John’s Proposal

When we were little and discovered
Grandma Magda’s head to be
as fuzzy as a peeled orange beneath
the metal clasps and straw-thick
horsehairs of her dime store wig,
there was nothing more binding
than the smell of cut grass, or earth
churned by the first summer rain,
nothing more heroic or dazzling
than you pirouetting on the front lawn
in your Wonder Woman gear.

We saw each other plainly then, and I never
thought a time would come when
we would see each other through a haze
of rice paper, or that you would trade such lightness
for the weight of John’s hand on your shoulder.

If you marry him, don’t forget the catacombs
you’ve yet to visit, or that day
you ran so fast the wig and spangled
cape flew off, unneeded wings.

From Where I Stood

Sixty blocks away, I watched a tower fall.
And all I did for days was talk and talk.
How I’d once visited a vault
of transi tombs, each stone lid carved
not with a living likeness, but the body
in early decay, frozen between
materiality and spirit. How I saw
the same suspension in the clouds of blasted
concrete billowing where the glacial façade
had stood. Lacking restraint, a better
language, I settled on figures,
gestures, any sounds to dampen
the unfiltered rumble of the tower falling.
When I simply should have said: I was there.