i wrote poems!
A sonnet for Sarit, and summer nights
I try to count my teeth by running my tongue
along them, but I’m ticklish on the roof of my mouth -
I’m distracted into something beautiful, familiar,
sitting in a yellow room writing poems
about a blue piece of paper, then heading out - to you.
We can find out what steel, inch worms and angels
share in a small town, and we can carry each
other brightly around like the sun and the moon do.
My tongue feels a few crooked teeth, then rests,
and I could make a silk and corduroy quilt
from the song you sing me, it helps me determine
the color of tonight’s sky, before our tongues cojoin.
Summer Safe
The moon’s curve is like
a butterfly’s bottom wing,
and there’s a lizard in the clouds
that my windshield lets me see.
The lizard is gray, the sky green
like a leaf, and like the rest
of the butterfly. My car
has become my place of music,
cool, and revelry, its windows
keep out the rainforest
heat and humidity, as well as the face
of the man who pumped my gas
at the station today. He didn’t
know the word “tip” and after
he got so close, I was
glad. I drove away
in my temple, thinking that the moon,
feminine but always housing
a man’s face, could be my god, the little part
of the butterfly, the ringlets that
drip onto your forehead like tropical
hanging ivy, playing a bass
that will never scare the butterflies away.
I try to count my teeth by running my tongue
along them, but I’m ticklish on the roof of my mouth -
I’m distracted into something beautiful, familiar,
sitting in a yellow room writing poems
about a blue piece of paper, then heading out - to you.
We can find out what steel, inch worms and angels
share in a small town, and we can carry each
other brightly around like the sun and the moon do.
My tongue feels a few crooked teeth, then rests,
and I could make a silk and corduroy quilt
from the song you sing me, it helps me determine
the color of tonight’s sky, before our tongues cojoin.
Summer Safe
The moon’s curve is like
a butterfly’s bottom wing,
and there’s a lizard in the clouds
that my windshield lets me see.
The lizard is gray, the sky green
like a leaf, and like the rest
of the butterfly. My car
has become my place of music,
cool, and revelry, its windows
keep out the rainforest
heat and humidity, as well as the face
of the man who pumped my gas
at the station today. He didn’t
know the word “tip” and after
he got so close, I was
glad. I drove away
in my temple, thinking that the moon,
feminine but always housing
a man’s face, could be my god, the little part
of the butterfly, the ringlets that
drip onto your forehead like tropical
hanging ivy, playing a bass
that will never scare the butterflies away.