I look familiar

I’ve been to Serbia

To Bosnia

And Croatia

I svugdje

Sam “nasa Maja”

Because I love

Food, white stone,

Thick woods

The faint smell

Of smog liquor winter

Urine in alleyways

Soup in the afternoon

Because I know the

Formalities of church

Crocheted doilies, miniature gilt frames

Because I grew up ironing underwear

And athletic socks

Because I know which men

Will push you around

Because my hips are wide

And I have a mole on my cheek

My eyes are old

And savagely European

Because I wear tall boots and

black pants and gold jewelry

Whenever possible

Because I smoke cigarettes

At cafes and will not say no

To coffee or kisses

Because I have stood overlooking

Sarajevo,

I am Theirs

I am their Maja. 

Geographic Portraits Part II. (inside of 495)

Close geography

Becomes sticky-

Eloquence is frilly

In the face of day.

Martina is home,

She is a queen wrecked

And rebuilt into a warrior.

Her hands are practically used

collecting ocean and wind,

she wades and waits

With the persistence of tide.

Marcia is on magazine street

Robust, ready, such freedom now

In her measured movement.   She is

North ramified, she is a core.

Blau flutters, is a leaf on a bare tree

You can’t help but stare at, the thin thread

Of its survival in the resolute winter.  She creates,

She has become whole. I watch.
Alan always, 

in all ways, Alan.

He is with me in

the wide woods, 

one long afternoon

in the pocket between worlds. 

Alyssa is a midwife in all things

Praising and mending old skin

To still stretch.  She leaves knives 

under my bed to cut the pain. 

Matt is on west 5^th

His roof deck is a ship,

A suspension from earth, the last look

At the beginning of one last trip.  

Jacqui I imagine in the back T.V room

of the house on Woodland road,

It's funny, 
to think of us as real women.

Geographic Portraits Part I. (outside 495)

I love geography

Map making moving

Each thumbtack

Marks a three dimensional love

Contracting actual space.

Tim is in Texas learning to fly planes

I imagine the desert

The hot thickness, the ruffled edging of brown scrub.

Delph is somewhere in the evergreen places of the Northwest

Rainy and wet and breathing

A time drip of water and mood.

Kristen is in Chicago now

And desperately misses Denver

As any good New Yorker should.

Her messy landscape I miss

The explosion of clothing out of her closet

The ethereal and real style of someone thinking graphically.

Nick is in Nairobi,

How alliterate, like a children's book.

I wonder what they think of Paul Walker doppelgangers in Africa.

He calls my cell phone 

(from Africa!)

And I remember sliding down train tracks together

Slow moving through my home city.

Luke is in Worcester

He works at his mother’s tree nursery and he came over and diagnosed our ailing hemlocks.  I love him unconditionally-

A paper covered creation of unconvention (and convention)

An electronic artist.

Bart is in New York

And keeps an excel spreadsheet

Of books read.  I still think about summers on the cape

The weak wind on the protected sea stairs. Will we always be kids?

Other Tim (also New York, soon New jersey)

Is getting married in November.

I drove the Lynnway late night in high school

To be in the sickness-free space

Of his kitchen. 

I like thinking of Jon in Nashville

All the music and bbq-he has finally departed South Boston.

I’ve written quite a bit about him.  He is in shaped pieces for me,

Complete ideas, forms, sounds, he is muse-ic.

Scott is in California

He watched me put make-up on one night before a party and I felt foolish.  It’s important

To be around people that know and expect your unembellished self. 

Standing on the continental divide in the snow,

I was happy, my friend.  

After reading some Ledo Ivo and being jealous of his home description skills

My home is a universe

Smaller

A pale planet

Smaller

An orb, a green profusion of moss

smaller

A lump crust land

A slow valley between two belly-hills

A city block acrid plastic and sidewalked

One house planted, a door.

A place at the table

On the hard bench without pillows

Not language,

Not specific space.

But a color

A nuisance

The pleasure of crackers

And coffee. 

Larger and larger

The drowning of feelings

Female and common

A creation.  

(untitled)

A requiem

For a friend

Eating popcicles

One after another

In the heat.

Stay awhile sunset

and change

the shape taste 

of things.  

Saturday commute community

Sloppy students late night

after work I want to tell them

I'm coming home from WORK

get off my train.

Then I tell myself to be patient

because I am only two years out

and I must have been sloppy sometimes.

Like that time I threw up in a trashcan

at Kenmore and as I did it I thought

"I am THAT girl." Or when I walked across Boulder barefoot in the rain

because I did not give a fuck

and my feet hurt.

And I think about how tiring it is

to talk mindlessly

and how walking home alone is easiest. 

and how I got this way is giving homage

to time, and pain, and time. 

And freedom whispers, is mist until

your spirit is crisp specific and true

and that takes loss, the recognition of

the one start and one finish that exists.

Birth, death.  In between is simply breath.

And each breath is you.

But I am still on the train, 

it is still late

and I regret not taking the bus until I realize

ALL public transport has been infected 

with the Boston University virus

which tends to emerge in one of two broad

categories of bacteria:

Skank and Bro. 

They'll get it, eventually,

and eventually I won't care anymore

but just at that moment I want to cry

and slap a few of them

shake them like their fathers used to

and ask: "what the hell are you doing? Don't you know that's not safe? Don't you know?"

Cancelled wedding

Like a subscription

A membership

A credit card

An order and delivery. 

Waiting for clean lines,

but smoke does not obey

geometry and neither

do we.