tell me
  one thing

you don’t have
  to. don’t say

do you know how
  this works?

maybe it’s no
  use. anything

i know

say one thing
  to me

something i
  won’t know

tell me
  one thing

you don’t have
  to say

I used to sit by the broken fence in my parent’s backyard at dawn. I loved lying on the grass and falling asleep there. There were little mushroom thingys around the logs beside the little shed and the stairs. I used to nap by your favorite fence when my parents were asleep at dusk. I loved being buried in the sand by the sleeping bag. We woke before the clams behind the tide and let them sleep and swam on our backs. In winter sometimes it didn’t snow. We used to ride sleds with feet on frozen grass past the little shed and past the stairs.

New York. where i am from we had fences of
stone left by glaciers. just a slice
of lakes. the
glove factory left. the canning town
ceased to exist. before that
the canal, suffragettes. we made
salt, snow and Indians. the New York
i know is rhubarb and the science of reisling,
wild strawberries, beer, and seasons. i’m as close
to marines on the reservation as anything. or
oz. written there. why not claim
the city with dirtbikes and skateboards
or flower tattoos from Syracuse?