Litmus Test
I am thinking of the tongue
after a popsicle, of Shibboleth,
of the flier’s detachable fringe.
Of mildness: milk and blood.
Of pungency: vinegar, lye.
Of Polaroids and invisible ink.
I am thinking of ponderous
results: a hydrangea that finally
flowers vermillion or sky.
Scarcity
On earth we major in the math
of paucity and paunch: calculus
of famine on abacus ribs, ratio
of rare sirloin to common glutton.
There is on earth no dearth of ways
for us to be in want, connoisseur
or hoarder, starvling or lech. Sadsack
who hefts life only to deem it meager:
on those who find being wanting
but do not want, scarcity tells most.
The Park at Night
At night it is another country, its hospitality
a mere cat door. Not only the feral enter. Kids,
limber, faster than the cops who chase them,
steal in under the cover of a darkness they burst
tossing cherry bombs from slides. The park closes
at dark, but some warm evenings, I see a woman
shaking samaras from a Vellux blanket—not as
denouement; she is readying herself for anything
rather than going. The park closes at dark, but
before first light, I see a man sit up and stretch
in a pavilion where, on weekends, nine moms
salute the sun. It would be too soft were I to tell you
the park is safe at night, but to say its trespassers
could not be innocents—that would be too hard.
Poem Meant to Be Opened
No one is asking you to wrestle the lid
from the relish or to extract corks
from bottles. Leave the silver ringlet
in the drawer. The poem is ajar.
The poem is a jar of raspberries no one
means to preserve, a palm to its rim
to keep off flies. Take my hand.
Pour the downy fruits in your mouth.
This world is made for joy
No one is denying that of this world
we have made a million joyless
things: landfills, bumpstocks,
caste. In roe, plastic gristle;
in children, lead. In case,
the suicide note.
How is it,
then, that we tarry on this side
of the ultimatum, unready
to depart this cruel world
made for joy?
Well, there’s this:
sometimes when we say in case,
what we mean is that we are bluffing
on the strength of the bees
who stuff their leg warmers
with gold dust, and sometimes
when we say hope, we mean small fry,
herring just hatched, an effervescing
pond. My claim on joy is this:
once a pediatrician asked my son
if it was his middle name.
So when I say this world
I mean wonders and I mean
signs taken for wonders, all of it.
I mean the grocer who wagged
a wet pompom of cilantro at us
like it was hyssop. You can’t tell me
that water wasn’t holy, as the water
is holy when a man not unused
to rain gets caught, biking home,
not just in rain but in more
than a downpour, when his mild
epithets turn to whooping
on his tongue. Even later, he will
not be able to tell it without
laughter, without incredulity; he will
not say cloudburst or torrent;
he will say, The heavens opened.
Sometimes they do. Sometimes
a child at three writes a note
in unproven runes and tapes
it to the sling where her infant sister
bucks. When I say hope, I mean
that when their mother asks,
the toddler reads the runes:
Cordelia, this world is made for joy.