Spring Lament
this spring is like that man in the white
shirt
radiating heat even from his thumbs
standing so close we steal each other’s air
a wedding band glaring on his finger
The Elevator
This house has an elevator.
It descends down a concrete shaft
To a bomb shelter that was built
When Kennedy was president,
When the idea of actual
Apocalypse, so commonplace
To people now, was still quite new
(To most Americans, at least.
Second Time Going
My father died on the June morning
of my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary,
and the next year, grief caught me by the throat,
silenced all words but no.