Salting the Soup If you had lived, as old women, we would spend an afternoon or twoeach visit cooking together. You would chop the carrots, your long, beaded   earrings swishing as you leaned over the cutting board. I’d heat the oilin the pot. It’s not cold outside, but there’s the first hint of chill and we   were always summer girls. Soup, then. We talk and laugh and I grindthe coriander while you shake your head because why fuss   when they sell it already ground? I tell you the flavor’s betterthis way and you understand I’m right, though you don’t admit it   aloud. Even though I’ll never…

If It Were Anything Else If it were anything else, I’d have left italone somewhere, like a jacket in a diner. I’d have crashed it like a wave against rock,torn it like a kite against the apathy of a tree, separated it like a boulder from the earth,dropping off the face of a sea cliff wherea tourist blocks the view. But it’s my heart. It cries for everything. A mouse in a belltower must think the wholeworld is shaking with the gentlest of wind, and yet the song keeps it from leaving.The cracks let the light in by a crescent sun. It lays in its nest, the raven flys by…

In the Nursery Little one, who are you,and who will you be?Hunger, I know,and endless thirst.But you are not wingedlike the honeybee. Joy dawned slowlyin your animal life,a matter of weeksbefore you smiled,and there are cries,and there is strife in not knowingor having a way to knowwhy the sharp jabor the sudden wet.For now there is skinand your mother’s glow. There are out and in,there are brief and long,there are eyes in the glassand elephants flying.See? They have brought youthis little song. The Grandfather in Summer Sometime before the dawn I watch a swallowdive-bomb a currawong, whose beak could break eggs.Just as easily it could hold them intact,tactfully, as a…

Prints Mom was singing It’s Raining Men in the poolWhen she told me that we must try to find God through art.She didn’t want to get out even though it was raining,And when lightning struck nearby she shouted “Hallelujah!”She stayed in the storm until the next day.Her fingers shriveled into bunched fabric and the print on them was erased.She told me she would always be able to find me by my fingers,But I worried that she wouldn’t be able to find herself. Grandma used to say that everything was Grandpa.A bird feather floating amongst trash on the beach or a butterfly that circled our heads.I thought his body must’ve turned…

In the Background a Goat Bleats Shrilly My son stopped by earlier.He’s going up in the hills to scout sitesfor a birding gagglethat’s heading out early Saturday,when the sun is supposed to show,after days on end of gray. I’ve been housesitting at a friend’splace in the country—let the hens out of the coopa couple of hours ago to eat bugs,scratch and peck,which makes them happy,as happy as chickens can be, I suppose. Hanging from his neck will behis binoculars, camera.His eyes will focus upward,note any sightings:date, time, location, species, color, sounds,more specs that I’ve no clue about. The sky to the north is darkening—better get the chickens in,get myself in.I…

Time Change I love to set the clocks back. not on a screenor a digital devicebut physically,take the clock downshifting gravity and timefrom one arm to the other finding the hour handwith my otherhandwatching the earth rotatewithin the small gearsthat never cease feeling the weightof the past monthsthe fires, the diseasesthe scientists on the tv screenwith their wrinkled facesand trenches of worry my grandson asks meif we can go to the park yethe asks me“is Corona ever going to be over”I tell him,“yes, it will eventually be over” but for nowI fiddle with the kitchen clocksynchronize it with the othersin the house even the dogknows the darkness will come earlier…

Defensible Space I beg for rain—who doesn’t these dayswhen grass firesstand up fast as sightunder breath from sitting engines,greased rags,the whispering of stones. My house is stucco-hewn,a builder’s alchemy:cement, sand, water, lime,covering the wood,hard and rippled,unlikely to catch flame. The trees are so far away Ihave to walk for 26 secondsout the doorbefore I can touch one.Yes I counted, and it’swhy we moved here, for space,for cement and stucco,for few plants,             no matter how we love them,all in hopes we won’t burn. Do you see how easy it is,how sometimes necessary? Instead of running from threator even desire, to just harden yourself,paint something stiffon the…

Lives of the Saints Something has shifted, no dog can deny this. Think of every attempt to mark or claim a piece of the city. We walk the same steps that Frank O’Hara walked on one thousand hungovermornings. A map of the world can be drawn with questions and written in sidewalk chalk. What is revealed is not so much the unknown, as the fact of complete possibility. Later we were taught to sing in orchards, where experience begins. But heirs to the underground no longer seem to fish the same lake of dreams. Later I stare at that photograph of Frank, crossed arms, wicker chair, the sweet ruinednubbins of…

Ars Biblica I am the Word, thy Art, that brought thee out of the land of literal analysis, out of the bonds of connotation. Thou shalt have no other Words before Me. Or after Me, unto Me, atop Me. . . all the prepositions. Just because it’s written in stone doesn’t mean it’s written in stone. As brilliant as the words are, they are probably not from My lips. Not sacrosanct. Revise. Remember the month of April to keep it holy. Observe the daily ritual. Write like your life depends on it. Or don’t. It’s your life. Honor thy creative gifts. Let them rain for forty days and forty nights.…

My Grandmother’s Tongue Before I was FrankI was Francesco,an accidentwaiting to be born. And beforeI was an accidentI was Calogero’s dreamof a better life in America. And beforeI was an accidentI was an accent loston the tip of my GrandmotherMaria’s tongue. Anonymous Across the streetfrom my condoplain plywood planksshuttered second storywindows of a century-old apartmentlike an abandoned rust belt bungalow.For a few days in Aprila dumpster filled with the leftoversof lives I never saweven though I imagined dramasplayed out behind curtainsof a stage only yardsfrom my own bedroom.So many questionsabout neighbors I passedon the sidewalk numerous timesbut I never knew their names. Frank C. Modica is a cancer survivor and…