This is the moment
she re-
discovers her sadness:
moons that caved in,
touchstones marooned
in her mind.
She marks all as red
as the wounds she wore
out in the mirror—
taffeta-trapped,
gasping through
mouthfuls of harm.
Whisper of once-was
lingering yet
in her fingertips,
she dreams con brio,
bravura, codetta,
dolore.
_
We can’t go back,
but there is this:
We can look back.
It has more do
with longing than love,
is more about
a place I can’t access
than something missing.
It’s only the urge
to hold you
I can’t shake.
_
How old were we
in the flood?
She counts the correlations
now, rising water,
arriving birds.
Hinged on a pigeon
that floated like a duck
in the tub, insistent on doing
everything she did.
The future fans before her
like a spread wing,
each year a flight,
each anomaly the hopeful
promise of success.
The present still
a handful of feathers,
unfulfilled.
_
Now, I sense all that’s left:
the way you pulled through me
like a fine thread through cotton,
buried yourself in me
like the knot beneath the weave.
No one can see, but running a hand
over my surface
I can feel you there.
Holding tight.
_
Miss is not the verb:
that I carry something
of you in me
is the important part.
Moments I would
have never left
more sacred for
the not remembering.
All points of contact
crumble, leaving
a breadcrumb trail;
dark birds wait to feast
on our sweet sorrow.
_
And it is hollows I have loved,
stroking my thumb
along curves of collapse,
the smooth stroke of lack
so why resist becoming
a void myself
shell sucked dry of meat,
artichoke leaf, tooth-scraped
thistle or bivalve, I
_
He taught me
how to be cold
and I have learned
why there were
so many empty cartons
of Haagen-Dazs ice cream
under my mother’s bed.
Bad loam
runs in streaks.
I have checked in
and checked out
and am waiting now only
to carry on.
To be told when.
To go.
_
Raymond Queneau
told one story
99 ways
as a sort of exercise
but that’s all I’m doing
over and over
rewriting the story
of us
and everything changes
except me clinging
to the concept of narrative
as some sort of shield
_
I need to be thin
and live overseas
I need fabulous hair
that makes bacon jam
I need tow-headed children
and a chair made of books
I need dredlocks
and a tattoo
and to do laundry
in fishnets
and a swimsuit
I had an idea
for something
that might make me
okay
and I can recover
from love
but it won't be
today
it turns out that
being myself
is harder
to change
in not pleasing
anyone else
why can't I
catch a break
I didn't even
ask to know
and it doesn't
help
I cannot teach
others to do
what I can't do
myself
under the layers
I laid on
no one is
home
and I can't even
manage
to be alone
_
A found poem
Catastrophe Age almost 16
Clinic Age 17
To middle October bad period
After armistice good period
He returns
She discharged Almost 18
Married. Aged 18
when the story opens she is just 24
when the story ends she is just 28
_
A Parody
Major Axis
(of The Ellipse)
pulls tides aside
with just his lips;
an apsis at
his either end,
he's just as close
as far again.
_
Watching Woody Allen
I suddenly miss
the way we were—
wonder if it’s already
gone forever, if
I’ll ever find you again,
if I’ll ever have
New York
the way I want to have it.
Wanting things too much
is a form of sadness,
according to God or Gandhi,
I forget which—
I’m supposed to be learning
something about myself.
I seem to only be learning
which parts of me
won’t wash away.
_
Be before Do.
- D. W. Winnicott
I have felt the cold
in many places—
the chronic chill
that hollows bones
into bird bones,
that makes the body ache
for the weight
of another’s warmth.
I have longed to be covered
in moans
and found only a whisper
would reach me
through the snow.
In the moment between breaths,
I begin.
_
The most ringing endorsement
I can give
is that I found you worthy
(of: lying to
lying beside
lying under)
what more can you ask?
You,
who asked
so many times
(indicated by x’s
similarly representing
dead eyes
treasure
kisses)
what I was thinking—
the answer most often
was some form
of lying.
_
In wanting to hold
everything
I lose the ability
to restrain myself.
But still
maintain
myself.
Though uncontained.
My waning heart
seems unable
to control itself.
Or myself.
Which
ever it is.
(My
with
wanders.)
_
This is just to say
I carry something
unspoken
for you
inside me—
something that
wants you, is
drawn to you,
finds comfort
in the things
you speak.
And wants to
care for you,
comfort you
in return. But
is content (and,
honestly,
a little surprised)
just to be.
_
Some of us, wide-eyed,
go wandering out into
the world, expecting—
some thing.
She kissed me, and,
in that lay
the (w)hole
of what was
to come.
