April 9th

Birth Announcement

"do you,/ a girl from kansas/ imagine the invisible changes/ in front of you?"
--Jim Carroll


I'm not sure where I was before,
but I dusted my bookshelf today,
and checked myself out up close, new
and alien with my fists up like that--
someone cared enough to take that
photograph, someone else to send it home,
someone else to place it in a small
red wooden frame, to hang it up, and, yes,
years later, to hand the picture over to me,
then embrace me like I was leaving
before I left for the north. Can you imagine--
at 18-- looking into the sleepy knowing
eyes of a newly-here human and giving her
the name of a fictional Quaker ancestress?
Could any of us have imagined any of this?
It's Upper Manhattan. Punk was born and
died. I'm eating Greek yogurt with
honey. I remember you I remember
you I remember you. Whoever
you are.