December Morning Poem

Below a scarf of snow
the ground has ceased to shudder.
With a heartbeat slow as sunrise,
it sleeps as if beneath glass.
My breath ruffles solemnly
into the fishbowl air.

I tap
my feet,
the whole world rings.

Halves

If Jack and Rose had spent less time kissing
they might have made it to a lifeboat.
They could have both survived. Nothing
keeps a sinking ship from going under.

It still feels unnatural to have breakfast alone,
to stop myself from thinking to grab two forks
and spreading hot sauce on what would have been your half.

Remember the night we missed three busses
in a row, the last lifeboats of the night, and we
were so cold and tired and you
were so mad, and then we met those people with the telescope
who showed us the moon.
In that dancing lens there hung an unbelievable
white city, frozen and old as a glacier.
I saw that teeth-white orb more clearly
than anything on earth.

If Romeo and Juliet had thought things through
they might have made it,
but at least Juliet never had to see that half-empty
bottle of hot sauce on the shelf
every single day.

Holes in the Prairie

The night I watched you dance alone
the floor between us sank into a valley
of certain and impassible hours.
Your hands, as they patted the darkness so near,
flew far beyond my grasp,
even if I had stood and danced
we would not have been dancing together.

As children we ran through woods unafraid
of pathlessness,
with leaves like feathers against our faces.
We could not be lost, not in summer,
branches were made to hold us.
We must be as children again, soap-clean,
not touching,
and while I want you sleeping beside me
I do not want
to wake beside you naked anymore.

There are no songs of this particular regret,
of this one lonesomeness,
the knowing that our friends
must only be our friends.
Just as crows must eat the dead.

And prairies must be burned to bloom.

Things must be as they are.
We must walk in the dark,
I must watch you dance,
We must be as we have been,
ourselves, apart.
The certainty of this return
is a shudder of relief.

Borrowed Body

All summer I rode on a borrowed bike

with a borrowed helmet and a borrowed lock.

My lungs gathered luminescence

and I grew lean around them,

riding long and light.

The wind blew in off the lake

in heaving hot and cold.

Miles out, lightning stung the water,

we lay down in the dark in the storm.

Your mouth was a thundercloud,

our bodies moved like the rain.

We left the beach with sand in our socks

as the fog drew strings around the moon.

With itchy breasts and damp tangled hair

I understood how it is to be a woman:

To pass through things, to be passed through,

To take what does not belong to me

and build it

into this body.

finally summer

In the last hour of morning

everyone pretends to be asleep,

lying still and heavy as the rising heat.

Finally

your hand reaches from your sleeping bag,

finally

I feel your fingers on my shoulder blade,

they move like a mouse beneath drying leaves.

I am as patient as a seed.

Our eyelashes are the dark fringes

of ferns in the forest

as we pretend to be asleep.

The lake tosses, a fitful dreamer,

summer sprawls open-mouthed.

A cicada calls.

It is the pause in the air

before we kiss.

Cicada

A cicada, newly risen, navigates my skin,

beneath the soft unhesitating touch

I too stretch my wings.

We have both lain for so long untouched,

now we unfurl knobbly and new,

fresh and unfolding.

Does the soil ache as cicadas are borne up bursting?

Summer is a weight on my thighs,

a soreness in my most hidden bones.

(sun)

In the morning we shared a mango
as pulpy and yellow as the sun.
The world gleamed with a summer sheen
so we sat outside and let the leaves
cast shadows on our hangover eyes.
They cast shadows on themselves.
How self-contained, those trees,
how quietly they gather in the light.

We were pass-out-drunk the night before,
the drunk of scholars sick of words,
the drunk of getting lost, eating snakes,
falling down steep banks
where the railroad meets the river tracks.

And all those cups of coffee drunk from styrofoam,
what chemicals did they leave in our bodies?

My friend, you laughed
when I kissed the eyelid of your drunk left eye,
it fit on my lips like the lips of a bottle.
For once we did not speak,
and they found us asleep on the kitchen table,
lying side by side.

Vocabulary

Is it platonic or plutonic? you ask, every time imprecise until I reply,

though really we are neither, how can we be,

our eyes half-closed, awake too long, poorly packed in tired skin,

improperly defined.

We lie on the porch, two lumpy cigarettes,

watching the ions of the air.

The snow is too slow for your patience, you say,

All other words plod off on peripatetic feet.

Each phrase floats face down,

silences pass like quicksilver suns.

Are we made of shadows or fire? Magma or perfection?

Really we are neither, here

on the penumbra of perception it is so late, here

your hand is on my sleeve.

I am cursed by your propinquity,

whatever that means.

Fire Alarm

Certainly we had been up all night

filling our mouths with bread and cheese and cinnamon,

gargling with the stars.

And certainly we had made sure the stove was off,

the pilot light burning low

like a moon on the horizon.

But when our fingers touched

the fire alarm began to ring,

sprinklers sent the whole pajamed house

stumbling out to the sidewalk.

They stared incredulous at our

wild wakeful eyes.

spirits

A cemetery full of mulberry trees near Wrigley field,
the fingers of the dead are stained purple.

Our lips are stained, too. I gaze at the tight confluence of your jaw
as we lie in the dapple-gray light.

Everyone that we love is the ghost
of a firefly once caught in some glass jar.

summer dreams

I dreamed my sleeves were full of crabs.
I dreamed I went to the doctor
and she told me everything was wrong.
I dreamed that you got married.
The world is made of fragile wires,
I wonder how it holds together.

