When the toll booth sign says
Please don’t stop
I sigh and say, here we go.
Once again, everything is sexy
and the world wants to swallow
me whole. Pushing D69
on the vending machine? Sexy.
Taking the top off
of the recycling bin?
So sexy. Cracking open an ice-cold
sparkling water with a French-sounding
flavor like pamplemousse? Le Sexy.
And yes maybe it's my hormones trying
to trick me into another iteration of God
be fruitful and multiply
‍or maybe it's just you tending to the garden
that I promised I would water and never
do and yet here you are in your gray
gym shorts and this is the summer
of cucumbers as big as my want
and I’m holding an empty salad bowl
waiting for you to come inside.

Friends, I have come to the end of my rope.
My child has decided that he is the moon
and I cannot convince him otherwise. His entire
face a moon, not a man in the moon, but a toddler
that is the moon, and yes he does give off light
in the darkness and yes some days he pulls the ocean
current towards his body and yes I’ve noticed
that when I take him to poetry readings
or art museums everyone cannot help but stop what
they are doing and begin to draw pictures of him
with images or language and yes there was of course
that one incident where someone shoved an American
flag into his back and yes, it was one small step for the boys
who marked him but a giant leap for me
across the playground and friends there was
that Halloween when he decided to dress like a bat
and a broken superhero showed up on our doorstep
and I had only peanuts to give him
when what he really needed was
purpose, I guess what I’m saying is I don’t know
how to parent the moon and now I’m making this about me
because the scientists are telling us that the moon
is drifting away from the Earth and I gotta admit
most days my gravitational pull
is a dilapidated hug at best
and friends did you know
that scientists predict that the moon was made
when a rock smashed into the Earth
and the more I look at my
son’s birth photos the more I see my body
ripped open by my sun, no wait by my
moon who invites me into the space
of his playroom and smiles
with the fullness of his face
And I guess what I’m trying to say
is yes, I have been eclipsed by love.

Someone has accidentally set the forest on fire
and having clocked in for the day I turn
this catastrophe into a little poem.
Some days writing feels like this
an animal presents itself to you
and asks to be remembered
maybe the rabbit chewing dandelions in your yard
or the bat gliding over your head in the auditorium.
As much as you may want to move on, the animals
will follow. Today is a quiet day and I am stuck
checking inventory. The things I don’t want to remember
I shove in drawers that no one will open,
memories where I was harmed,
no, memories where I was loved.
At the market in Odessa
my grandfather waits for me.
It is my turn to haggle over
the price of strawberries,
once again I am too American
for this moment, he wants me to
do what I have been taught to do
he wants me to survive. He is of course
dead, leading me through this life
by hiding images throughout the world,
used paper towels that I have learned to
fold and store beneath the sink, half-rotten tea
bags that I will return to the soil, and pickle
jars that now hold soup and rainwater.
Back at the market, I follow my grandfather
through the meat section and stop
at the butchered animals
be specific he tells me
and I return to my desk
to write about the concrete apartment
building where my grandfather
watered white roses on our balcony
in Odesa, where bombs now fly
into buildings, into this building
‍into the cracked sink
and pictures of dead
relatives and the rug nailed
to the wall that my father
smuggled on a train
from Czechslovakia
and the books, and the old
domino set with the carving
of the naked woman on the
cover, tits out and bush on fire
and oh the crystal shot glasses
that only remnant from my grandfather’s
wedding, the day he married a woman
who made the best syrniki in the world.
Here,

sit down and eat.