I just finished a month-long collaboration with Brooklyn-based illustrator and designer Caroline Hadilaksono.

Each week, I gave her a poem and she gave me an illustration, and at the end of the week, we both responded. Here are our swaps…

Swap #4

News

The wind slings snow about like laundry.
After work, she stops by the Japanese confectionery.
She buys a cherry blossom, scented of spring
and preserved in salt. An entire white peach
in sweet jelly. A kind woman
places her selections like two good soldiers
in a printed box. She carries the box
close to her body where there’s a secret
too delicious to share.

When the Lake Freezes

The lake throws ice on the shore the way teenagers toss clothes

to the moonlight, dip their bodies like wafers in the water.

I want to walk out on the ice but don’t. I’m never the one on the ice,

in the lake, sliding out of my clothes like a goddess accustomed to worship.

 Benjamin, four, says, I love the evergreens. He means he loves being here in a world

 where everything gleams.

 You and I, we grow cold and turn back. We’re old enough that any lake is every lake.

 We turn away before we turn away.

 

Swap#3

 

Umbrellas

It’s a bit like jousting
making it down the sidewalk on this
rainy day
too many umbrellas
too much scaffolding keeping us safe
beware of garlic she said
last night at dinner
garlic opens up your root chakra
some men are tall and broad
and carry umbrellas like small empires
they claim the middle of the sidewalk
and don’t give a damn
others wave broken umbrellas
over their heads
like misshapen hats
it’s these men I want to bring home
feed warm soup to
and take straight to bed

Moon Child

As children we climb
imaginary ladders
believing we’re getting somewhere
around 35 or 40
we pull the ladders down
there was after all
nothing to prop them against
we begin sheltering
which is what you should do
if you’re in a high rise
and it catches fire
no one does this
someone cries fire
and everyone flees
except for the man
who runs to his balcony
dust cloth in hand
to keep the soot at bay
there’s no good way
to tell you this
but I’ve been sending
ladders up at night
I believe I’ve struck something
a shadow maybe
and where there’s a shadow
there’s an obstacle
and a source of light

 

Swap #2

Night Wind

The night brings wind like a high note sung by a mezzo-soprano.

Unhitched mind as restless as a horse left out before a storm.

Footsteps above: a flaw in the sound-proofing or ghosts in robes of moonlight?

Prayers are rabbit feet in the pocket, a secret tree house in the mind.

The motherless look everywhere for mothers. Jigsawed, we press our absences

against the world and wait for fit.

I pray for a generation of new people with old books in their hands.

 

Innocence, Loss Of

No ice on the river until there is.

Walking in on a stranger playing the piano to an empty room is like walking in

on your mother praying.

Eye contact tells you you’re okay; lack thereof: backpedal.

For years, I thought they were morning doves.

When I first wake up, the light is so rich, I want to pour it in a jar,

whip it to pink froth.

As a girl, I caught lightning bugs in my hands, then released them. The whir

of their wings was a gentler black against the darker black of the sky.

The neighbor boys smashed the fireflies in their fists then scrawled crude shapes

on the driveway with the luminescence.

 

Swap #1

Still

When the wind’s been blowing
for days and then quiets
you notice the absence
as when you wake at night
and know you’re alone
before you open your eyes
I can count on one hand
the number of nights
I’ve slept apart from you
this last year
I’m not talking about sex
the constellations rotate
but never draw closer
one to another
but as the trees grow
the spaces between them diminish

 

Flight Cancellation

Tonight I am walking
through the lace of falling snow
I am thinking of my friend
who will marry tomorrow
I won’t be there
I once believed marriage
was about my own happiness
but it isn’t
as when a stray black cat
crosses your path
in the snow
and you think not about
your own bad luck
but the cat’s
and where he’ll sleep tonight
on a living creature
the snowflakes melt and bead
on the dead
they accumulate like diamonds