​Selected Published Poems

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Making Salad

She’s belting out Elvis

when I walk in the kitchen

Don’t be cruel…she sways

as she chops avocado and apple

 

and forgets the next words, seems

five is the maximum number

of words, she retains

of every song ever recorded, ever heard

 

and the rest—she hums or makes up

and laughs at herself

a party for one, every moment a joy

simple, all she needs

 

is Elvis and avocado

and some tofu, lightly sauteed in some soy

sauce and then beans for her protein

all weighed on a scale

 

and I watch her—meticulous

perfection, she wants to stay around,

she says, for her grandchildren’s weddings

and their children

 

and I hide my face, I don’t want her to see

that I don’t want to leave

and move an ocean away, and miss

the making of salads.

San Diego Poetry Journal, 2023

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Intimacies

it started with the rain, pounding

windows that don’t shut, that

leave puddles to annoy our neighbor

below, who leaves nasty notes

 

in a time of war, in a dessert

where I find myself in middle age,

in new language, new home, old

aches sitting in spaces creaky

 

like the morning floor where I place

bare feet, then coffee then an email

from a friend becoming a friend,

all the words in other languages

 

for the hierarchies of intimacy

and my babies I held, skin to skin,

now bigger than me, wanting nothing

of this intimacy, space and silence

 

how I now show love, then dance

and jazzy beats and a teacher

who could stand nearly still and

barely move his pinkie and move

 

the world or the frown on my face, make

me see every gesture as movement toward

sunshine burning away clouds, new

day, new café near the market

 

and thirty minutes later stories shared

with the dancer who spills her coffee

and barista philosopher and poet

moving boxes and coffee in a

 

handmade green ceramic mug, we

don’t like green here, the dancer says,

it reminds us of the army, I say I

just see trees.

ita and the Wolf Literary Journal, May 2024)

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***

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24:58

With coffee in hand, blue

ceramic mug, I wait.

Ma Vlast violins keep time

with Sahara morning winds.

Morning—womb-like—still dreaming

the day into being, and me, waiting

for a word to pique

or coffee to spark,

settle into that part of the brain

where taste and memory tell stories,

or maybe even a sudden hint 

of light on the horizon

or the surprising sounds

of Rachmaninoff’s Paganini coming

from across the street that second night,

as we waited for sirens,

                         and for twenty-four minutes fifty-eight seconds

                                                                                 I have hope.

I remember thirty-two years earlier

at the Philharmonia

in Mikhailovsky Square

the first time I hear Paganini,

the pianist stands,

kicks away his black leather stool

at the climactic note, hair flies, I cry

he is Orpheus

                          and for twenty-four minutes fifty-eight seconds

                                                                          I am destroyed.

Erased, remade, a blank slate

and the world is glorious and the music

ends and cheap carnations and applause

are given and I return to slushy ice

minus-thirty Petersburg streets

and now, warm coffee in hand

I remember remembering.

 

Ma Vlast still plays melodies

and I hear Hatikva.

Poetry is Pretentious, May 2024

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***

 

Rodin’s Hand

I stare at the black canvas long

enough to begin to make out

a shadow of a hand, the hand

from The Kiss

the hand in the middle

the hand holding the left thigh

were it not for that hand

she would fall, the first time

I saw The Kiss

I stared at the hand

tender holding reminding

me of holding I have had

holding I have not

had, and now thirty years after seeing

the kiss in Paris

at Rodin’s home

I see myself in the reflection

in the black of the paint

and wonder

if the holding

has always been

me.

Ephemera Poet of the Month, August 2024

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​***

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Antonina

This morning sipping tea, my husband scanning headlines, says

The meek shall inherit the dirt. Which, still, to my ears

raised on heavy honey Christianity, sounds like sandpaper. But

sitting in my stiff Sunday clothes, I never understood

what the screaming preachers meant by inheriting the earth.

