The First of Friday

Fifteen minutes into Friday and I felt the need to update. In truth, I can't sleep for worrying a little over two someones dear to me, with some serious medical challenges.
I don't know really what to say here, but I rose from bed, needing the company of some imaginary company, the screen, these words anting across the white mock paper before me. I have thought today about centipedes or millipedes and called them the false eyelashes of evil, but perhaps they're not. The fluffy ones are said to keep other insects at bay. I have thought today about three ghost airports, cream of tartar, and mostly about a woman made of fire flung from a convertible and her next words all shattered and scattered on April's cruel highway. I've been thinking that there isn't enough poetry in this month of poetry for me.


An Old Man Performs Alchemy
on His Doorstep at Christmastime

Cream of Tartar, commonly used to lift meringue and
angel food cake, is actually made from crystallized fine wine.


After they stopped singing for him,
the carolers became transparent in the dark,
and he stepped into their emptiness to say
he lost his wife last week, please
sing again. Their voices filled with gold.
Last week, his fedora nodded hello to me
on the sidewalk, and the fragile breath
of kindness that passed between us
made something sweet of a morning
that had frightened me for no earthly reason.
Surely, you know this by another name:
the mysteries we intake, exhale, could be
sitting on our shelves, left on the bus seat
beside us. Don't wash your hands.
You fingered them at the supermarket,
gave them to the cashier; intoxicated tonight,
she'll sing in the streets. Think of the old man.
Who knew he kept the secret of levitation,
transference, and lightness filling a winter night?
—an effortless, crystalline powder
that could almost seem transfigured from loss.