Poetry

This is the year strangers
will say terrible things

about you 

There would have been chaos,
confetti mined from the cliffs
of Michoacán. 

The “Lyric I” tied its sheets together and flew the coop, confessed itself off the balcony.

All the rain in the world

is falling, making
a door you can’t open.

We made a dance of all the ways

we’d hurt our bodies.

I wanted to play Gabriel in a tinsel crown,
but was cast as the Little Drummer. I hoped
to carry the crucifix, to ferry the chalice
down the long corridor of St. Aloysius

The forest opens wide then closes once

After curbing what hasn’t sold

I sit across the street and spy on people

taking what this morning was mine.