they sold the lot on Main St where they never built that high-rise 

but good luck building anything in this economy 

the air is too hot

the scent of cigarettes boiling off the other passengers

as I wonder what’s the point of poetry 

what can we make from words?

what words 

still let themselves be made into anything?

I told her I only read poetry 

that reading a whole book

takes years

the feelings stacked one atop the next

gravy over cake

no differences between sorrow and a theorized joy beyond the writer’s means

a poem is a mouthful 

a minute’s grace

a massacre in millimeters

the barest bruise

a slap in the face 

remorseless 

starving

true

if only all truths were so easily digested 

instead of sticking in your gut

dragging you along with them 

to end up inside out 

yet in writing poetry 

we feel that same laceration

spilling ourselves

spoiling the calm completion of a blank page

for nothing more than one vain moment’s proof

that we existed

(2023)