CHILDLESS MILLENNIAL

Noah

Abecedarian for Billionaires

No Backsies

Patron Saint of the Impossible

Devotion

 To the Four Spiders Statistics Says I Will Swallow in My Lifetime

Cardinal, Grackle, Briefly Grapefruit

Alice at the end of the party

Implement

Transliteration

Overview Effect

It sounds like bickering but I realize it’s not: the couple
shuffles just ahead of us toward the seafood department
one gesturing from captain’s seat behind the cart’s
handlebar and one leaning into the cold case. Get some
salmon, too. Where?...

Shrimp (a Love Poem)

Picture a clod of boys in the dirt road clumped around
him       stubborn root that he is           who set himself
afloat in the mill run in a tin tub          got stuck and beat for it
but survived...

Kutya

Ellen had a frog pond behind her house
a glory of weeping willow by the door
a screened-in side porch so full of boxes
we snuck through its narrows like a hedge maze

every plant pot’s soil held a treasure
rock or glass, tiny turtle made of brass...

Ars Poetica, Describe your Perfect Date

I’ve got a heart like a pickle tub
you can turn it over and drum on it for change
it’s full of living things, it’s good for you
even if the smell isn’t for everyone


Pickle Tub, Moussaka, Sea-Witch: Coney Island

poem on unceded land

is want like bloodmuck, brook’s stinking bank
a quartz-studded hunk of rock turned over
promiscuousness of bugs
all crawling armor and legs

Want Like Flood

Who held you as a child? I search for memories of touch
and come up blank, then wonder how my mother
would answer the question. What I know is thirst...

Tender

I turned inside out against myself
bending to the law of calories in / calories out...

(Print only, spring 2022)

piece/meal

she gave me a poem on Valentine's Day
    about watching me walk among the dead
bought me my first coconut champagne from Gray's Papaya,
     the flakes tickling my tongue through the straw...

Chiara Di Lello

Books

Selected work