I Am Trying to Love Frank O’Hara More
I really am! I am trying not to see his exclamation marks as cheap melodrama and his endless conjunctions as some kind of separation anxiety or fear of mortality for what do full stops signify except dying

A leaky drainpipe drips
creating damp patches on uneven paving,
slime green algae blossoms
forming viridescent ripples

if samsara’s concrete please don’t come back
as black jackal for I live in Norwich
nor spineless worm as I don’t have a lawn

I grew up on a farm so I should know all about expensive cows and free milk. You’re taking being a debutante much too literally. We only meant to give permission for you to make a good match, not flit among the suitable boys…

There is the green that birthed all pine trees.

We were the housing and the housed,
meaning nothing except that
we were always occupied,
or to put it simply never out.

Coming home to days of heat
trapped beyond the door, to time skewed
by time away, the house bigger and
smaller than before.

I don’t know why I look to my mother
for her shadow never stays.

I want to tell my mother,
I made a successful loaf
in the bread machine you didn’t know
you were leaving me