Vipers don't need to pine or coil 

They loll on large temples 

Languidly scanning 

Soaking up sun

Undisturbed and focused 

Listening 

I spot them so easily 

it makes no difference if they have the triangular head because they don't really move 

they're not supposed to leave that beautiful space 

Just know that if you're clumsy 

at sunset

that's when you're a nuisance.  

Stepping on the loose Path 

as they make their routine glide 

back to their cool rock.  

That's on you.  

Why not just stay on that temple 

watch the sunset 

and go home after dark.  

It's your sunset too and the dark is not scary.  

You can be the carrier pidgeon.  
You can never stop you can never soften 
you can be you you can be childless 
you can be scathing 
you can be a killer 
you can play chess around me and move on every square 
you can be the queen or the king or the night or the wing. 


I want to touch that wing is all.   
And wrap myself through this carpet.   
Let me thread myself inside your being I'm not here to hurt you


You can leave and leaving can be our arrival.  
Leaving can be our language.   
We can learn to love leaving.   
Leaving each other can be our bliss and our connection 
leave me a million different ways 
from different parts of me next to yours.  

Over my tiny speaker I hear
the tinny twang of his guitar strumming a gentle,
somber song of pleading devotion his voice lilting on lyrics
longing for his lover as I muse on you
o gentle mother
between us a river
may just as well be an ocean independence fireworks blossoming in undulating cacophony
every pop and burst
unsettling my love song
And he sings, “there goes my life”
My fingers ache
I’ve been twisted and ripped holding onto this life
and what lovely pose
did you strike
showing your starlets
your muscled modeling replete with Pilates perfection entreat to melt in my mouth the notes of song
when earlier I
sauntering down the sidewalk dared whistle and hum
dared tangle my arm in yours near Lincoln Center

You did signal me to come
your beacon oscillating
over radio waves and
routed signals from the Ethernet. and you tasted my breeze
and liked it
and I was scared but kind
I pine
for the delicate,
melting morsels of your work those stage strewn vignettes Where do you rest your head to close your eyes
to draw the shades on those kind, silken cornflowers where golden curled tresses lay warm on your cheek
after you’ve tucked in
your babies
and wiped clean
your lashes
And the bombs have stopped and the ashes
gently float to earth
and the rain now falls bending the bows
running rivulets
to wash the ash away
Would your heart flutter,
like mine?
Would you warm
my dark, rainy earth
with your sunshine?

not written by me

Wonderflesh wonderful wonder how I got this way, over the hill, two kids, a dirty apartment and no sex. It all comes from wishes and hope. The hope that someone will change or the wonder at someone's beauty. The awe in their ridges. The ridges of their jaw, their neck, their skin, their sac, I can't write scrotum. I'm too proper. But the wonder and awe of someone's body and how skin can fold on top of skin, like little bumpy waves and carry you under it, the flesh, or ride you beneath it, wondering how you got here. I got here because I made a choice that day during Fleet Week when we met. Yes, a sailor I picked up in Central Park; so not wonderful. And yet it was, in a way, to meet someone from so far, who steps off a boat and onto a bedrock island and walks to a park and meets his wife. I hate that word. Rather his Other, the admirer of his ridges and the candy of their swirling.
Now I wonder where this all works. Go back home to my children, to their wondrous flesh so puffy and soft. Their golden eyes and their wonder at me. They feel everything, they say it to the word.
"FUCK" from my two year old's mouth or "fuckin' underwear" from my four year old this morning. As in, "I don't want to wear those fuckin' underwear."
I fell into her comforter, my head fell into this sheet. Hold me up and cradle my head. This can't be where all this wonder ended up.
She said she copied mommy, or he said she "must have copied mommy" and so she repeated "mommy said it when she gets angry".
I wonder how it got to this? "Grab your shoes, not your golden shoes, fine, I'll take you to school."
The hug on 72nd Street, "it's going to be OK, it's going to be OK" and then my heart I hate so much, the one inside me that sees nothing and has amnesia.
I went to buy her a gift at the Toys 'r Us, and a Thomas the Train bag, for my wonderful two year old. They will be OK, Mamma will buy you a present.
And when I went to pay, the three ATM cards were missing from my wallet. "You should report it," said the teller. Drama avoidance alarm. I counted my bills, my quarters, my dimes and came up with thirty-four dollars and eighty two cents. I wonder how it came to this.
"I have your cards, you can get them when I see you" said the text message.
I looked down on the concrete in Times Square, sat in those red chairs and made a phone call.