Because the only meek people I saw were women and they

were inheriting shit. Which made me think of Antonina,

the woman I lived with in Petersburg, thirty years ago. Antonina,

wife, mother of two sons, worker of two jobs and kitchen magician

who stretch a bit of ground beef with milk-soaked stale

bread and eggs a and fry up the tastiest hamburgers. I can still

taste the white onions on my tongue all these years later, and

pickles she’d place next to the patties. Pickles she’d

spend the summer canning with cucumbers she dug

from the ground from that postage stamp of a dacha

twenty miles north of St. Pete. I never remember

Antonina eating with us. She would stand at the

stove frying and frying and frying, grease collecting

on her clothes her face on the walls she’d have to

clean, while we hunched over full plates. I never

remember her even speaking, as she flipped and

plated more and more food. Until they were done.

I would listen to the men, hoping to improve

my Russian, but they hardly spoke, the only sounds

the clanking of forks and slurps and belches. Then

one night, when I couldn’t sleep I tiptoed my way

to the kitchen certain I was the only soul awake, when

I saw Antonina at the kitchen table, in front of her

a plate of prianiki and raspberry jam and sweet strong

Assam. Laugh-whispering into the phone something

about work, she stopped when she saw me. Said a quick,

poka milaya, and hung up. This is my time, she said.

And stood. Made her way to the window. Lit a cigarette

and opened the window to the minus thirty air. I didn’t smoke,

but asked if I could have one..  And we stood near the

winter window till the cheap Russian filterless cigarettes burned

themselves out.

Little Leaf Literary Journal, August 2024

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***

​

She

Nothing about her is appropriate. Decades older with

the style of a child. Patches of pink hair, interspersed

with bleached and blue bits. And dozens of sparkly

plastic beads hanging to her waist. Her dress yellow,

a split up the side, where I can just make out

the tips of grey wool leg warmers. And the morning

Mediterranean sun sticky, sweating. Minutes later

we stand in a circle in the room that has become

my womb. My shrine, my solitary space surrounded

by the sea. Where I chisel myself back together. Today

the teacher invites us to go inside our bones.

What does it mean to go in the bones? She breaks

the silence with the voice of my childhood—

cigarettes and six packs and airless trailers

with barking dogs, but she is not from Appalachia.

She is desert-born with a wildness in her eyes. I

want her eyes. She flaps her arms. Slides with

her leg warmers, slipped over pink-toe-nailed feet,

across the circle we keep. She knows no boundaries.

Sings into the silence. Stares. As if she knows what

I want to know.

Moonlit Getaway Prize, September 2024

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***

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Prayer

I’m riding home on the bus. From

Mount Scopus. The sun shuts my

eyes. I fall into my seat. Sway

 

with the stops and starts. Oh,

to sleep. To stop the running

of my mind. And the singular question.

 

How?

 

To get through the day?

Hold cardamom-infused coffee

in two hands? Taste

 

its desert sweetness, and yet

be a witness

to suffering?

 

And not wipe

a tear. Bandage a wound.

Beat

 

off every bully. How?

Can love stay

silent?

 

I do not know this kind of

love. To love

is to walk with wounds.

 

The bus

stops near a school. It must

be the end

 

of the school day. Mothers and

children. Teenagers with backpacks

Braces and pony tails. Black skirts. Wigs

 

and strollers. I am sitting

in the back. Far

from old people or pregnant women.

 

I hear whispers

behind me. Loud. I wonder

if the woman has gone

 

mad. I turn

to look and see a siddur.

She is whispering Psalm 145.

 

The Lord is near to all who call

on Him…He hears

their cry and delivers them.

 

Head bent. Three tears

on a reddened face. She

rests her one hand on her

 

swollen belly. A toddler

sits beside her, staring

out the window.

 

She bites her

lip. Opens her eyes. I give her

back her privacy. Turn

 

and face the front. Her

crackled voice speaks

to her child. I want

 

to throw my arms

around her. Say,

you are not alone.

 

Say, this is what we

do. In silence

we hold our love.

Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Fall/Winter 2024

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***

​

Armand Circle

Knees to chest, I wait

on a black metal bench

in a late afternoon sunshine

I try to name. Orangey-yellow

Tuscan sunflowers, that summer

twenty years ago. When we

lived on a farm with the kids,

played with geese and drank

wine from the vineyard and

ate gelato every day. And watched

the sun set, a quiet embracing

sun. Close, a whisper promising

gold. A man walks up in navy blue

matching cap and track suit. Says,

they are saying it’s cold, but

I think this is perfect. I nod.

