Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?
I began by writing many long poems about anguishing moments like a gang assault on a teenager in the Bronx and the terrorist attacks on September 11. I also wrote long poems about how my couch—where I do all my writing--is my favorite possession, how a man made fun of my disheveled appearance while I was training for my first marathon in Central Park, how I thought I was an outsider when I was growing up. I gravitated to narrative poems and still do. But now my poems are shorter, lighter, even funny. My upcoming chapbook contains poems about seeing a young topless woman walking in Central Park, seeing men in underwear as part of the No Pants Subway Ride, and being hit on by homeless men in New York City—one wanted to watch TV and hold hands, another called me Charlie’s Angels. I even have a poem about forgetting my dreams except one: I was trying to remember the name of Ken’s girlfriend. Was it Betty? No she was from the Flintstones. I woke up and instantly it came to me. Her name was Barbie.
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