Soaked in time, she rolls
in words that hold
some meaning, coating
herself entirely, enterally,
preparing to digest some
opportunity—
at her most honest,
she is her most
opportunistic.
_
Shadows of birds
fly up
the lit blue
behind you
and I laze,
languidly,
practicing breathing,
becoming real again.
I dis-
appeared
for awhile;
within those hours
I existed only
to you (live
only in your
memory).
Read to me
while I ready.
The being
(okay)
is everything.
In days to come,
it is not myself
I will miss.
_
Why should suddenly
those days return:
milk in the water,
a stone in the sun,
midnight walks and cupfuls
of tears, or tea—
(then beer, then
wine, then whiskey)?
It's nothing to do
with who you are (or
were—), just that
you were there
with me. The hardest
truth is not that love
ends, but that
love is arbitrary.
_
realizing
you are all empty
of love
means there is
room to create
and probably
time, too, to
pick one
of these days
in which
you remember
someone plainly
loving you
and you forgetting
to laugh
_
Playing god
in an 8x10 shed
where adolescent instinct
ruled all—
when she dreams now
of an old man
handing her a bird
too big to hold
it reminds her
of the first cock
she chose to cull,
the way the trash can
shook from his wingbeats
even though his neck
was well broken;
it wasn’t that
he’d lost a race
or proven impotent—
he was scalping
every chick in the loft
that wasn’t his own progeny.
Hearing their screams,
seeing their heads bleed,
she dictated
his death sentence;
for the good of the many,
her own life sacrificed.
_
Feathers line
his brown bower,
a thousand
sticks or more.
He likes
what she likes—
ephemera
etcetera—
the paler his plumage
the brighter his gifts,
sorted in piles
and arranged:
berries, flowers,
nuts and bones—
even old beer cans,
plastic straws.
But’s it not all
for one bird;
if she likes it,
maybe so
will her sister.
He likes
what shes like,
calling one,
calling all.
_
Hail Mary,
full of grace,
Snow begins
m
e
l
t
i
n
g
and last
fall
slowly re-
turns. Up.
the Lord is
with thee;
Apparitions
of us start
easing out,
creased and crumpled,
wrinkled
and wet—
blessed art thou
among women,
I’ve gone out
to gather
the last icicle
hanging on
evening’s eave:
A single drop
drips like a drupe
from the tip;
instead of stone
within, one
immaculate
tear.
and blessed is
the fruit
of thy womb,
Jesus.
You’re still
inside
with a glass
(of wine)
Holy Mary,
mother of God,
pray for us sinners
the plastic
beads
of the rosary
c·o·u·n·t·i·n·g
decades
of mysteries:
now and at the hour
of our death.
joyful, sorrowful,
glorious, luminous,
comforting.
Amen.
_
So pretty to think
that he’s secure
even if I’m avoidant
(which means
I’ll fuck him over—)
wait:
doing that already.
Hmmm. Then,
am I the evil one
for not leaving him
when he loves me?
(I’m probably not
supposed to be thinking
of this in terms of
who’s evil or not...)
Relationships
are not easy
for the emotionally
healthy—
for someone like me,
they’re pretty much
hell.
But apparently
I don’t even need
psychotherapy!
I can use him
as my secure base
and be normal
and happy.
Wow. Sounds so—
easy.
How come
saying it doesn’t
make it work?
_
nights that I fell asleep
while you were still
talking to me
mornings you didn’t know
I hadn’t slept at all
and there was no point
in trying to be quiet
no one mentioned irony
when that came up
_
A loon with a spoon
and a beribboned robin
cadged a barred cage
for a bird with a bobbin.
A wren and a hen
set up shop in the moon,
where they peddled green cheese
to the spectacled loon.
The cheese was a gift
for the newly caged bird,
who declared all such kindness
distinctly absurd.
As for the loon
and the robin with ribbons,
they’ve been tarred and feathered
for acting like gibbons.
_
Let’s practice being small:
minikin mannequins mass
parading, masquerading as
queries from before the floor
became a field too far away
to wander; don’t squander
the quiet kenning, yearning,
keening. She seems a slightly
querulous thing, slighting even
sightly denizens of the world
in which you live; give her
ghosts instead, let her zen out
(or in).
Twisting and rhyming, the
timing falls off until you’re left
mining the asphalt, miming
your own faults. Who’s fault
is that? Tarred and feathered,
she remembers the barred cage.
Full of music then, her ribbons
and robins hang in shreds. Dead
to your pleading, drunk and
needing, she winds her way
upstairs. Upstaged, you take
her dare, and make the grade.
_
She would wear scuba gear
in the tub—not for fear
of drowning, but because
the ocean’s nowhere near.
You are keeping her alive,
if not exactly thriving;
but that’s because of her,
not for your lack of trying.
