Haircut

for ______.

Stone lions guard Imperial Ridge,

their heavy paws on stone globes.

Now Dad’s in Manhattan, Mom’s in Babylon,

and an alien sky covers the diner.

The home I had when we met is gone.

You were already dead when I saw you in Paris.

You pulled up then on a public bike,

in strawberry Keds and a teal t-shirt,

to listen to the street band with me.

Since then, you’ve been to the smoothie store

where Macklemore would come with his kid.

We drank with Adore Delano at R Place

wearing a pair of another man’s shoes.

We saw Lady Bunny at the Stonewall Inn,

Amanda Lepore there, seated in red beneath a swirling

spotlight, blonde hair laid like a marble floor.

We spent Wednesday mornings with Richard Wilbur

on the drive from Cummington to class.

He read us Bishop’s “Anaphora.”

I backed a Prius into his stone gate.

I heard on New Year’s, at Inwood,

caught on a carousel of blunts and champagne.

These locks of hair are cut for you, the key
your name I vow not to lose.

You’re me and you’re not,

and we are all we’ve lost,

all passage, wonder, and all cost.

Skin in the Game

after Emily Dickinson’s “A door just opened on a street—”

I found a book on Triangle Lane.

I, eighteen, was passing by.

Page three spelled out a unicorn

spearing a poet’s eye.

Sharpie crypted context and writer.

I, drunkenly, tripped by—

passing mirrored wound and horn,

I could not hide in time.