paloma

sometimes I miss
the press
of a soft breast
in my palm—
surprising weight
for something
capable of flight.
they were
the sole religion
I’ll confess;
benediction
in every brush
of wing,
confessors granting
absolution with solemn,
nodding heads.
feather and bone
are our holiest relics.
I believe in resurrection
each time I see
another flock 
take rise.

_

D., me

the lines collect,
congregating in gregarious
collusion—
      we’ll be defrauded,
both of us,
thinking these words
have anything to say.

it’s the worst kind
of hypocorism, reducing
each other to diminutive
twiddles: dotted i’s,
crossed t’s; worse yet,

            it’s dangerous—
letting me roll around
in language like this,
letting me turn a phrase
around you, entwine you
in rhyme:

one uncial could be your
un-
      doing.

_

Innervation

I sang the echo
of my art
into your ear,
and though
you were asleep,
it must
have reached you:

a rumor you
had heard before,
the loss of
secret, sacred, languid
            bliss
 
the kiss that
missed your lips,
went straight on
down into your
hips—

fascia fuses
skin to muscle,
muscle to bone;

alone
          we all come
apart.

_

Why (and Not)

It’s not food
until somebody eats it—
it’s not you
until someone sees you,
          mirrors you,
brings you
back to yourself,
cracks you open
and crumbles
at your touch.
                    So much
centers on a trembling,
tumbling, melting—
magnanimous and muddled;
molds you, folds you up
and covers you, counters
and then comes for you,
at you, on you, to you—
true and two who, total, 
finally hold 
                and are whole.

_

Poetasting

rills 
    of Rilke 
running 
        in rivulets

cummings 
coloring 
each 
coming

as Roethke roves, rolls, roams

and Hikmet, 
                   honeyed, 
                                 hums.

_ 

Elle

likes love—licks love
lilting limpid liquid love
looks for lovely lolling love
love that lingers; limping love
lush and low, lackadaisical love
longing, loitering, lonely love
lumbering love, lyrical love
loves a lanky lover’s love
lateral literal linear love
 
(love,—)

_

Be Comely—

mind your body;
bind your many
modifications, mine
your maybe, bending
to mending
all combinations
cunningly combing,
coming to numbing
and calming again.

_

Nocturne

Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim.
                                         - Ovid
          middle
          of night
time
       without light
rampant caliginosity
bituminous atrocity
          camera obscura
          perfer et obdura
silence defending
beginning
               by ending

_

Midnight Mass

Iesus Nazarenus,
Rex Iudaeorum
hanging from his cross
in a fresh coat of paint

above his nascent incarnation
lying blanched and bloodless
in an ashen manger

when we are asked
to bow our heads
for prayer, I examine
the hands in my lap;
no nail holes here.

_

Leda

Her flesh flushed full
for god in form of bird,
the only beast able to bear
the brunt of such ferocity.
She was not made for men.

They required gentler, softer things,
the kind of things that
wrapped up nicely, things
without bristles or thorns,
hides soft as butter,
as malleable and forgiving.

Their jealous, inadequate minds
imagined her passion parried, 
pinned by webbed claws, pictured
her violated by a beak—unable 
to recognize she needed feathers
to tame her, the fold of two
vast wings to lift her up.
 
What they named Zeus’s lust
could only be her absolution.

_

Spun

raising ghosts
like no one else can,
suicide elides
in curving stride
the bluebird’s folly,
exchanging sanctity
for ceremony,
creating more questions
than answers—
even while lying

_

Confessional

I hate to do something I can’t explain.
All my actions have such good reasons.
 
Except this:
 
Telling things
I don’t want to tell,
expressing things
I’d rather not express,
to no apparent end.
 
Yet it feels as much a part of me
as the inside of my skin.

_

Imprinting

every hour she waits for a drink
she will reward herself
with one more later—

wants to return to her childhood,
only her own—no one else’s—
wants to laughrunclimbtrees,
lock the bedroom door—

as if that would do anything;
as if a man crossing so many
more substantial boundaries
would be stopped by a hollow
sheet of wood, a bit of brass;

is it a false start
when we leave ourselves,
only to return?
or if we start too late
do we run out
of time to try?

as if to return
would change
a goddamned
thing.