_
Nothing left but nuts and bolts;
bolts and nuts and cigarette butts,
butts and nuts and thin little cuts,
cuts that slice like fire through ice,
ice that melts like water ought—
bolts, butts, cuts, ice,
now you know what all I’m not.
_
Next day, I am all poetry—
fingers all enjambed iambs,
toes all troches. An anapestic
angle at elbow and knee, I
feel a syllable slide by my
ankle. I sink below you but
retain a voice, my one vice.
_
Give me no harbor
from myself;
(they let me lead
a thousand lives
and so cheat death
when I’ve already
died.) Allow me no
room to breathe,
no ship to sail,
no world to wander.
I’ll terrify the flesh
I find in the bottom
of my glass. When
I’ve emptied it. But
most of all, don’t
let me in. Begin, be
gin. Begging to sin.
_
A single breath.
He watches her go off
like a firecracker, like
a fit of sullen sparks
and still he sees her, seizes
her, sails the seven seas
to find her sustenance,
a wayward glance, a sly
and sudden something like
a sneeze, the silent sound
of please that’s reckoned
in a gasp, a gazing, grazing,
dazed and dying on her
lips. Against the sodden hollow
where his heart once was.
And so to dark in dreaming
of everything she’s stealing
with absolutely no intent
of ever giving any of it
back.
_
If a curl against you
catches fire,
will you part
with can-
tos?
two can
what one
won’t (or will not: own it)
to be,
there
quietly consuming,
displaced. And so to
silence.
_
O w)
here is
the postcard
I marked
Us
(lost—
among
the pages and
the one piece of
my heart
I left
for you—
can’t find that
either n—
_
I will scratch at my
humanness
until it shows color;
humor me—huge
and hued, hungry
for an ung
racious
grasp, I rasp rapacious.
Is it possible to rape
one’s self? I
lunge
after your lungs, long
ing to be in, greeted by
your groans, grow
ling and howling,
slipping at a lipped
syllable
and sliding
still.
O! the thrill,
like tilling fallow land,
like yearning to be
home—again, and
opening the door
and coming
in.
_
I miss the days
you go
and, going,
are gone—
getting used
to the use
of another
other
maybe that change
isn’t what we learn
but what we learn
(to forget)
you are you
ng
t(w)o me fo(u)r
the way you want
_
A
parent
ly
just getting to
o
old
to want to be
a lone
here
any
more
_
How can this be food?
How can it feed you?
Don’t get me wrong—
I know the caloric value
the pages contain:
just didn’t think anyone
else would recognize
the way one can feast
on letters, gorge on
words, make metaphor
their meat.
_
The snow falls finely and I
feel you move through rooms
I have vacated. Some shadow
of my girlhood self may
flirt with you, stroke her hand
along your jaw; don’t be
fooled. She was already
wounded, knows how to
defend herself by sleight of hand
or thigh. There is no decoder ring
that can help crack this cipher.
_
Ray Charles would feel
a woman’s wrist to size her up—
I’ve let you further than that.
Have you seen me now?
According to Helkiah Crooke,
sight is the most important sense
because it verifies what is only
intimated by the others.
But sight alone is faulty, too,
and needs its fourfold reinforcement.
Have you sensed me?
Have you sized me up
and determined my properties?
What are they?
And which sense
do you most trust?
When the condition most
to be feared is blindness,
we close our working eyes.
_
may
be
we
can put
our hearts
(separately, or else—
apart)
through the grinder
pulseandpulse
and
let
them percolate
(patience: wait)
then
drink
what
drips
into
the sink
_
if the when you
won’t you
ease me
tease me, please
me—
can you, can’t you
let me
make entry
in t(w)o
the world
and
t h r o u g h
(that is
—who?—
you)
_
She went forth into the night,
clad in garments shot with light,
moving stars with easy grace,
the moon reflecting first her face
then hallow’d ground beneath her feet,
echoes of her voice replete
with sparks of heaven’s saving fire
to crack the hull of hell’s empire.
When he saw, he knew her name
but hid his knowledge all the same;
in moving by as breath of air
he caught, entangled in her hair.
He could not fail to save his soul
but deep desiring takes its toll
and when his breath had run its course
he still had not felt all her force.
And so she, sighing, wanders still,
moved by her own restless will;
only smoke and ghosts remain
as testament to fading bane.
She can recall, at sleepless night,
the way desire once took flight
and fled to rest, away off far
and drops one tear, a falling star.
_
who cares
whether I am trying
to get outside myself
or inside you—
just
take me with you
where you go,
when your eyes slide
low below their lids
and your breath
lets loose beneath
my fingertips—
just let me come.
_
