nomadic age_
Selected for the Marymount Manhattan Review
The Literary and Art Review of Marymount Manhattan College

the cancerous July sky
as seen from a fiesta
put me in this sate
of nomadic constraint
leaving me to wander
to wash ashore
every now and then
and to be silently sucked out by the tide
then on another birthday to arrive somewhere else
Just when the sun began to warm my back
The tide would pull me away into its cold abyss
Just as I fell asleep
I would wake up and be somewhere
That I didn't know -- that could not know me

But it was my birthday and I was forced
To Celebrate
It was my birthday and I cried

----

sitting in the back of the red car -- playing with micro-machines
driving up route 81
from your parent's house
to our new place
the military accord
our new ability to afford
to reckon
to move
to begin
the never ending journey
of birthdays here
and
birthdays there
of summers
moving

an ecological circumstance of cardboard, newspaper, and tape