Poetry
We are afraid/
of junior high school students and the nauseating things /
they say among their own kind.
after the pink peonies die, their heads droop,/ petals begin their falling,
I am surrounded by streets/
half dark, half lit, by high rises/
sheathed in metal and glass,
I’m inside this body that doesn’t work / the way it did before, as if all my angles / were filed down.
For minutes,/
I watch his heart: ventricles contracting,/
blood pumping – my other silent pulsing center
She called me to pick her up, but by the time I drove to the block,/
three men in total pandemic suits were walking her out.
Think your lungs a forest cleared./
Your breath winged/
as if it had a better place to go