Two Poems

I have too much stuff.

I’ve thrown important things away.
Closed eyes looking back/
scrolls of player pianos/
paragraphs. The room
gets dark around me after
sunset and the light
switch is too far. Pressure
like someone’s lightly
pressing on my temples
with open palms.
Peanuts anthologies
from when the kids
were small and Snoopy
was like any other dog.

Concave shelves were
once weighed down with
heavy books—he’s
packing up brown boxes.
Cardboard depicting concrete,
laying a bedrock for the things
that disappear. A clunky
feel, an awkward
composition. A cat in a
hen pose, on a glass table,
from below.

Dissatisfied and itchy. Thinking of
flowers—blue and indigo, from
water that’s been dyed.
Pitch-black rooms at
night feel heavy on my eyes.

Watching clouds move back
against tall buildings, waiting
as the building falls,
(I fear there’s skywriting
above my head that only
I can’t see and everyone
can read it but pretends
it isn’t there.)
He left the edges
really messy; an excess
and a deficit of care.

Trying To Listen

Trying not to let my turns of phrase roll
off the tongue too quickly; I must keep
consistent spaces between words.

(I’m convinced—
standing next to an up escalator/gripping
tightly to the handrail/’till my feet
are lifted slightly off the ground—
that other people breathe
with greater frequency than I do.)

Trying to find three hidden Ninas
in a drawing by Al Hirschfeld:
where fabric folds at elbows/in
their hair/the laces of their shoes.
Trying to say my name aloud a single time.

Trying to listen to phone calls—
like in movies: you can hear one person—
talking with long…
pauses in between.
Leaving thumb-and-finger smudges
from attempts
to touch protected things

[encased in glass vitrines.]

Gestures shaped by worrying fingers/
tying rubber bands in knots. The first
language humans had was gestures/
Maybe just moving my limbs
would be enough.

Trying to sit still enough
for long enough for
sensors not to sense me,
so the lights always turn
off/instead I’m starting to make eye
contact with everyone I come across.