Sonnets 1 – 240

On Sunday I fly from Santo Domingo to New York City. I am sure I will arrive alive, but just in case I don’t, I am going to put a PDF of the two-hundred and forty sonnets I have written to my satisfaction so far. I’m aiming for three hundred and sixty sonnets in all, as in the three hundred and sixty degrees that make up a circle.

This is a manuscript I finished up today, September 18, 2026. The sonnets in this collection were written from April 2003 until February 2018.

Here are sonnet 1 and sonnet 240, which you will find with all the others in the PDF below. 

1

Looking at the springs, sitting in the sun
something at my nape begins to tickle
like the wind’s moving a hair there, fickle
on my bare neck between the scalp and trunk.
I’m reading the poet Bill Kushner—Ah!
His April Poems are wonderful to hold.
It’s April and I’m here with Bill—But no
Something’s crawling on my skin. Is it? What?
I scratch and it vanishes like a thought
forgotten, but it’s not. It walks. I pick
from my neck a beautiful round red tick
with many tiny moving legs, enough
to turn my thoughts from Bill to blood and death.
It knows I’m here, where I wanted to rest.

240

My sense of order is always to clean
but under the covers Cachito sleeps
a bump I see—Outside it’s 5 degrees.
Snow covers everything. Cachito breathes
and I’m relieved to see he is alive
watching him fall and rise knowing in time
he will get up to eat, defecate, cry.
I’ll make the bed in that allotted time.
Now I’ll let rickety Cachito stay.
Whether made or unmade, changed or unchanged
in bed he will dream of far away prey
the mice of yesterday. We humans change.
Bad habits, pretty morning gossamer
become with age an iron chain or worse.

Sonnets 1 – 240, 9/18/26