Poetry

Nothing else to do But love while waiting. We hold our hands To the flames until we no longer know What we wait for.

Sludge heart. Pot-metal heart. Scree . . . Some leaves fell. Schlock heart. Chil- blain heart. Piss-stain heart. Gelded heart. O heart incontinent. 24-carat electro-plate heart. Cicadas were silent. Bumper-sticker heart. Foul-mouth stink-bomb heart. Black. Black. Black. And I sang all day. Drop-dugged wolf- bitch heart. And held birds in my hands. Thistle heart. Briar…

These files in longhand preserve . lies I tell myself about shoulderblades . whose outlines I never traced about eyes that once met mine . but did not turn back after they had passed . I arrange them by last name made up when I can’t recall . exchanged when I can . Each tells…

What happened to sweet heat, the sneezeweed, the luna moth and gingham sleeve, sipped Slurpies and reedy kayaks, the sponge-bathed trees? Why are the nights so flustered and furrowed, dusks crimped by crooked V’s of snow geese bored with palmettos? Why does the full moon pinprick the draft, neurotic winds reentering therapy, the light, an…

A spring wind hustles hundreds of pages into the street, discarded leaflets like pieces of a shredded textbook under the feet of high school students let out for lunch. A young woman bends and grasps a flier: sliver of promise, passport to enter through the golden arches, gateway to the west, up escalator to immediate…

The furrows deepen on your forehead as you watch the TV story of Chief Joseph. Later, as your amber eyes—two villages, fade into the darkness, I deliver a knockout without mercy, “Does marrying me make you feel good?” Some have been known to bob up with “Somewhere in my bloodline is a Cherokee.” Your sad…

what about their celibacy? widow playing maid for an in-law and if high-born inheriting three thousand     not more shaving her head wearing only white   I do not know this law   lying on my lord’s burning branches I do not mind getting old my forehead creases     though my mouth still turns up I love trying on…

If this world were mine, the stereo starts, but can’t begin to finish the phrase. I might survive it, someone could add, but that someone’s not here. She’s crowned with laurel leaves, the place where laurel leaves would be if there were leaves, she’s not medieval Florence, not Blanche of Castile. Late March keeps marching…

I would’ve called him Ice Cream, or Monopoly, or Grand Slam: something I especially liked. He’d have played catch with me when no one else was home. He might have come from planet Fev, where God taught him kung fu. He might have traded crescent kicks with Christ. Or been a girl. Maybe on Fev,…