A. MARVULLO !!

The barista held out two different-sized cups
and asked, Which medium would you like?
They’re both mediums?! I shouted this.
Medium is whatever you want it to be, she said.

It is not acceptable to reach over a counter
and kiss someone, and as such it should
not be acceptable to write a poem about
a barista without her permission.

I thought of her in traffic today, how she
flipped my worldview with an interrogative,
like here I am at exit 31A, no closer to
deciphering this new blueprint—

I will find her tomorrow.
She will draw my face in a latte.

The answer to whether you should read internet comments
is always, definitely, an emphatic no.

There is no reason for you to care what other people think,
because you are the hyacinth among the biscuits,

and they are refrigerators without baking soda.

You are the corporate stadium skybox,

and they are the sweat on the parquet,
mopped up by an undergrad majoring
in sports management.

You are a professionally curated video playlist
of cats riding on robotic vacuums,

and they are wobbly diner tables
that make eating soup an exploration
of futility and rage.

Waitresses might come around and apologize,
try to stick some sugar packets under the gimp leg
before pouring any more coffee,
but they almost never do.

(http://nyti.ms/10ZlNoL)

When I leave this place, I imagine my departure a vertical explosion,
in the field out there, a violent force that lifts me from the ground
and puts me back somewhere else.

I imagine the result—a deep, wide hole in the earth that could
fit snugly a great number of 15-passenger vans—

That’s Anthony’s crater. We don’t go near that.
Hey, let’s walk around it, ok?

I imagine the years passing at this crater,
the glacial, unyielding steamroll of time,
heavy, dark winters and the vernal, wet
months of the year.

Soon enough, Anthony’s Crater is a gift, a new
community space, it’s understood,
like a playful misspelling,
or a t-shirt earned for showing up
and then leaving again.

When my hair has receded beyond nowhere,
and I have loved beyond trembling,
and my children have come here and
done all that they wanted
and no less,

I will return,
my car parked at the edge of the road—

Walking the two-and-a-half miles to this spot right here,
I will return,
with a shovel across my shoulder.

You will barely know who I am
or what I mean—but I’ll return.
And I will begin to refill what I left here,
I promise you.

is the best coffee table book purchase I’ve ever made—
every page a new whisker, a new set of claws,
with detailed photographs of fur patterns
and anomalous, silly behaviors—

like cats who sleep in sinks,
or cats who sleep in bookshelves,
or cats who sleep in dog beds!

“Inside Jokes for People with Cats”
is also a self-help affirmation rag.
Don’t be afraid of the Devil, it says.
The Devil doesn’t give a shit about you.

Last night my cat slept on my chest—
she knows I’ve been reading the coffee table book.
It describes people in the Middle Ages,
how they would sleep with objects on their rib cages
to protect their hearts from the Devil.
Sometimes those objects were cats.

Never mind that, though, here’s the truth:
Last page of the book features a picture of a man,
not a cat, staring intently at a blank space on a wall.

The text underneath reads:
Perhaps cats aren’t the only creatures
who chase shadows
that were never there in the first place.

Hi! It’s National Poetry Month during April! Here’s a poem I wrote. Whether this is a one-a-day thing remains to be seen. Baby steps into the shallow end, you know?

FUTURE TOASTERS

Last night Jeanie showed me her knuckles—
red and raw from the amount of doors.
I stepped out of the moment to think of
something about bare-knuckle boxing
and the Supreme Court—
came up for air: nothing.

She described her morning as
trying to turn rocks into trees,
so as to sway them more easily,

and one man described his opposition to
same sex marriage as a concern for
out-of-pocket expenses for the toasters
he’ll have to buy—

future toasters, you know, for future receptions.
Jeanie left him a rock, unconvinced.