_

Distance=Absence

I am behind a glass
where I can see your blood
but it does not touch me

I spent my entire childhood
learning to need no one
and all of my adulthood
learning to not even want

it is not emotion  
          but language
not about reality
          but distance

to live in the moment
you can only live
one moment at a time

and no one will see you
when you can no longer
recognize yourself

_

Nonce

aye wan to lift
inner cottage buy
the see

whiff a guarding
full off tuber
oses
 
ant sever all
gnomes with
lunk gnoses

_

(687 lines)

each of us
with our own agency
aching

don't you recognize
the catastrophe
this will be

I want
and long
and lack
and ache

and never
enough

still you
torture me
 
with your
own brand
of sympathy
 
all the time
that we find
will not suffice

we'll agonize
in insufficiency
don't you see

       me
save me
sink me
willingly

into all
you are

wanting more
than all you have
to give

_

She: Cartography

you must know:

(you must—
and you don’t—
which is why
I’m telling you—)

how to say
your prayers

how to praise
the instep
of the footstep,
then the hem
and then the
un-hemmed-in

you must know:

(you must—
and you do—
but it is key
and so I emphasize—)

to inhale
exhalation

to soak in
incense smoke,
to brush with lips
the hair—
sometimes,
only air—
 
look: Look.
Taste. Touch.
Feel. Map
with your finger
tip . . . (tip): tips

don’t ask:
she won’t know
what she wants
until she has it—

that secret she keeps
even from herself

but she wants to know
 
she wants
to know—

she knows she wants,
and, knowing,
wants you.

_

Phenomenology

not forbidden;
unbidden

manwoman
no woe, moan won

for skin
for in

for human kin
(un)      kind

one mind mined
all mine

youmewe
negation of the negation
 
undulation
adulation

all undone

_ 

Transubstantiation

If bread
on my tongue
can become
his flesh—

then his flesh
on my tongue
can become
daily bread.

_

Conversion

When I was a child
I prayed in a field
at an altar I stacked
of river stones, a little lump
of yellow wax
alight on top.

Now I am the altar.
First kiss is conversion
and he lays his prayers
across me, anoints me
with his oil, washes me
in his tears, sacrifices sweat
and blood upon me.

And I burn for him.

_

sub rosa

I am going
into the water.
I gather memories
likes stones from the sea.
Things that don’t
even have words.
I wear them smooth
with constant turning.
Some things we can do 
only for ourselves.
I carry them in the pockets
of my clothed heart.
I have something
for only you.

_

Cumulus

I gather them up
and they run
like grain through my fingers

each one a whole
containing its own
possibilities of life

yet insignificant alone—
there is nothing like the luxury
of being elbows-deep
 
in poems

_ 

Coincidence

Funny that I was just thinking
of writing a poem
to explain to you
how sex is like reading

and here you are writing
a poem about how
you want me to read you
like a book.

Maybe funny isn’t
quite the right word.

_

Balance

There is nothing you owe,
because it can never be repaid;
we are constantly in flux of debt,
owing—and receiving—

This is why people name God.
They cannot stand to bear
such a burden between them
and so assign their dues
to a greater being.

How can you give me yesterday?
I cannot offer tomorrow.
We already have more 
than either of us deserve.

_

Not So Far Behind: An Exercise in Exhalation

Waiting to feel some
thing this
isn’t what it was
supposed to be

I am a jealous god

I want the words to be
MINE only mine
all mine only all

and everything you used to be
is everything you are and
if I could play Picasso’s
guitar I’d tell the way I really
feel

which is nothing of any consequence

I hate
that it always
comes out like this

I fuck another fuck
like I write another paper
like I write another poem
and then erase, just in case

when the dialogue between us
gets too close for breathing
then I’ll find another way
to ease inside

I cannot decide
if I want or don’t a reader
someone to believe
the things I say

because bleeding might be nice
for someone else to watch
but we’re all fucking voyeurs 
just the same

I would like to run away
have wanted this for almost
all my life
even done it
a few times
and every time it’s better

ifibreathethebreathyouhaveformeandletyoutakesomethingfromme
althoughyouthinkyoumightbegivingitisonlysacrificehownicetosplice
asouloficewithsomethingbeatingmaybebleedingmaybebored

how boring
(which can mean
making holes, you know)

you ask me if I ever missed
the friends I never had
all I know is all or nothing
so I prefer the kind I can consume
not you

they tell you there’s no use in traveling
wherever you go, there you are
it works that way this way too

ambiguity is golden in the way of
things worth commerce and capital 


_

Re: The Best Gift Ever

Didn't you know
that you 
were gift enough?

