Auto-recycling

"... when the human engine waits/ Like a taxi throbbing waiting"
(T.S. Eliot)


The motor was stalling,
dying, beyond repair.
It was a good motor
but it had had its run;
it ran for decades but
couldn't remember
any more what got it
started. What did it
run on? Or for?

The hiatus after the final
halt was only seconds
(centuries) long; then,
a pair of strong legs -
fit, sinewy, ready -
hit the ground, and
started. Stepping
confidently, (from the
heel, to the ball of the

foot, to the toes) in a
straight line, with an
elastic bounce, they
take on the rhythm
of a new drive, self-
combusting into the
zest of a new personal
velocity, overtaking
old landmarks, cruising

the city with ease
and suaveness, generated
by a brand-new
well-oiled
self-ignited
motor.

Distortions of Renaissance Pragmatism

The world must be peopled,
Says Benedick (to himself)
Before Beatrice enters
(Act II, Scene iii).

And so I do -- without much
ado. Except, I don't
people it with people,
really. A friend called it

Slavic animism once
(it was the summer of
bare feet, long words
and short nights).

What it is, actually,
is an exercise in
exploding loneliness
into a population of animas,

protective and personalized,
sending signals and
reasserting the rightness
of this moment in this

your life, reflecting
your defragmented
you, showing it
in the light.

A comforting mirage
of external meaning
revealed in the
quotidian to the observant --


this is certainly
not what Benedick
had in mind when he
set to people the world


with Beatrice. Too
metaphysical, that.
And, ultimately,
profoundly lonely.

Black Sandals

If my mother had been Asian
She would have probably looked
Like the woman on the metro
A few weeks ago.
It was something in her
Wide temples, it was
Her short black hair,
Her small, clever hands, and
The intelligent fingers
With modestly long
Fingernails, but most of all,


It was the straps of her
Black sandals around her
Dainty pale-skin ankles
Set off nicely by medium-
High heels that spelled
My mother silently
From the floor of the
Metro car.

Kelebia-Kelebija: Entering the Country from the North

10 million years ago
this was all underwater,
this stretch of fields
was home to
fishes, shells and crabs
not dreaming of trains
carrying dreamers glued
to windows across the oceans
of wheat.


this drained sea-bottom
is endlessly the same
north and south
east and west,
gives me nothing
to go by, doesn't
translate into borders
or countries or allegiances,
it teases, rightfully,


until, a few hundred meters
down the railway line from
kelebia, two words sprayed
on the wall of a crumbling
railroad house sail slowly
in and out of my view,
fitting easily into the
landscape of stray poppies
as we dock into kelebija:


VOLIM TE.
and then i know
exactly where i am
and what i am doing.
like a fish in the water.

Breathing in a Dark Room

Wait for it
thoughtlessly
unpreemptively
just an honest
wait
arms open wide
for the right time
even if it feels
late.

Just wait
(that’s what you’re
trained to do),
in the gathering
night
let the void
find you
enfold you
claim you.

Wait
(not out of tiredness
or cluelessness),
choose to unwind
the impetus, implode
the surface cumulus
into a perfect
nothingness,
only yours,

(Like floating
in water, face
up,
like breathing
in a dark
room,
like hearing
the world
disappear),

Wait.

Botched Heritage

botch (v.) [from ME bocchen, to mend] = to foul up, to bungle, to put together in a makeshift way



The day I woke up to find a hole
In my thick blue cardigan,
I knew I was in trouble.

My fingers are short and stocky
(Like my father’s; I have his knees too):
They are clever at blind-typing
But stall at pedestrian tasks.
So when I fetched my sewing needle
(The only one I own, slightly bent)
And the spool of thinned-out black thread
(Which I’ve had for decades, possibly),
I stepped into an unknown zone,
Pitifully incompetent.

Like a diver in a helmet,
Trudging heavy on dry land,
I was stumbling with each stitch,
I was losing thread and mission
In the narrow needle’s eye.
And all the while I knew, I felt
That this was a betrayal
Of my grandmother’s fingers,
Dancing delicately, playfully
For years, for decades, in pairs and patterns.

All the hours and patience and
Tenderness she sewed into it,
The Princess of Crocheting,
(Dreaming of children’s children perhaps),
All the cleverness she trained
In her fingertips, and willed
To the next batch -- evolved
(In the new millennium)
Into this earnest, but clumsy,
Botching of heritage.

Species Vulnerabilis

We walk around wearing
our vulnerabilities,
blinking in shyness
with eyes averted
carefully, from insecurities
of others, too much like ours.

Harelips, club feet, lazy eyes,
birthmarks, pockmarks, dumbo ears,
thick skin, thin skin, wrinkled skin,
voices, murmurs, memories,
words unsaid, and words outsaid –
a collection of wounds

we wrap around us and
carry, paradoxically,
like a protective shield,
a comforter, a motherly
armour, lulling us to our
baby sleep, hoping that those

we meet along the way won’t
shake us awake too rudely.