Running for Your Life: “Instagram” poems

What’s hard is soft
In an urban
Space fingers
Taper to tap
Never ever awash
In head-butting spores
Boy staredowns
Fingers clench
In fists, strike
Face bone, nose
Cartilage, contours
Of what it used to mean
To be a man, soil-stirring *
Deep, gone, gone, gone
In an Instagram minute.

Miss Lonelyhearts

Can’t think of his name
The writer fleeing the East
Nathanael West, he says,
Can there be a darker
Story? What she wants,
Needs elude her,
Miss Lonelyhearts
Adam’s rib flung
At unmade bedclothes
Fierce and hollow eyes
Leave but a dull note
On me as a woman says to
Her friend-captive over
Barbecued kohlrabi
Gowanus-style:
“My DNA is on Instagram.”

* Yes, I meant soil not soul

Next: Running for Your Life: Open “The Door”