I am named after my grandmother Paulina Friedman.

The Friedman's were jewish. 

This is the first time I ever wrote this down.  

My grandmother's Polish family lived in Warsaw and were sent to Lotz and from there they died in Auschwitz.

I don't ever acknowledge this because I was never told this fact.

I can't trace my ancestors. I can't pray for them in Hebrew, I can't even walk into a temple.  

My grandmother's niece was Giovanna Ukleja.  She married Roman Ukleja when they left Auchwitz, one of the few who survived.  I have been told that they met when he pulled her out of the line to the showers.  He was a Polish worker in the camp. 

I walked by the monument to the relatives of Auschwitz survivors my whole life, on Riverside and 83 Street, by the flower bed at the end of the path that starts at 96th street.  I learned to ride my bike on this path.   

I wish I could explain the sense of not belonging that I feel.  In a neighborhood where everyone is Jewish and I don't have the words to say I am one of you.  I am always floating under the Jewish people.  

I am an origami

Marriage is not like a math equation

Given a) exploitation

over, he doesn't pay for anything

then, b) neglect squared by n

n being we never go out

minus that time I ate those crazy good mushrooms at x

x being the insanely expensive restaurant on 19th street off Park

find x (who's name I forget)

Daddy used to live in a loft right down the street

I hate that whole street

How he forgot his weekend so I

called

his assistant from a pay phone

and she took me to Brooklyn to sleep under her big Boxer

who felt droolly nice

Apply this to the present

(Oh, the name for x is Craft)

When one is inside a Marriage Box

small things are mood altering,

admiring the Spring 2011 Marc Jacobs white silk dress

with happy big red yellow orange stripes in diagonal

Or wondering how I can transform the shower curtains I saw at Anthropologie into my window curtains (can shower curtains be so nice?)

Hypothetical curtains defined: layers of a blue Fez (Morocco) divided by white frilly frills that are more (the dog) Cock-a-Poo than linen

jingle

small things get me through the day.

And then I find myself declaring "absolutes"

in the vein of "I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore"

Confide (pause) I am exploited

Cry (not audibly) at the dive Big Nicks

(you gotta be from the Upper West Side to know about their free pickles.)

as I say to my husband:

I wanted a marriage that was EXPANSIVE,

to go to india

"you want to go to India?"

Unsaid: to go back to Madurai, east of Madras and rent a place by the sea

To EXPAND my world not become an origami

I am an origami

I made myself into an origami from this box

I like this pickle.

It was all about that he was tall

and that he was American american

He thinks it's about money, EXPENSIVE

Like I’m some rich girl

"Do you see me buying bags? ",

I blurted out in couples therapy.

I hear his dissmissive undercurrent: I'm "worldly."

How do you make a noun into an adverb?

as in: it's a sin to attach to this world

1/7/11

weary and rattled
can you really see my thoughts?

The gym blurred
and I was free to slide and jump
with abandon and clarity
It was only a dance class

I pulled away from my lines

down under my feet soared my fifth finger


big
small
in-in
turn
 forward
back
lean
grip

up
wind and
pull the eyes deeper
(free the neck look in front)
tail
reach
turn
(pull away from inside knee)
out
up
big toe big toe
up
slide up
reach
down
lengthen down
back of knee
open
down
line the back behind me
bow
heal
pivot
these were my thoughts
and there was joy
for all my twists were
contained and washed into becoming

Is there an eye watching?
God I offer myself to you
to do with me as thou wilt
take away my difficulties