Yes, perfect. My daughter

comes out of a shop and we sit

in the Florida orangey-yellow sun

absorbing the perfect. She says

she likes my look—the

oversized jeans and fitted

black t-shirt. She says too many

years I hid inside, behind. I start

to cry. How true and she only

knows a morsel of the memorized

masks I wore. To fit.

I have spent my life surviving,

I say, gazing at nothing. She

is old enough now to know some

of the sadnesses, I say.

All I wanted was to feel good—in my skin.

But how?

When my skin belonged to men and gods

who made rules I obeyed?

All I wanted was to feel beautiful.

But how when beauty was their justification

for terrorization?

And all I want now is to sit in the sun

burn off the layer of skin—not mine

find my way back inside.

She puts her hand on my arm. We

close our eyes. Grasp the last

minutes of sun making its way to the

horizon.

Tangled Locks Journal, February, 2025

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***

​

Chocolat Chaud

​This morning was one of those mornings when I felt 

distance, between my daughters and me. Now

an ocean away, now living lives I follow on Instagram.

With people I don’t know. How strange

to hold a being inside, to feel that first kick to the ribs

(a sign that life is becoming) and then,

to release them to the world. This morning

was one of those mornings when I felt the emptiness

of the black-sky, too early even for the birds.

This morning a longing with no name gnawed,

and I thought maybe, if only I could find words. Today

I sat, grabbed my laptop, and there it was. A photo

I hadn’t seen in years. My not yet three-year-old oldest child,

twenty years ago, drinking chocolat chaud. Back

when we lived in Paris. Back before she didn’t know

what language she spoke, back when we had afternoon dates

to museums or gardens, to ride carousels and watch puppet shows.

To buy purple balloons and chase pigeons, pretend we could fly

and sometimes we would just ride the bus. Stare

out the window and she’d scream, maman look, it’s the awfull tower!

Or, regarde Maman, it’s the statue of Curious George Washington!

I’d laugh at her adorableness. And hold her so tight. And she’d

ask me questions; like can spiders walk on water? and

what is divorce? the name of an ugly picture we saw at the Musee d’Orsay,

and I tried to explain but she couldn’t understand how love could disappear.

But the best part of every date was the end, when we’d make our way

to some café for a croissant and chocolat chaud. And quickly she learned

how to hold the porcelain pieces in her little girl hands, how

to pour the liquid chocolate, then add cream, and her signature touch—

adding every sugar cubes she could find. And she would drink

the whole pitcher of chocolate and whole pitcher of cream and crunch

on the sugar cubes. I never intervened. Only sometimes,

secretly sipping first, to make sure it wasn’t too chaud.

Vagabond City Lit, March 19, 2025

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***

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Martyr

I don’t know the moment it

started, perhaps it was sitting in

the san diego sports arena that doubled

as a concert venue and mega church,

where I saw with Grandma, after

she’d found God. After the pot-selling

and nudist colony teepee. Maybe it

was watching from the balcony

as crying ladies pushed their crying

children in wheelchairs to a stage

where women with bright red lipstick

on their cheeks and big sticky hair

and big sticky smiles sang songs

to too-loud electric guitar music. Maybe

it was the blue-polyester suit trousered

preacher with his sweaty white shirted

chest that smelled even from way up

in the balcony. Maybe it was the

floppy Bible he held as he screamed-spat

threats to someone that I could never

figure out. Maybe it was my former

pot-selling Grandma now mascara-face-

blackened being handed tissues by

a lady holding a crying baby. Maybe it was

the promise that the devil was coming,

that I had to take up a cross and do something

with it, a cross that was probably filled

with splinters, like the wood forts cousin Jimmy

would make me build down by the creek

where rattlesnakes lived, just down the road

from Grandma’s teepee. Maybe it was the

secret punches and secret bruises and secret

tears I learned to hide. I think, staring

across my too hot coffee at a friend

who misunderstands my understanding of

the word, martry, and glares with a glare

that silences me with a silence as loud

as all the screaming in that sports arena

back in San Diego.

​Across the Margin, September, 2025

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