how can she say that what she misses most
is not you and is not even
your hands or your mouth but instead is
her own ephemeral desire, so strict and focused
in proximity to your body and
amorphous in your absence, a teeming squad
of all the noises ever made in the bedroom
which circle the ceiling, tasting the air
and waiting for your invitation.
how can she say that what she misses is
not your action, but her reaction, all the ways
in which she understood herself
in comparison with or next to or while fighting with
you, the comfort of clarification.
to miss your body feels like a confession,
or an omission-- the crucial leaving-out of
secrecy, privacy, honor, in favor
of the brutal openness of absence.
here and now in her aloneness she still
can barely admit to the way she desires you,
would castrate herself for you, since the sex organs
like little bleating lambs can only
wander off and be preyed upon, now.

you and your definition of grace

depress me, repress me, how can I be

anything you would want, with my

cold, crass humor and indefinite moods?

your words and you, thick as thieves,

conspiring amongst the pages and things

while I burrow, chilled, into

the hard wet sand at the lakeside--

the little crabs, their round shells and

sharp toes, they welcome me--

and you climb into the ink,

black on white, with ideals 

as firm as the parchment they rest on:

I wonder if you are soluble.

I curl into my shallow nest

up against the pebbles and glass,

unafraid for the moment, but

knowing I will disappoint you later

when I emerge, damp, winded, and

covered in grit for your judgment.

I sleep with two cats one hardcover book and at least three extra pillows so that when I am struggling up out of a nightmare I am guaranteed at least one thing will be pressing itself awkwardly into my side

i am no ruth, i will not glean
in your tired fields to keep the skin of me
in one piece. i am no bethsheba, i have no pool
and no patience for the quiet
of focusing on the body as art. i am
not esther, i cannot be diplomatic, my charms
will not extend themselves to your ego.

pessimist that i am, i wait for your loss,
expectant and ready to witness
the exodus of you. if ever i could borrow
another woman's story, i would already
be planted, straight spine, long limbs
tall and ghostly as a clouded pillar of salt,
stretching out of the dirt and reaching
for a home i never owned.

press me to the wall, crush me back
against the graffiti and the concrete, let me have
the angle of your forearm against
the give of my throat. i crave your indifference
to my pain. let me cede autonomy:
force me to my knees in this
slick bar bathroom. take my breath
as a prize, take my pride as a ribbon
and wind it under my face,
upturned to yours. i want to see
crass, untempered lust walk across your face.

or else, bring me back to my body
and walk me home, guide me upstairs,
quietly unlock all the locks on my front door.
our footsteps will be loud in the hall,
i will wonder why you are not
roaming me already.
touch me like you treasure me, taste my mouth
and tempt sex out of me inch by inch.
in your coaxing i am gentled, but too quiet.
between these dim walls i find control
handed to me, and wish i was not burdened.

If you had kissed me
There in the afternoon sunshine
I think probably I would have exploded
Into ten thousand new stars
And lit the whole city on fire with my burning

You make something inside of me
Claw its way out of my mouth
With long nails raking tracks out of my throat
It emerges, wet, spoiled, and thinking
It could deserve you

Somehow I am trapped already
In the voluntary cage, trapped by moments:
By the kindness in your eyes
By the way your hands slope down to a cigarette
While you ask me gentle philosophical questions

The next time my heart threatens
To crawl out from between my ribs
I may let it, because I think you might like
This place lit by the burning off of fear
A thousand energies all desiring you

Waking with dreamt memories
Perched on the bridge of your
Nose
Sighing as the birds called, singing
To wake you from the escape you
Leave behind
These days, no one knows what a
Day will bring and what a friend will
Say
This kind of day, this kind of morning is
Leaving us slowly, slipping away into
Other times
Leaving us barren, without the joys of
Sleeping, conquering dreams, finding heat
And happiness
Or else rage, let me tear you open and
Spill your secrets like entrails on my wide
White bed
These mornings see us breathing soft and
Wishing for more, waking to the world and
Its rhythms
These days you never know what news will
Strike in the middle of your sweat and work
Mid-afternoon
To catch you unaware, although few things ever
Have snuck up on you, you are not often
Sleeping, peaceful, as you were this
Morning

this bright corner of my heart
in the shape of your spirit and your words
does not waver; it shines even while
i condition myself to
lose something i have not yet gained.
i feel sluggish, ill-used, but
the blood that does make it up that slope
continues to burnish your image:
you shine like copper in the sun,
warm, metallic, heavy.
i taste metal on my tongue from
the circulation of you in my veins.
when i do not succeed--
when i am too young, too strict,
too demanding or too callous,
when i am not the one you want--
the brightness will burn out, nitrous and fiery,
but the taste of your carbon will remain.

Little transgressor, heart on your sleeve
Out here begging for scraps--
A smile, a touch, an exchange--
Bound to your lesser emotions, I see you
And the slavish way you cower
When the wind howls too loud.
Down here the air turns sharp
Around brick corners, and the dark concrete
Where you lay your bright head
Becomes more weapon than support.
Is this why you turned out?
Their hands can only take; their teeth
Can only tear. And you with
Your small-child eyes, your too-wide mouth
Will be easy fodder for their daydreams.
Someday, sweet one, you will lose your sugar
And forget you were ever anything else.

