Poetry

Mount Vernon, NY, summer 2001

Sitting on the concrete steps in the back of my grandma’s house, 
our dad shows us how to burn paper 
with a magnifying glass. Says people kill ants this way, 
how cruel it is. It was true: the magnifying glass’s gaze

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I was participating fully in Life,

or so my calendar said,

when I had the spiritually extravagant

gift of being heart-struck,

standing before a painting.

I put a poem

in your backup jewelry box,

the one you keep

at the bottom of the taxes from 2003

in order to foil the inevitable burglars,

Flagged to a halt by a woman in boots
and an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her

orange flag on the highway yesterday in
the first flurries of the season and watched