A conversation with someone I haven’t seen in a while

               Hey, do you want to go to the prom with me?  I just lost my pencil.  It fell into the toilet the other night.  But that’s not where I lost it.   I don’t know where I lost it.  So, do you want to go to the prom with me?  Even though it’s not high school and my kids will need looking after, we’ll figure something out.  I’m figuring it out right now by writing a list.  Do you have a pencil?  Don’t answer that if you were only going to answer one of my questions.
               I saw you the other day, but I think water vapor was clogging the air as if the ocean had evaporated.  Through the mist I perceived you, it must have been you, and then something shrouded you- a shaggy, bedewed red-pine bough, a slammed car door, or your own secretive nature, perhaps.  Or maybe it was something about me that made you disappear.  Well, here we are again, starting out like high school sweethearts.  I’ve got some gum.

– Ari Feld

On Difficult Poetry

At night, air remains the same
color, though it becomes more difficult
to see through.

It contains this quavering voice,
released from a radio, dissolved
in strings and the street’s foliage.

I hear only enough to know
it is somewhere
and it sounds,

perhaps, Italian, like any voice
that air can carry and confuse.

Though, perhaps I do the confusing
by straining to make the voice clear.
Certainly, that is no the work of the artist.

– Ari Feld