Fire 

After Walt Whitman's "Mannahatta" 

A stitch in the brow as our eyes catch the sun
in a wan stretch of manila
sediment, gift on a breeze from the North,
with the leaves lit beneath

We raise our phones, taken
A bolt of lightning become the whole sky
& the fireball, red

I have seen this —
industry bright against blush of gold
with a dusting of mourning-dove feather —
at the westernmost point
It winks back

Once upon a time
the flexible hickory dazzled a people
so charmed they grew it an island
of grass, then hide, then brick
named for its gut’s potential
to hem unbound forces
an offering to the impossible

Manhattan
Built on garnet, the color of flame
A man waves a gun as my boyfriend eats duck
“How was it?” He says, “Delicious”

6 June 2023, Seward Park NYC

Set me free

God sighs pink smoke
He retracts with a low breath in

I’m inside the sparkle
breathing in His image

I light a candle
its flicker dancing

its sigh curling up to the frescoed ceiling
Silence is another kind of speaking

No less powerful. The eagle is born
when the egg cracks

and if you wait long enough you’ll see
him flying over the river

Barred from relaxing into time
I sit taut and resentful

An accidental smuggler of the earthly
which I carry in my throat

I ask for His help
to give it all up

Set me free, O Lord, I pray
Set me free, I pray, O Lord
Set me free
Set me free
Set me free
Set me free

Set me free
Set me free
Set me free

When it all falls down

Flame eats the bones of the box truck
The effigy, shivering through the black air
In a neon oval of ochre
I watch its stomach dissolve

Situation outside of time and place compels me
Yet I am nowhere more of my time and place than
Speeding past on the freeway feeling nothing
Until I am at a remove

There, it crumbles
There, I’m stationed
That’s where my there is
A perfectly modern condition