Poems

The Policy Says No The policy says no to your case,the policy was written for a different placeand a different time and a different man.The policy was written by a different planfor a different world and it doesn’t accountfor the actual thing and the amountof money or the thing you’ve actually got.The policy says no […]

The New Anger The old anger was the blunt and undirected and the raw,The old anger was the reaction without the careful lawOf the understanding of the triggerand the source and the address,The new anger, and the new is nothing less.The new anger is the graduate of everything I’ve been through,The new anger is the

The Paper Monument They built his likeness from yesterday’s headlines and editorialsPraising his deeds, constructing heroism from recycled storiesA papier-mâché prophet, ten feet tall,commemorating donations to the poorWhile conveniently forgetting where the wealth came fromThat let him look generous for sureThe statue stood in the town squarefor fourteen days before the weather turnedAnd when the

The Incomplete Fall The pedestal cracked beneath the weight of a thousand oily liesI watched the headlines flicker out like fire in the eyesI lost the key to the executive suite and the driver at the curbTrading the hollow lecture for a silence quite superb They stripped the title from the doorand scrubbed the plastic

The Jaw at Night My dentist said you’re grinding in your sleep,my dentist said the evidence is deepin the wear pattern of the back teeth wherethe anger that I carry into the airof the ordinary day goes when I sleep.The anger that I carry goes to keepits appointments in the jaw, in the grindof the

The Gym Has Destroyed My Sense of Self I joined the gym with the intention of becoming a different person,not a better person necessarily, just a different version,of the current person who can’t go up one flight without announcing it,to everyone around him with the heavy breathing denouncing it,the breathing was the thing,the breathing was

The Hostile Bid He assembled the war chest over three years of capital raise,A billion dollars waiting for the right target to emerge,He found it in a company with a stock in a malaise,That his analysis said was trading below the underlying surge.

The Fury Was Correct When the fury came I didn’t fight it, I let it run its course.I sat in the exact center of it and I let it be the sourceof everything I needed to understand about what had happened,about the exact nature of the wrong and how it had been fashionedinto something that

The Grudge I Can’t Put Down I’ve tried to put the grudge down on the table,I’ve tried to walk away from it when I was able.I’ve tried the conversations about letting go,I’ve tried the frameworks and the vertigoof the therapy that said the anger costs you,the therapy that said the grudge exhausts youmore than it

The Fire Station The building where they kept the trucks went up in August heatthe asphalt cracked, the air itself combusted in the streetirony served hot and literal as firefighters stoodhelpless on the sidewalk while their station burned unmanned The hoses melted with the rest, the equipment meant to savetrapped by what it was designed