Sunflowers

Hunched over,
Sun pinching at their necks
Waiting like refugees
with shrouded faces

There is no rain in the summer
Only blood
that passes from flesh to earth
through snarls of root and vein
to feed the shriveled skin of the sunflowers


Meduzot (Jellyfish)

Glowing globes of mystery
Thousands of universes
exhaled onto a scalloped shoreline
The sting of countless worlds that do not exist


Aussified

I want to be in a city with a grumbling stomach.
I want to roil in its appetites.
But the Jews of Vienna are pent up in Yad Vashem.

Even the ghosts here are quiet,
Strolling along trolley tracks taut as violin strings
Past the tattoo parlor on Judenstrasse,
Barely glimpsing at their monument -
A library of stone.

Vendors in powdered wigs beckon and sell,
"Bitte," "Danke," "Thank you for your visit"
As though nothing has transpired between Mozart and today

While the ghosts wave good nacht
to the gold-crusted buildings
to the marble curled like smoke.

Their silence deafens and curdles in my ears
I strike at the rock, waiting for tears.