful snapshots: Edinburgh (4),
with parents in Kent (8), some snowy place (14),
painting the house with your brother (20);
of latter digital images from my camera, 2024,
more gaunt, yet seemingly ageless;

of care and trust and overdone vegetables, gravy,
brussel sprout production lines - mundane memories
at a breakfast bar or marble kitchen tops;
of seaside trips, taking the long route,
of picking roses from the garden for perfume,
with sticky hands, wet, sickly smells;

of my sister's wedding,
of early morning rude awakenings,
met only with cheer and offers of lukewarm tea;
I still have your butter tray on my desk
(hospitable even in death).

Spoiler

I miss my mom, but I am always so thankful for the growth she had inspired within me; like everyone else, I was a stupid teenager, and I am so grateful that she saw through my "mean" facade that I really leaned into back then. though, that was a long time ago, and times are different now, and maybe I am mean with a near-year of loss. might get rid of this one soon.

04.02.2026 - like Cary Grant in the movies

the Montana plains
(planes, plain) stretch eastward beyond you;
sumptuous emptiness pocked with
the 14 hour streetlight of the sun,
I joke that you are out of a
Kerouac novel.
you are out of your mind
and in everything else.

I walk away, pretend
that I finally retrieve
your cigarette from my pocket,
read the smoke like your
poetry.

Spoiler

thought of this on my lunch break, dedicated to an old friend. I hope the road is treating you well and wish you all the best in your travels. I also hope that we will meet again someday. much love.

04.03.2026 - kafka on the shore

Murakami came to me
in short bursts of memory as if the life of a typewriter
was a retro invention sinking the ancient sea bona fide.
your sentimentalist finds your lips
as he finds his tear ducts.
that’s our little revolution:
cherubic page numbers just waiting
for the computer evolution to do something
worthwhile.

04.04.2026 - "the night will pass" / Yiską́ writes of John Wayne

Yiską́ and I sat cross-legged on the ground,
floating listlessly in a dream
down the ski slopes of Arizona
without feeling in the face or hands.
we laid down in the white light of daybreak
which saw the perspectives reverse
and shorten
only to lengthen again.
he reminds me that your stranger
sees a desert and thinks of emptiness,
missing the intricate geometry of the Hogan,
the sacred directions that anchor a life to the cardinal points.
I put my fingers to my temples, try to bring the poems together,
try to imagine my Kaddish hands unearthing
something beautiful. I say to him,
“tell me another story!
tell me the one about the cowboy,
the one when your papyrus was just
desert dust!”

Spoiler

Navajo organizes nouns into a hierarchy of animacy (how sentient the referent of a noun is), something like: humans/lightning -> infants/big animals -> midsize animals -> small animals -> insects -> natural forces -> inanimate objects/plants -> abstractions. “where do poets fall in that hierarchy? are they lesser creatures?” this is not what the poem is about, of course, but it might as well be.

04.05.2026 -

I was just in the shower
after a harrowing time away from it.
thoughts scattered and fell over,
I felt like the dead
fumbling at the start of morning:
dew in the Lyceum in London before
it all makes sense again.

04.06.2026 - ars (ours) poetica

curiously, I thought of Frank O’Hara
the day after the day I did not get
run over by a truck on Franklin Avenue.
I toss Lunch Poems atop the third step
of the stairs to our apartment
where I begin to write this poem, huddled into
my cellphone as if I were in silent debate with a lover,
only sitting to make a point.

you must begin with one block of prose
framed against the entrance wall.
my head is clear because it is expelled each night
into a phone; my face left itself impressioned
on the pillow to map Madrid, or even further,
Japan, with our poetry touching like constellations
upon the rest of the empty spatial plaster.
I see no impossibilities with you,
our words pressing against solemn
and still in some bright yellow cab wedged
between the bustling bikes and buses
of New York City.

(it is only appropriate
because you are as aesthetically striking
as a skyscraper, because your mind
is as vibrant as every neon light guiding me
like a moth back to the lamp of you.)

Spoiler

I keep thinking about Frank O’Hara and how poems can just happen in the middle of everything. this is how it feels when I write lately: on my phone, thinking about someone, in between places, etc. not sure if that makes sense, but it did at the time.

04.07.2026 - Montauk, New York

it's cold in the gut,
like that first time you had
to throw a trout back, even after
the hook had reached through its left eye.
cold like the flapping of blackfish
in a bush asphyxiating
as if I have all day. I'd love
to jump from the caves of Anchorage
into the Pacific with you.

I listen to fragments of your poetry
even in your void; sleeping without you,
I am a singular and diverse habitat.
if I could no longer rest my head
on your collarbone,
I’d stare at my palms all day.
I'd wait until they found your lifeline.