there was a half-circle of blue I saw once out of a hotel room window. I didn't know if it was a swimming pool or the sea. I looked at it. The fact that it existed at all seemed remarkable. The water was a shade of blue that I had never seen before. That was the thing that got to me. I knew that having seen it had changed me in some way. Irrevocably. It was the same way I felt when I first let you inside of me. I suppose that is the feeling of desire. We like to think that desire is the same as yearning. But it's not. I don't want to desire you. I don't want to chase after something that I know is beautiful. I want you to eat through me. That is how you learn how to love someone.

9

we know that love is large and sometimes monstrous
the heart can be so porous
at times        that all it can do              is sing

I thought the moon
forever in the sky would always
be in the sky but then you
handed it to me gave it to me
on a silver platter it tasted
of sour pear and apple it filled
my mouth with
winter song and euca
lyptus

Mine is a body undone
a text that wants to become
something else
something that can fit inside
your mouth/do you know what that is

I think of the quiet reciprocity of your
body fed all of these years on tulips and
Pissarro
I wonder what parts of you have become me

I love blueberries.  I love the groves
of almond trees
you see as you drive up to
Sacramento.
I love anchovies and
raw broccoli.
I love Spanish wine and the feel of
your tongue when I am
down between your legs.
I love Jacques Brel, and the piles of peaches
that appear in stores late
in the spring.  I love gin and tonic, Alexander
Calder’s
mobiles, and the
early novels of
Philip Roth. I love laying in
bed with you
looking at
pictures of
Greece.
I love smoked salmon,
especially on a bagel toasted
with a little bit of butter.
I love lemon drops,
Frank Sinatra, and e.e.
cummings.
I love the smell of
eucalyptus trees and those
long,
flat
strips of
bark
that
peel
off
their
trunks
like
paper.

don’t stop come
naked there is more to this
than there seems my love
peacock green strawberry
lips I want to bite you
I want this to be something real