June 11-17, 2007: Rosemarie Crisafi and Alex Stolis

Sunday in the Group Home She hovers in a tiara of braids, rows of diamonds and starbursts Brown arms do so much, flashing a stream of printed blocks, spirals and eyelashes Ancestral cheeks and broad forehead, polished brass and copper, tribute her mothers How unwearied she moves in the colors and secret power of her Ashanti wings Emerging from the haze without words, he blinks, safe in the goodbyes, twisting and linking the sunrays and crescents of adinkra cloth Piscialletto Weeds grow in gutters With ice pellet shingles a fire engine aria duets I abandon the aquarium castle I drain the places where my mother strained linguine ribbons where Daddy paid a penny for each dandelion, piscialletto (to wet the bed), he called them, popped from soil I unearth the taproot whole Across clouded glass, filaments light the wind With the patina of a photograph reflected in a mirror, I turn the key. Binary Goodbye When I press Send: Sequoias blink into view, fog dripping off foliage, falling a long distance to the ground; unfelt on the forest floor wind crackles in the awning where orioles live; in the underworld, giant shadows loom, dark soldiers on gold-threaded moss I send it all to you in an equation. The Office Pineapple Hiking up four flights, elevator paralyzed, copy machine in a trance, lungs quivering, you come face to face with her son’s drawing In the cubicle of the girl from Jamaica, a Rastafarian it seems, a pineapple, pinned to a bulletin board, a beach of pinwheel palms, a multicolored grenade, tossed into the air, bursts Sword-shaped leaves open in the detonation You decide you can work with this psychedelic fruit.

Divorce isn’t as bad as people make it out to be Say, for the sake of argument, you had never been in love before , never saw that woman, the one with amazing tits, voice like light rain–never noticed the way she walked into a room, lit it up like a firecracker Say for the sake of argument you never asked her friend if she was seeing someone, never asked for her number only watched from a distance and fantasized about her hair, her perfume, the lace about her bra Say, for the sake of argument, you never learned to say consumed, compelling, outré –never learned to whisper and nod, give a knowing look from across the room to signal the perfect moment to leave Say, for the sake of argument, you never learned to catch random bits of conversation, never learned to count the beats between her breath You might have become a liar instead, incomplete and unknowing–a foreign man in a familiar land.