Here are a couple poems I’ve been tinkering with over the years.
The Best Sunscreen for Your Face
is SPF
Let’s Spend
the Summer
Inside.
I could prescribe
a wealth
of misinformation,
the distance between
my heart and what
graces the page.
Last night I fell
head over heels
over my bike
on the way home
from a restaurant
job, ended
up spending
what I made
in eight hours
in thirty minutes
on band-aids, watch
repair, my bike.
There’s no such thing
as a free lunch,
as serving brunch
with a bandaged hand
to immaculate men
and women who ask
my name, What happened
to your hand?
When they leave
they leave
twenty percent,
nearly always.
I can’t complain
about the order
the world
has written down
for me on its pad.
I used to get mad
at people
for falling prey
to advertising, not
at the advertisements.
This morning I read
Never mind what happens
outside the window
of personal triumph
in the reflection
of a seven-year-old’s
Ray-Ban sunglasses.
His mother was blonde,
eurocentric and god.
I told her everything,
told her this
in earnest —
I will only profit
when there’s nothing
left to think
to want to buy.
_________________________________
Poem with Tasteful Tan Lines
(after Petter Lindgren)
Stephanie is twenty-two
and the pearls encircling
her neck are no match
for silken skin which
emanates a radiance
that could stem only
from a diet rich
in essential oils, jarred
water infused with
asparagus, sold for six
dollars at Whole Foods.
Stephanie’s mentioned
in her Tinder profile
that her hobbies include
testing out the amount
of tacos she can stuff
in her mouth in a sitting
& playing twenty questions
with her Uber Drivers.
Stephanie’s photos feature
Stephanie wearing white
friends draped across
her arms in beachfront
haunts; six languid smiles
betray the existential
boredom which must
accompany having parents
in upper tax brackets, leg-
acies who’ve owned
the same swathe
of summer homes
for decades. Stephanie
attends Cornell & while
her classes are taught
by esteemed faculty
who too have attended
similar schools, she’s not
yet learned nor been
taught the tenets
of insidiousness, that
it’s bad to treat gig
workers like playthings,
who dance for money
even though that’s
not far from true.
Still I fancy
imagining Stephanie
standing atop
heated marble
bathroom tiles
in a well-furnished
Murray Hill apartment,
owned by a family friend
& rented to Stephanie
for six hundred a month —
Stephanie staring placidly
in a fog-resistant mirror
while she fixes her hair
into a long & painful plait,
while dreaming of beaches
(or nothing), Saint-Tropez.
