4th of July

I could tell you we’re all thieves, but

I’m not sure you’d want to listen.

Between mouthfuls of ice cream,

beers flowing like boundless youth,

laughing on a Brooklyn rooftop.

And did you see the fireworks

tear up the sky like bombs?

And did you see how it rained

fire in Gaza last night?

And did you know we paid

for it? I say we, like me too.

Like, I paid for it too. And did you

know we also torched the skies

of Iraq, and Afghanistan?

Did you know we paid for that,

too? Yes, we, like me too. Like,

I paid for it, too. Like every year,

it’s July, and we’re back

on that rooftop, cheap beers in hand,

grinding burnt meat with our teeth,

skies dark as eulogy, screaming and

flashing lights, and you call it a celebration

And we’re all at that party.

Yes, we, like me too.

I’m at the party too.

▲

I wonder if the dead can dance

Perhaps the firmament shakes when they

do. Do they hear music? Can they see

the wounds we lick with borrowed salt?

I knew Loulou was gone before

the phone rang. The knowing seeping

through walls days at a time. But

there is no bargaining

with the current.

Sentience turns ethereal.

The ribcage steadies over a

silent heart as daylight wanes.

Outside her hospital room,

another ending. Beirut dances

to an apocalypse dressed like spring.

I steal her pill box. I grab her perfume.

I hoard all the photographs.

I swallow them like almonds. In my grief,

I imagine her in a field of mimosa trees

probably making fun of me. I wish her back.

I’ll gave back the city, its people, its tangled streets

like broken bones. You can have its buildings.

I’ll even give back the sea.

▲

Forging constellations in your name

Days curdle in the pit of my stomach

and I pick them like flowers I carry

to your grave, my feet straddling

a city dying at the hands of too many

gods. A cement-colored sky, hovers

over the ruins of a collapsed heart.

Years ago, at your house you poured

coffee in porcelain cups surrounded

by walls covered in picture frames

hiding bullet holes.

I strung their cases into

constellations, drank the light

pouring in from the windows, watched

you leaf through the newspaper.

To your left, your portable radio

spouts headlines. In your eyes, the start

of an obituary. That is the difference

between dying and becoming dead.

The former is a happenstance, the latter

a long-winded echo.