Inside My Electric City (YesYes Books 2016)
The Marilyn Letters (dancing girl press 2013)
Sample poems:
Dear Marilyn sometimes it’s nearly impossible
to believe you existed. That you walked
down streets & took telephone calls & ground
out cigarettes with your shoe. That you left
lipstick rings on the edges of glasses
& smoothed your stockings. That you pulled your feet
in when they slipped out from under the warm covers
as you slept. Dear Marilyn once at Cape Cod
I stood at the edge of America & drew
my name in the wet sand with my big
toe & pressed my hands as if in wet cement.
Marilyn as you can guess the next wave
filled the handprints & faded my name.
Dear Marilyn sometimes it’s hard to believe
that we ever actually exist.
_______________________________________________________________
Dear Marilyn what’s stronger
or weaker than will?
It’s 11 p.m. & Saturday & there’s
Irish whiskey in the cupboard.
There’s no saying at this juncture
in time what will or will not
happen to it. Dear Marilyn
almost anything is bearable
if you decide to like it: men
with spatular toes, beets,
the burn of booze or jogging.
Well.
Maybe not jogging.
You know, once when
I was 12 I watched all
your films in succession
& my stepmother
came in to the living room & smiled
sadly & said Oh, sweetheart.
You want so badly to love her.
