I asked the ocean to show me; peel back my eyes
and scrub them clean with her sand, her salt
so that, cleansed, I’d know the size of the universe.
So that, illuminated, I could dream again.

Instead, she grabbed me ‘round the waist; eased
me into her vast hollows and in darkness,
blessing began. First feet, then knee, and hip.

She, lovely incubus; suckled breath, gathered rib
and dust, capillaries red and bursting;
until a thousand galaxies fixed themselves on her tongue:
the sky opened up
cherry blossoms in Chile; holy, lost
and, just then; whispered,
“You are the size of the universe.”

At high tide, she left the world on my lips;
Woke me, purified

Younger, she
the poet wrote of
unraveling
all things good
holy, true, and right. Before.
Before. Before she knew
what it meant
to beg--
force you to lift
dead weight,
untangle her limbs from your floor
and hold your lungs
against hers, in and out
pleading breaths to slow.

The godless, even I,
know prayer in crisis.
In the suffering, out compassion
lungs filling with
all things good
holy, true, and right.

You, the tree
cannot stop change.
There is no convincing the leaves to keep their green.
No whispered begs pause


the loss.


Cherry buds
turn, turn, turn
grey winter air
pink with the unraveling,  loosening
of petals, the undoing of laborous months.
And you, in turn
fade, fade, fade
from pink to
grey.

This gift will last
Until you’re gone
And then, spark
Flint and fiber
burn.
Your eyes
Too closely set, count the stars between
Scorpion and justice—poison
penance
and this gift
tumble to earth, briefly gather dirt
And return, home.
Salt, salt, salt.

Has your nine year old self
ever wandered through corn fields
row by row, peeling back tassels, husks
of almost-ripe-almost-ready-not
not
not
yet, silver queens? Always hoping
the next one will be

close your eyes

big
yellow
juicy
enough to sentence to the boiling pot?

Barefooted
and wild up and down
down
down
plowed dirt buried toes

heat matting hair to your face?

Or caught yourself in a farmer’s winter field
staring down tilled rows of cold
cold
cold
ground,wondering how far
you’d get if you followed them?

Make three left turns, then call 911.
Just ask the poets,
the starlets.

At fourteen, my favorite poet wrote lines like,

"I want to speak hot metal fluently."

And

"Watching the suitors stagger home,
Now I'm butcher, now you're bone."

And

"Young girls tie ribbons around their slender throats
trying to keep their heads on."

On the cover in blood,
I DID IT FOR YOU stained the twenty-something poet's tits.
And Christ, I thought she was stunning.

So, it should not
surprise me now
that remarks from her elegy
overlap perfectly
with my twenty-something own.

"They will not know how many people
you brought into your life to inspire you.
When the affair would disintegrate
you'd say, 'Well, at least I got a poem out of it.'"

I'm just surprised that she's still alive.

Mirrors lean on walls
One: white frame, rectangular
Two: round, turquoise, robin’s egg.

Neither of which belong to her. A symbol, I wonder
for the ease with which all could be (has been?) abandoned.
Finally, at last and at once.

Two red pots
A box of paints
packed, into the passenger side
of the only car she’s ever owned.

Nodding toward the easel in the corner
“More paint, fewer strokes.”
and two small foxes emerge.
Displeased, a third is produced
and the laundry tumbles.

Today, at exactly four in the afternoon, as the gods of wind and rain assembled the clouds--in three quarter time no less--I felt brave. Just briefly. By 4:04, perhaps sooner if I’m being honest, all the fear had returned as:

                                                             ­                                                                 ­  Buddhism
                                                             ­                                   Your (very specific) eyelashes
                                                             ­                                  The likelihood of dying young

                                                             ­                                                                Ivory statues
                                                             ­                                                                 ­      The men
                                                             ­                                                                 ­ The women
                                                             ­                              “I think you know who you are.”
                                                             ­                                              Pygmalion (mythology)
                                                             ­                                  The crook of your nose in stone
                                                             ­                                                     Sculpture; nonsense.

                                                             ­                                                                 ­      Patterns
                                                             ­                               All the heavens, in all the worlds
                                                             ­                                                                 ­            Cells

                                                  My habit of blaming the moon, Venus, Ovid, and the tides
                                                             ­                                                        for not kissing you
                                                             ­                                                  (neither you me) twice.

At eight, I taught myself
how to braid. Three strands of a shag
poncho in the furthest back
seat of the family’s grey mini van, folded
one atop the other, on repeat. I thought
I had invented something. In secret. In the dark.
Unbuckled and free. Probably
much like my parents, and the suburban
home, at once, real
nuclear. Complete: one dog, a fish
and oddly, two chameleons adored by my little sister.

“Look how beautiful,” the strangers would say.
Touching the curls matted to my face,
Whispering about the baby’s blue eyes,
curiously unlike anyone else’s.

“Let’s dance,” mom would sing, and louder
the funk would sound. Yellow kitchen walls,
arms swinging back and forth, knees
high, eyes rolled back. “Remember,” I would later ask,
“when I wrote that song, for the dead mouse on the sticky trap
in the basement. Sitting at the top of the steps. Crying,
on my plastic guitar?”

