Where Men are Mended

In her poem above, Sylvia Plath is speaking about hospitals, where people are in fact reconstructed. The eerie way in which she described the process of healing makes it clear that the poet is not as well as one would hope.  Below is the full extent of the poem and Plath’s dark descent. Please click here to hear her […]

Trip Poem #8 – Ubud

Planetary   I seek a portable religion With seasonal shrines housed in leaf   Faces of chalk upon each odd-shaped rock To mark the spot where tomorrow I might drop My planetary skin   Gods with flaws Brawn And a taste for sweats Sweating under the yellow Umbrellas I bring   Anything: A spring green […]

Manicure Poem

Writing poetry is hard, especially when you are getting a manicure. Great weekend to all!

Trip Poem #7 – Nusa Dua

There is a simple way to say things   Morning prayer Dinner as a family Fruit thinly sliced   This way sways from the poetic From the bulk of words Beaded thick as boater’s rope   Here we say birthday cake And set placemats That keep flat keep round   We do not invent a […]

Trip Poem #6 – Singapore

Singapore changes colors differently:   It begins on the water Less light to flatter The bean-shaped bay whose boats Now foam a shadow wake   Then traffic and car lights whip on Lights of movement and of caution And of waiting For some other’s turn to run   Next come the office and apartment lights Spaces occupied by life […]

Simply Put, in a Poem

Today, I have a very quick poem to share.  It is from Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, pictured above, and it’s called “I am happy living simply.” She was writing between 1892 and 1941, which for me adds even more value to the poem below: I am happy living simply: like a clock, or a calendar. Worldly pilgrim, […]

Trip Poem #5

  On the logic of the giraffe   How high really were those centuries of leaves

Trip Poem #4

  It’s worth getting poetic about contrast in your mouth   About cold cream mixed with a fat lemon’s spit   About egg and sugar and thin-sliced meat   About the chef and the cook smuggling a piss   About the stake in the store bought for the blatant pig   About fullness as a man and […]

Trip Poem #3

  On the sadness of a small swimming pool   A few yellow leaves float unmoving along the red-faced rim

Trip Poem # 2

Languages can be lost You embrace one Know its possessive pronouns, its past and present tense, its words that bite How to transform adjectives into adverbs How to speak letters into silence How to make letters linger by alliterating them with the next Its country of origin and colonial stops Its party talk, its newspaper talk, its […]

Trip Poem # 1

This poem is about forgetting poem topics. I think of a good thing to write about, am sure I won’t forget, then I do. Right now I am writing to remember a great poem topic I just forgot. Writing about forgetting is the best way to bring the poem back. Ah. You might not believe […]

Trip Poetry

Even though I am well into my thirties, I am about to embark on a twenty-day family trip with my parents, brothers and significant others. It’s mostly in honor of my mother’s sixtieth birthday, but also to celebrate my father’s recovery from a sudden health crisis he had at the beginning of the year. Our […]

Bikram Love Triangle

  Five minutes late to class and we got spots, spots apart. But, a mirrored column in front, so we could check each other out.   I watched you get hot in Ardha-Chandrasana, as you poured your head between short, upstretched arms. Then cut a sweat with the six hip Utkatasana dips, but by then, […]

Elephant Journal published my poem “Bikram Love Triangle”!

Elephant Journal, one of my favorite yoga and lifestyle journals, published my poem “Bikram Love Triangle”! Please visit Elephant Journal and read my poem. If I manage to get 2,000 views in the first few days of publication, they will feature my poem in their “Popular Lately” section, which would be huge. It is a […]

My Poems on The Furious Gazelle!

Several of my poems can now be read at The Furious Gazelle literary journal, based out of Brooklyn, New York. Please visit their site to check them out! Below is one of the five published poems:   Bathroom Talk   Watching you pee in front of me while we talk about not being late It’s […]

A Poem for Mom

  I confess that reading Julia Kasdorf’s poem “What I Learned from my Mother” this past Sunday made me teary. But, if there is a day for no-holds-barred sappiness, it’s Mother’s Day. In many ways, it was my first Mother’s Day as a mom. My son is eighteen months old so I now fully understand […]

La Pañalera

  Debo cambiarte Sin contar la vez   Destapar esa blancura Tan frágil como papel   Mojar algodón Desdoblar untar   Todo contigo es manual Mi palma es tu puño en tu boca   Cada contacto confirma Tu tamaño ante mi   Para ti ritual Es un simple juego más     Escrito 2013

Baudelaire and Woolf Present their Magic Show

  To see how Literature defines the everyday, it is sufficient to look to the work of Charles Baudelaire and Virginia Woolf. The first is marked, indeed enabled, by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s redrawing of the Parisian landscape in the 1860’s. The second allows herself to be inspired by domesticity in the burnt-metal aftermath of World […]

Final; Exhausted

It’s been too long since I spent an entire Saturday in my home doing nothing. But today I am doing exactly and precisely that. As a result, I even went through my pictures and found the one above. It is a shot from Ariana Reines’ book “Mercury” taken about a month ago in New York’s […]

Creatures

There are good reasons why Billy Collins is probably the most-loved U.S. Poet Laureate in recent history. For one, his poetry speaks, talks, chats us up.  It is like The Simpsons. You can zone out, read and enjoy. Or you can dig a little and discover that each word is rooted in mindful soul. Here is a great example of […]