At My Feet
A day after my birthday she left it outside: by the bedroom door, soggy with summer rain, curled like a comma, with a yowl. A present—better late than never. It lay there, soaking up more rain, iridescent with a hint of red. That night as I slept she brought me another and left it on the bed. Small as an ink spot, a morning surprise. Two days later she announced her gift as I lay On the couch watching Woody Allen wishing I had his brilliance. This time the little thing was still alive, so when she dropped it in front of me it ran behind the speakers and then...
Read MoreMule Heart
We need a word for love that is now grief, Which refuses to collect dust in the glare and Lively clatter of the heart; Love of what was, that still is Because stillness is precisely the puzzle For our grinding, mule hearts — Heart like a catchment basin filling To overflow then recede in accordance with the seasons — Yet the heart is a walking vessel in search of rain — Over and over we bolt from the discomfort of our Agitated, unrestrained thirst that manages to Eclipse us every time. Here it is, the skinned and meaty crux: Love guides us...
Read MoreTsunami
Am I to desire you, lover, who teaches non-attachment? I am tsunami; with violence and duration My petitions, as in wave shoaling, heighten to break in fists And sea spray upon your coastline. Am I to desire you, lover, who speaks of immaterial love? Alone, to embrace these long, lilac dusk shadows? When your mouth is tropical water, a sleepy harbor Of honeysuckle skin and halcyon limbs. Am I to desire you, lover, who spins parables of reason? You persuade me that need is only the howling infant, With softness you cradle my angry wet face With patience you crouch at the perimeter of this...
Read MoreGesso
He said he always uses gesso first So the paint on top won’t crack And here I am dizzy in the tunnel Lights dividing like swimmer’s lane lines And I take to the diver’s block and put my hands to the edge and I I want to call him And tell him that I’m afraid of it all disappearing And I don’t even know what “it” is But maybe it would clump in my brush Like the oil that wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place And on the edge of my desk, a red party cup full of paint thinner And he’s so thin and worn that when we hug I can feel his paintbrush ribs against my breasts And...
Read MoreHe Told Me It Would Happen
The future hung over everything we did, exchanging presents, as we liked to do, books and nuts and chocolate, a canopy, sound of bullfrogs and cicadas, over everything we’d done, chocolate and nuts, books we talked about, backroads, gas station blazing in the August night we pinballed into, the restaurant with the singer, tips in the jar, how I ate a cherry tomato. Later, fog rose from the river, settling on both sides of the windshield. We drove past the point we couldn’t see then opened the windows and blasted heat. I wanted never to bounce...
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