“Of course,” Katie said, “once, you were stuck
too.”

Sometimes, I paint my lips red, and wait by the door
A grey cat sort of longing
The dark chord strumming musician
of Picasso’s bluest phase

A curved spine woman, once modestly
assured in her fleshy self
now
bony, curled
around knees and dissonance.

I just want to know you better now.
Wrap your scarf about my neck
and show you my holiness.
My childhood.
A wintered and withered
Kansas stream.

Lace up your skates. Let’s marry
ourselves to the creek, shallow and icy,
until our ankles, lungs, lips
ache.

"I think it's strange that you think
I'm funny."

My earliest memory is the sting of iodine.
Settling into the flaps of skin
that remained with, when
the rest, deposited
among the rocks.

So, it should not surprise me
now, a few decades later,
running- wild, reckless
as back road flowers- I find the same
knee meeting stone.

Gravel and gravity share
a root word, after all.

“Close your eyes,” she said. “The first thing you see,
feel
past lives”

“Karma,” she continued, “owes you one.”

Suffragettes.
Drunkards.
Mothers and god-fearing
souls. Prohibitionists, of course.

You, baby girl, moonshine.
Boiled up in…
wooded bungalows. Brush, covered
near the creeks.

“You can do that,” echoes
...when I close my eyes...

Few write of the opossum
double-wombed and nomadic
there is little romance in telling its story.

The women, with their Victorian desires
do not swoon, fall victim to the vapors
at first glance of the bare tail dragged about
the rocks and garbage, babies dangling from the
white beast’s fur.  Their fainting rooms
have all but crumbled, painted over
at very least.

But, once the books have fallen from atop heads;
graces excused,
the corsets cut loose, and the bourbon nursed,
the opossums don’t write much about the women
either.

Prepare yourselves, young poets,
soon, you will be without shield
loved, worthy, enough
but aching.  

And the
cats dance into the forest
taking with them your letters.
Pinning words against trees, making stanzas
in the nests. Shaking free the fruits
to
sour and rot, a dozen or so.
Prepare yourselves, young poets,
soon, you will scavenge for verse.
Pain your husbands.
Shame your mothers.

Still, you have not known hunger
until weightless, dizzied
you watch animals flooded from
the bush, make way to your
homes. And without shield,
you are loved, worthy, enough.

And she bruises, just like
Anyone else would do

And the conversations turn to kissing
in doorways and the merits
of vulnerability.

The prettier ones ask
the others what they want,

and they draw together
on mountain bound trains, burning
their life works on whim.
unashamed,
that their stories are told, freed
by the glitter-faced pop stars.

And she bruises, just like
Anyone else would do

And the conversations turn to kissing
in doorways and the merits
of vulnerability.

i.
I will not mention you by name
will not describe the curl, cult of dark hair
Wrapped between thumb and teeth

You will not hear the poet's
story in this
You will not see her
conflicted, green, dancing.

ii.
And by now
I am werewolf, tidal

And in daylight
Hackles. Fangs.
Sit beneath bruises and neatly lined lips.

She kissed like a Scorpio.
Obviously.

Wondered, why
I was not mad at her
and hushed her longing
with the benign shifts
of consolation.

"There are too many colors,
in the world. Wouldn't you prefer
to swim
see
carve
out
the hook of hip and
back,
with the mallet, blade
of this red?"

That pretty smile, avoidance
masking
what my psychic -- if I had a psychic --
would read, “tragedy."
Definitively
Cup, or
Sword (emotion) (idea)
The star-crossings of
bone
sore
feet…
regretting the shoes,
never the music.

After all, is the world
not so beautiful?

Like that week I got a hotel room right above the pool.
And my room smelled like chlorine
and your skin smelled like chlorine
and we didn't care.
You spilled orange juice on my
computer, and for years, the space bar stuck
and after every word
I thought of [space] you. And that night

we tried to sneak into the park across the street
to watch the moon, and maybe kiss

but the gates were locked
so we settled for the field behind my house, and
laughed when the neighbors walked past,
because we knew they thought
we were [space] fucking.

Like that time the stars bent ‘round the mountains
crashed about the desert
and crept to your face

watched me dance
up the stairs, let it be known that
I would think of you;

but I would
not [space] wait, or count on them to
settle back into the caves
above.

Or that time
so many years later
that a man I did not know
smiled at something I could not see
asked me a question, and after every word
I thought of [space] you.

I believe
your suffering
is as real as mine,
and mine as yours.

Please be clear
in this distinction:
the suffering of which I speak
is not
the romantics'
tuberculosis, not the
absinthe laden or demon
stricken, syphilitic Paris
of the 1930's.
(Although, it should be noted
that if you had
either
or both
tuberculosis or syphilis
in the 1930's
I do not intend
to minimize your suffering.)
I mean simply to say
the suffering that quiets the
wild abandonment
of
your
true
essence.

I believe your suffering
is as real as mine, and
like love as an action verb
or struggle
wound
or pause-
in pursuit of dignity-
connectedness-
your suffering is
the most humane thing
you can do for me
and I, you.