It was not evening-out jewelry, not twice-a-year jewelry. She slept in it. She always said when she died I would have it but almost certainly never pictured me wearing it: how it would lie an inch below my beard, in the hollow between my clavicles, how the serpentine chain would catch stray hairs on my…
When they started calling, we were alertto names of friends/not friends joining the cultof fear?/not fear? Free to drink, smoke, swearbut not free to carry the self-same guilt;some lesser god, held less accountable—Two women breed tragedy; two men plot.To live like a man—dash, dash it all.It’s so much more than being a sot.Goddam the fifth,…
A glass falls. You send the broom beneath the cabinets.You pluck. Vacuum. Yet always there persists the shard you missed, small as a fingernail, wide as a lemon slice.I know I am speaking to those who have been cut by it, and to those for whom the last shard waits, in shadows,barely shining. Also: that…
Often, we love best what is hidden: the locket,our initials etched entwined on the back,the wool coat’s pink silk lining, the paintingbeneath a painting, its faint hills and far-off church.Last month I bought a pitcher, only to discover that,when tipped to pour, it reveals a hidden message underneath.We love whatever is inscribed, whatever’s whisperedin the…
Awake in the blue hour, something pleasant just out of reach, the only movement an incandescent flicker: the pulse at his throat. I want to want to put my mouth on it, to tongue each salty crevice of his neck but don’t. After 20 years of waking here I just watch the beat lift his…
How is starlight travelingin the scald of day?I don’t know, but I’m sureit does. And that star over youhas lit candles in the baywhere the fish never sleepand where my breathgoes wanderingamong the harbor lightscarrying the dreams I rememberand the ones I forget, thoserendered over in order to balance outforever, a notion which asks,in its…
Saturday as an old friend Sits like a sphynx queen On the Daedalus roof deck, I pray that she too Is not pregnant before me. Sunday, I finish the porch Back in VT under What is apparently called A Strawberry Moon. White-blue paint Spits into the black Plants below while I howl THIS IS MY…
I watch them smear themselves Around the world and worry. I want them with me. To fold Them inside a garish treasure Chest that I will lower into the sea. There’s me, middling on The perfect surface of the mad Pacific While my best loves sleep Beneath, conserved, Coldbodied. Kept Souls keeping me. Their bodies…
in your best bluesy voice. I wantto start over. Not at the beginningbut where something takes hold thatcould never belong to me. Breathby the fringe of the sea, I give you backmy first child-cries, the smear of worldthat took hold as flesh, Time with itsshake-down-the-house hungeralarms, its eyelid of darkthat even now closes over mewith…
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