By chance I saw you,
standing across from Union Square.
I knew it was you from the nape of your neck,
the one I memorized as it retreated from view
all loose hairs and flush red.
I wonder
if it remembers the imprint of my lips,
heat-seeking,
mistaking your warm for warmth.
I wonder if you remember still,
Me,
tracing constellations in the freckles on your cheeks,
as if your face was somehow a road map to the stars.
How silly was I to think
I could make a holy place of a boy who forgets,
to have and to own are not the same?
poem
April 12, Summer 2013
We used to be silly
thinking our love could outlast the summer,
milling
about thrift stores
making homes of tea shops and
cozying up in our bedroom corner
hoping these threadbare blankets would keep us warm
against the cold that set in
unseasonably early.
We were silly
hurling words as if they would dissipate
in open space
and not slowly chafe
at our sensitive parts,
thinking an open palm meant only give when
an open palm also spells want
and we were wont
to fall apart
young and lost and always searching
but never seeing
ourselves.
April 8, To be black and alive
Kinky follicles
coiled skyward
–a grave inheritance
April 7th, Urban Poetry
April 6th, Sunset
Steeping bruise purple
sweet tea sunset’s colors seep
in fading day’s sky
April Poem-A-Day #4 Distance
I don’t like the look of you,
all teeth and want,
rough hands
grasping.
Only moments ago
their smooth touch soothed this flesh,
but now it grows cold
as absently, I watch you devour
the offering of these limbs,
watch them sink into the furnace
of your mouth.
themagpiestash 
and beauty
in the sun’s outstretched fingertips
that drip this sweat
this swelter, this heat
this pitter-patter in the streets,
Listen close enough
and it sounds like the murmur of
hummingbird’s wings but you
won’t find no hummingbirds here,
just the low rattle of these streetcars rush–
–rushing past,
Hiss so loud you swear
you hear the beast of this city rumbling
below you
Hear Miss Etta sing so sweet
on 47th street,
the faint tinkling of coins at her feet,
those feet
who keep walking past and
never stop–
this stomp stomp stomp
is the the beast’s steady heartbeat
don’t you know this city never sleep?