_

Sinking

inkling 

         clinging

in the hollow

of my           ache

p.s. pls (please)

sp         lit between

fingers / mouth

head

        down

                 S    (h)

                   out

_

The Anatomy Theater

the peeling un-
            feeling

pinned
           to a table
    skin flayed
sinews splayed
organs shivering
            shriveling
prodded and fondled
a cold corpse coddled
by pincers and prongs

while men
with their handbooks
watch

ignorant
of the hollow
between your spine and the tabletop
where some warmth 
                                remains

_

Requiem

Do you know how it is when one wakes
at night suddenly and asks,
listening to the pounding heart: what more do you want,
insatiable?
                     -Czeslaw Milosz, from “Farewell”

I dreamt I was a ghost
disappointed I had died
when I had so much still to do

there are things that I
could teach you,
could touch you with

but want
only to listen
as you give me your reasons
in my own language

your tongue tripping over
the terms of my body

tangled in confusion
broken-soul stories
no reason to withhold
any                 more

_

New York

City like a lover I shame
when I am caught
in flagrante delicto
slutting around with dirty burgs,
meaner metropolises.

I abandon their gaunt wanting
to re-turn to you—to be
within reach of you,

to be where,
waking in the night
from sordid dreams,
I can reach for you,

a subway ride from suicide

coitus reservatus come again

art inanimate but inhabited.

_

Restructuring

It was myself you gave back to me
unexpectedly

dangerous
with words,
                  with wants,
with wondering when
and where and, always, why

I keen to know,
to have discourse of dialogue
and coarse dissonance, too—

but if I haven’t been myself
it isn’t me you want
to worship.

_

Ezra on Empty

The poetry of purgatory
lingered on her lips— 

feathers kept falling
at habanero hints; 

Saint Ezra rolled
under the bed, 
exhaling her name: 

Was she ever here
if she never came?

_

Sangfroid

Do not ask me to name
that which was done to me
before I had learned
to defend myself;
it is part of who I am,
and if I am to love myself
enough to offer defense,
I have to love him, too.
Which renders love
down to nothing more
than any other form of fat;
when cold it is solid enough,
but heat it up
and it runs away
or burns to nothing. 

_

Stella Cadente

If you are missing something
it is because she took it

cradling it
between tongue and teeth

like the burning coal
that Moses carried
in his mouth.

_

Sublogic

The way in which we describe the propositions 
                      is not essential.

                                                - Ludwig Wittgenstein

I cannot say how far—

how many hallways traversed,

locked knobs rattled,

rooms checked,

loose panels pried free

to look behind, just in case—

only to find you, finally,

in someone else’s space,

where I discovered

that to hear you there

on the other side of the door

was enough.

Here’s a proposition for you:

        don’t give a fuck

about the way it is described.

So you be a philosopher

and I’ll be a poet—

no one will ever

wonder what happened to us

except ourselves.

_

Nebraska, circa '06

Our fingerprints mingle
on the lid of the sugar bowl

my hands smell like
dirt and death

the first robin of spring
lies in our bedroom closet
with a broken wing

look what the cat dragged in.

_

Bibliophile

I am still looking
for a good hard-backed copy
of love.

_

Trepidation

The uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back

to what is known of old and long familiar.

                                                - Sigmund Freud

Known of old

and long familiar

   I feel

that certain class of fear

of the known

spun

un-

the frequent

that thrills with a shiver,

            a shake,

that takes

without touch

enough            to make

anything more corporeal

down-

right                 uncanny.

_

Wanderlust

. . . geography is also a type of writing,

as indicated by its suffix —graphy . . .

                            - Amy Wells-Lynn

O my

peripatetic lover,

if geography

is a type of writing

then travelers are authors,

explorers scribes—

and when you come wandering

my champaign fields,

meandering in hollows,

roving over eskers,

you re-

write me,

every time.

_

Flocking

A bird is a bending
of rules that I broke

feathers that can’t be
                                 unfallen
bones that can’t be
                              unhollowed

a swallow
a wren, and then—
a thrush

a thrill
and still

you can’t go back
into the egg
re-wet your wings

a bird is the old broken
world that I bent

a whorl: anything shaped like a coil
a curl, a girl, a whirl,
a whippoorwill
until

after words
the birds
come

on yellow feet to feed
on the cracked 
and crumbed.

_

Grammerotica

Puts his em—dash
in her (parentheses) and
comma, comma, comma,

leaves “quotation marks”
across his back

apostrophe’s possessiveness
precedes . . . ellipses

next morning just an
           indent
on the pilcrow beside her

_

Fore words

Speak to me

      sliding through your words

forwards      for words

talking     taking

too much of me

slipping under my

     words     afterwards

If there were notes beneath

they were piano-

pressed

             silently     in symphony

sin for me

     form

he     felt

for no one, none     for some

for sum of something suddenly in symphony sliding in in sin and slipping sound

_