When I tell you that my therapist and I
Focus on the need to view oneself as complex:
What I am saying is that I need someone to tell me
That it is okay to falter once in awhile
Because I am about to stumble and
I need to know that you will let me catch myself, too.
Some weeks the drug use is too frequent;
The cigarettes go too fast, the wine evaporates
And I need you to hear me when I say that
I am complex, I am many, I am broken
And I can catch myself before I try to fly.
When, in the middle of your story, you
Look over and notice that I am crying, know that
It is because I hear you: because I am
Touched by you: because I feel you, and I am
In it with you, for you, alongside you.
We joke about connections, tenuous and firm,
People known and unknown as though
They are all on the same platform
When we can both name those people who
With one phrase could upset the whole delicate system:
I will joke with you now because I know
We will pick up each others pieces later.
You and I are a pair, a balance, a harmony
That stretches out for years and when I tell you
That I am attempting to embrace complexity,
Know that it is in your example that I attempt to model myself.

the calm of you
the deep blue presence of you
like if I could just breathe in and out in rhythm with you
I could inhabit the same grace--
your calm in the face of absolute, oppressive truth
while I wish only that I could hear more of you--
the greed of newness, of acquisitional lust

There is nothing reasonable about lust.
Irrationally, irascibly, I desire you--
I imagine you-- places, times, positions.
When will I be sated?
At least let me ply my curiosity long enough
(to make you cum) To see if
This is meant to grow into something larger--
I am breathless, reckless, for want of you.
What will it be, when finally I have earned
An hour of your time,
The focus of your bright/dark eyes?
One brief, shining evening
Is the happiest I have been in this place yet
And I will be as not/present as it takes
To be allowed in your space again.
For the chance of your hands--
For a moment stolen from your mouth--
I can be quick, I can be quiet,
The whole of me is not ashamed of groveling
To meet the pounding need of my blood.

That if I could make everything perfect for you I would--
That if I could feel the crush of you-- the need of you--
Just once maybe I could be satisfied-- or else
Never satisfied again, but full of a greedy keening
That keeps me at bay, at heel, at attention--
That if I could keep the taste of you on my tongue I would--
That if I could touch the heart of you-- hear
The blood pulse of you-- moving deep under my hands
Like a prayer on a Sunday morning-- I might
Sing myself content, for the mouthful of soul I could swallow.

In some distant future we are in our kitchen
Which is brown-- bricks and old cabinets
And cigarette smoke filtering out through the
Windows with their brown, brown frames--
And Marvin Gaye is asking what's going on, and
I am chopping vegetables, filling the room
With the smell of browned onion, browned garlic.
We are talking about books, or ego, or music,
Or I am lucky enough to be hearing about
Your new idea: a poem, a shop, a program.
In some distant future your eyes are
On my bare legs, your taste is in my mouth,
And my hips remember the greed of your hands.
You tilt me, tint me, toward monogamy,
Toward the possibilities of your skin and dark eyes.

If I am young then let me be pliable,
Willing to learn, open
To the world and its rhythms
And your pain. If I am young then
Let me be conscious,
Seeing with open eyes the long inclines
(Toward justice, toward peace).
And let me be hard working,
Broad shouldered, a twist of sinew
So strong that the works of my hands
Will further our journey, a bit.
If I am young then let me
In, show me your scars, tell me
Why they walk your skin,
And why mine too are beautiful.
If I am young let me be heat
And motion and transformation and
Combustion for a tired movement,
Energy for a worn-out beat. If
I must be young then
Let me come to you, coquette
Or pet, sex or sadness, and be
Lithe with unused anger in your hands.
If I am young let me be quick
To close the gap, to state my intentions,
To make decisions with my body
And to trust you with my mind.

She is silent in his arms as he tells her
His day, his troubles, his triumphs.
The heart of him drums under her ear,
And her pulses latches on, little mimicker.
His words crawl inside her skin like maggots
And feast on the emptiness they find:
Where are her stories? Why is her blood
Cold, and flush with carbon? Like rivers
The blue slices down her bones, and she
Tucked up underneath him like a pet,
Traces the bits she can see: her wrist,
The crook of her arm. But when she looks
To him, no rivers at all can be found; he
Is a mountain, a monolith, bloodless, stone.

The string theory of you and I:
You yank, I trip.
You spin, I stumble gracelessly
Just to land at your feet
Seeking asylum, not understanding
Why my world turns so violently.

Even now
As I work to unravel the webs
That stretch between us,
I hesitate to make the silks tremble,
To alert you to the motions that I make.
You will descend,
All hands and mouth and desire,
And wrap me again in your sturdy cocoon.

So quietly I grasp the strands
And unweave, untangle, reverse
The patterns of years
Till coils of sex, heat, and anger
Loop around my ankles like snakes.
They entreat me, entice me:
Remember? The memories?
And you flood me, honey and water,
As I am pressed to experience all that you are again
And again, weaving old scenes
Back into place,
Captured, filled, complacent.

I wait for the day I can be comfortable with you,
Safe in my own skin, approved and appraised by you:
In that moment I will be peaceable, fulfilled.
For now I retain my anxieties, my fears,
The million ways I know I will fail you.
I wait for bare legs, open beers, the familiarity
Of your arm on my shoulders, my hand on your thigh.
For that moment I will swallow my fear,
Cover up the things you'll hate as best I can,
Impersonate a sweet, simple, nice girl
And hope the disguise gets us through to authenticity.

You have always had a sense of heaven.
I have perfect faith
That the firmament and you are in perfect accord:
Of what is needed, and when;
Of when to reappear, of when to refocus
On the orbit, the ellipsis that carries you
Closer to me again, after so long gone.

You were so many firsts for me, the rising
Of a time when I was ready to learn
That fear can be good, that
Anxiety could bring me greater joy, better hunger
Than the calm of a full stomach.
You and me and a little alcohol, we went
A long way from sunrise together.

To reawaken to you, so much older and
So very different, is disconcerting; you remain celestial,
The movements of time and light and heat are yours,
And at best I am a borrower,
I am thunderstorms, tornadic,
The darkness that blots out the view.
It is how I know that no matter what is said,
Your path will carry you away from me again.