Licht

cover art by @_sorrysorrysorry, Rachel Rosenfeld

Donuts

that I refuse to eat, lined in the window of Peter Pan,

for I want a new body but

get a haircut instead, rolling into the Red & Black again,

where you lounge in your barber’s chair, darksome

and gazing into your mirror, as if inside Versailles,

as if transposing what you dream

into a revolution of my senses, as if I had not

face planted into this shop and refused a beer

for seltzer. The narrative of my heart is Whitney

Houston’s How Will I Know? You softly bump

your crotch against me as you begin to buzz

the side of my head, what’s left from what fell out,

you who wear a pompadour, a white

tank top, and checkered tights; you regret that you

were the one in high school who pulled kids out

of the closet and told them they were queer; press me

against a locker, take me down with your strap-on;

you say that you just bought a beat-up car and cannot

wait to pick up a pretty girl: I have never done that before,

you say, as you taper the back of my head, and ask,

smiling, how much do you want off the front? a finger length?

What would it feel like to bind my chest and

let you undo the wrap and touch the breasts that I don’t have.

But I would not want to show what I tied up. Do you ever

touch your crotch and wish for what isn’t there? Squirming

a little in the chair, I talk to you about getting touched,

as a boy; you tell me you’re sorry. Why can’t I have your

infinite, starlike arms; you who could not

use the bathroom at a wedding without

someone trying to get you out of the women’s stall.

When I asked which pronouns you preferred, you said

you accept them all. We laugh as you lament

that your colleague wore the same pants as you

yesterday. What will I do for Pride,

you want to know. And would I like a hot towel?

You hold it against my eyes and brow; I breath in

its lavender scent, as if you’d raised a nosegay to me,

as if the aroma were yours, somehow; gently

you dab my forehead and brush my cheeks,

lifting the compression

from my face.

Thicket

Shed of missing

supplies, smell

of mulch, tight

pinch of his fingers,

the stick of skin

in bushes

under the window.

I let him make

me touch

him. Once, I saw

his mother standing

over us washing

dishes and

once, his father

must have heard

him from the garage

counting down

the seconds until

(he said)

he would stop.

In a room

in the house,

a portrait

of his mother

in tights. His father

was the chief

of police.

Alt-Right

Some Jewish people could be escorted

onto the train again

and would ask if there’s food in Dachau.

When you said you support the tyrant,

I mourned your loss.

I eat alone, debating with myself—

It is easy to say the dead are dead

but harder while they’re living.

Hundreds of crows fill the branches,

ballooning in swarms

above the river.

Early evenings, luminous sky, the frozen ground.

Wash Us Away

I never thought you were in love with me, but that’s why

you touched me.

My mother says that

I was so attractive as a child, people asked to take my photograph,

but what do the poses

of a child become?

Not being a model didn’t protect me.

Not being a child did.

I was protected and I am

loved. I was protected

and I am loved.

Now that I am unable to eat, my cheekbones show. I lie down,

thinking of you,

a flood rising across my body.

I scroll through photos, seeing you,

older now.

With a woman.

published in The Cortland Review

Licht

The yellow traffic light on Jürgen-Strasse

blinks through the pines,

and through the kitchen window,

the glow of the evening sun infests

the horizon. I put
away the forks, I put away

the forks, I put away the forks.
I put away the forks. Headlights pass.

A pile of loose cement,

cordgrass, guardrail.

Broken Open

and survived by wind.

Waiting for another storm

to send this beach beyond wreckage,

but where else could I go?

Boarding windows, listening for thunder,

give me liquor and I’ll worship.

First it never comes and then it never leaves.

Stuck in rot, rock,

shit, sand, and mud.

Noise ricochets across the inlet.

That the earth is drowning. That another flood will kill me.

Writing from the Tundra

I hate being a woman asleep

inside a man’s body;

at my window desk, in my Italian notebook,

I describe the concrete fields beyond my home,

smoke stacks lit up against a pink sky;

I feel most visible, flipping through the pages

of my work, seeing myself flicker in my words.

Unable to stop writhing, as if a fish hook

snagged my gills,

the line caught up in them,

the academic in me cannot tease it out;

writing about another poet, she becomes me,

a narcissism I hate.

Snow builds to the window each day.

And I feel myself breaking up into the wind.

My students know it. I discuss it with them,

this routine of meeting twice each week;

I tell them that I have given all I have to give.

Into the evening, pollutants disperse

from factories. A train makes a sharp,

austere sound,

as if shot, trying to escape.

Noël

When she touched his back, a cataract of drunk

and blue blocked my eyes: he might have been there

rising up to meet me, in my mind, not there in front of me, broad

shouldered, big chest, what she needed in bed, she being an animal

like everyone else: I am the animal of jealousy,

of ready-made hurt. In my jacket pocket, in a case,

I kept a pair of earrings, chalcedony, a light blue. 

I stood there, within the tree, like an antelope;

sheathed in smells of pine and bitterbrush,

swilling vodka, behind gifts, under glowing ornaments.

Waking in Red

If only moments of then

could sweeten me up

but I threw away my childhood

and have almost nothing left:

a pair of running sneakers broken

at the toe; a dried tulip from a date

who I left, in desire, over and over,

like pine needles scattered under 

the great tree, tipping over the roof 

of my room; what would have 

happened had I seen myself?

I loved listening to Little Wing: 

everything melts into / the sea, eventually. 

When I am 38, you said,

I will divorce and marry you. 

That seemed like a bottle flung out 

to the ocean from a burning ship.

Rats fled from me, eddies split and

broke with barrels of alcohol. Whale

semen surged and washed my deck.  

I thought you’d marry your abusive

boyfriend. That is the logic 

I understand of life: an impression 

pushed-in stays hard to punch out;

unlike the car bumper, dented 

then pressed back into shape

from the inside, with heat. 

I learned to use my heart too late. 

I washed up

and made my skin soft

and clean, only to get lost

on the way to your home.

I learned to drive after

my mind was gone. I know violence

better than you think, better

I mean than I wish to acknowledge 

in myself. That is why I love 

a hockey game. Musk of the rink,

sweet, damp. The steam rose 

before practice under the red 

awning. The stands were wooden

benches above the half glass. 

A father could throw 

himself onto the ice. 

Le Cirque

Waiting for our food, circles

Of white tablecloths, rolled napkins, the building spiraling

Upward in circles, concentric circles, dizziness

Spiraling into the chandelier, the roof, the sky—

The tv above the bar shows a protest outside the UN

And, then, footage of an Israeli tennis player getting taunted.

They protest against Israel because they hate us—

The world will always hate Jews,

My grandmother tells me. Spiraling, undeniable

Logic of the survivor. All wrong.

My response? I will never be a victim—what the hell will it take

To make you understand? The bright lights

Invading my eyes, spinning with the round tables, round

Trays, the crystal glasses catching the lights, shining

Off the knives, the curls of my grandmother’s silver hair

Bending in the light, the light catching her light blue eyes, bright

With her memory of escaping Europe in the hull of a ship, only

To arrive in Africa, to huge Nazi flags hanging in the harbor.