Springtime

All colors are changing from gray-white to green
while springtime spins circles and drools as it cleans.
Ice frozen is melting an inch at a time,
froth rivers in gutters all gravel and grime.
All rivers are rushing: the first day of spring.

Our bodies now follow the course of the thaw,
a stretch in each hamstring, a yell in each jaw,
of bright words that break free like rivers unbound
from banks that were deafened from muting each sound.
All sounds are now singing: the first day of spring.

We sprawl on the front porch with arms opened wide
to gather the light as our atoms collide.
The sun crashes over with curious eyes,
our hearts buzzing softly like lazy houseflies.
All hearts beat together: the first day of spring.

As seeds all split open and leaves all twist loose
the season is jumbled, a tumbled-up truce.
Our feet pressed together, thin sole to thin sole,
a half of a half and a half of a whole.
All halves slam together: the first day of spring.

Interlude

“I am so glad we live here together with our yam”

he said, putting hope in her hailstone heart.

They fluttered tiny wings, licked icicles,

fell sick, convalesced.

Through the betrayal of November, the knife-wound of January

they unfurled wings so small and gray.

Nearly invisible.

Beneath dull skin the flesh is bright.

In spring what else will come loose, break free,

take flight?

Love is a sweet potato. Love is a moth.

Illumination

Finding text you took up ochre and iron,

etched the pale vellum of my mind with gold.

Illuminate this manuscript, these eyes.

Line words with woad and coal and images of birds,

fill with tumeric and lead what has been black and white.

Blank verse entwined with vines, my veins are verdigris

vessels in the workshop of your cinnabar smile.

Stiff spines stretch, a book opens,

plain pages disappear into an indigo night.

Freedom

I hope that someone was thinking of me
at the exact moment that I,
thrashing the centerline of the dark highway
between Clovis and Roswell,
hit 100 miles per hour.

Everyone is always thinking of something else,
and I thought only of the death-shudder
of the steering wheel.

Life

Life is complementary to life.

It is too many things not to match with itself:

The muscle-clench crunch of December snow,

fifteen minutes of afternoon sleep,

bank swallows darning the air.

In the morning we wrap lunch in wax paper,

go swimming in our clothes,

lie in the unleavened sunlight.

I would happily make sandwiches with you

until breast cancer finds and kills me.

Lemons

She gave him lemons

that they squeezed over a floppy chicken,

then baked inside its soggy skin.

Later they ate the meet, their prying fingers

peeling off white strips for greasy mouths.

He gave her beer and wine and whisky,

coffee and tea,

hard bread and rough romano cheese.

They got high from a bud burning in a ballpoint pen.

At four am he took off her glasses,

uncovered eyes bare and bold.

Their faces wavered

but did not meet.

In the morning they woke curled head to foot,

sore and dry-mouthed on the couch.

He gave her a glass of water before she drove home,

thirsty for lemonade.

Shoplifted Cheese

You cut the sandwich in half,
without asking if I wanted half a sandwich.
You broke frozen bread in half on your knee
and stuffed it full of shoplifted cheese.
You made me feel smart and clever
though I know I am anyway.
A well-meaning charlatan is still a charlatan, they say,
yeah a well-meaning charlatan is still a charlatan.

You poured me a cup of tea
and read such good books to me.
We stayed awake til dawn
yeah I fell asleep at dawn.
The next week you were kissing that other girl
and wouldn't hang out with me.
A well-meaning charlatan is still a charlatan, you see,
yeah a well-meaning charlatan is still a charlatan,
and and adorable liar is still a liar
and Aladdin is still a thief.
And Robin Hood had STDs and every actor plays a part.
When will I learn not to sell half my heart for half a sandwich?

Lines

i.

At five am, after nibbling
the coarse corners of dawn,
our mouths are full of hours,
our feet are bound to earth.
Goodnight, he says, and tumbles upstairs.
Through the hundred-year old floorboards
I hear him walking-
a heartbeat through old plaster, pummeled waterpipes.
His footsteps are fingertips
tapping a table. Together
we slip into our rooms, then out to the bathroom.
Hallways mumble at our passing.
I hear him walking
then we stand, spines aligned,
brushing our teeth at the sinks.

I am a line extending forever from one fixed point.
Ten feet up he is sleepy-eyed parallel.
We are railroad tracks, those curved and rusty ghosts.
The waters runs, falls silent, creaks on again.
Hinges squeak. We pace
a balanced minuet to sleep.

ii.

One night in the trainyard
He tries to tread the tarnished beam
but always tumbles back down.

We discover
that side by side with arms outstretched
like flimsy spring branches,
we can run.
His mitten locked around my fingertips,
fleetness is a matter of inches.
Our feet telegraph those two cold spines,
meters skimming by.

In that hand-held darkness, surefooted,
I suddenly believe in flight.

November Nights

November night
piled beneath old blankets,
cold close
enough to feel the stubble,
see summer creases on the skin.
We lay, legs colliding,
our arms curved like bird wings
around the others slow-fluttered ribs.

Each word is a jar
opened and spilled out:
coarse nutmeg, papery anise, cinnamon bark.
Each touch shudders: fennel seeds
spreading on the tongue.
We are bright with questions: cloves and broken glass.

Will lips touch those laugh lines?
What explanation is offered for the minutes
between now and dawn?
It is enough to have these phrases.

Morning comes open-mouthed
without words,
only soft thoughts
that crumble like walnuts
between the fingers of a moment:
waking up curled around one another's toes.