there are
times when
the world insists on
making meaning don’t
turn this
into an abstraction
my hand
down
here between your
legs covered
with moss (I can almost
feel your milky roots)
watch my fingers
as I touch you there is
electricity
can you
see it
watch me get on my
knees this is
the sky flowing out
of your hips can you
see it this is
what gives (milk)
to all of my
hungers don’t
stop
let me
make you flesh
into blossom let me
take you down
into me
like the rain

I believe in ghosts, I believe in luck and fate and destiny/I roll the dice whenever I get the chance/sometimes I count out beads on a rosary/I keep hidden/in a drawer/I’ve been to Paris/but I’ve never beento Berlin/I ****** a man on the roof of a building/after a party once/I don’t remember his name/ sometimes I play dumb
I sometimes/don’t know how to draw boundaries/sometimes I don’t/cross my legs/I’ve been told I should see a therapist/remind me again how you like your coffee/tell me when you are about to ***/don’t make me/wait for it/tell me again that you want me more than her/I won’t say my body is like a rosary/but
sometimes/ it feels like one/let me teach you how to please me/let me show you how to open my legs/just/like this/can you
see it/this is the part of me that is connected/straight to my brain/touch me here/and I’ll/grow wings/touch me here
before the river of my body runs dry/I need to take a shower/I need to get on a plane in an hour/I need to try harder to forget his face
long before I was a woman I was a thing burning in the middle of the sea/I was in the middle of the sea I closed my eyes and mouthed the word waves/the water changed the shape of my body as only water can

We have survived the
Storm of falling
In love the smell
Of apple and lilies and
Brown sugar fresh
On your mouth and you
Half
Asleep there is
Something blooming in the
Sweet moss of your hips
Wet with patience and wild
Joy that is your body
Made new in love the last
Of night’s
Milky fingers I pull the sheets
Up to your shoulders
And dream
We are
Young again
Stars
Just a little before dusk

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.

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.

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

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

it could almost be music this excess of heat
and yes spring is gathering (a promise)
the moisture of my body up into the clouds
could this be what makes the plum tree blossom

When you face the sun too long
You start to think this way

What am I in your arms/when the night is everything/the stars agree in their ascent/and I feel something rise in me/to love/is to live with the/unknown in front of you/to recognize that the sky is/written in the light of/earliest birds/a text/over water/over time/love me/love me before I come undone

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
to me. 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 changed me in some way. Irrevocably.  It was the
same way I felt when I let you inside 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.

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

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

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

and
again the
mag
nolia
of your
tongue
seeks
out the
center
(of me)
this
cavern
insatiate
promis
cuous
as the
dawn

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

We have survived the
Storm of falling
In love the smell
Of apple and lilies and
Brown sugar fresh
On your mouth and you
Half
Asleep there is
Something blooming in the
Sweet moss of your hips
Wet with patience and wild
Joy that is your body
Made new in love the last
Of night’s
Milky fingers I pull the sheets
Up to your shoulders
And dream
We are
Young again
Stars
Just a little before dusk