Little fox,
I've come to confess to you

though I know your church is the chicken coop
and your Christ is appetite.

If there is mist up on the mountain,
it's my spirit wandering.

The rest of me kneels here,
before you in the brambles like an overturned cup.

Alone in my bed, I have wondered
why I hurt my lovers, why they hurt me,

but I think it's because
angels are so similar to layers

especially when a spray of white feathers
in the air is all that's left.

Little fox, here is my spirit
riding wrapped around your slender black feet.

Let's test our hearts and pull a wishbone--
you've got plenty cast aside.

If I win, I'll change my ways and skew to kind.
And if you win?

I'll call him, saying let's try again
knowing what will happen, and how sly my words have been.

In the Rhambangle, the climbing vines
looped themselves up and through the latticework
like emotions falling from a dream.

You loved the hour-bound birds who made their nests
in the high corners; feathered keepers
without ceremony, counters of our soft seconds and all the rest.

I liked your boots, especially tucked beneath a wicker chair
in the moonlight, lost to your feet
but called a curious thing by the avante garde among the moths of local wing.

I haven't said it well, I realize. My irises kept the words
after I first saw them in morning light.
It's a fool's errand, so they say, making these sounds no string nor key would own,

but I keep trying, because I love you down to the detail, the divinity, the dissonance, and the bone.

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Romeo, gosh, I'm sorry how things turned out,
and sorry I didn't die after all like you thought.
I'm old now, you wouldn't look twice at me
but I miss you still, even so, most definitely.

You could find me tonight across from a cornfield
working the St. Lucy's Fall Festival and how would you feel
about that, babe? I wear a lumpy old overcoat
and sell tickets to teenagers so in love they almost float.

I get feeling sentimental and sad about everything
remembering how you said you were the All-Powerful Weather King
and could make the sun come out if I wished it,
or kiss me and kiss me again if I told you I missed it.

My goodness, Romeo, you don't know how often I still think of you,
like when I saw some crestfallen kid with wild hair walking through
the festival like he had something on his mind
and he seemed lonesome, like you, and quiet and kind.

It's almost midnight and the lights are going dim
so I've got to pack up and go home alone again.
I wish so hard that things had turned out different
and I'd say, "Romeo, oh Romeo," and you'd know what I meant.

All those songs about waking up in a lover's arms--
I don't know what they're talking about.

Oh, I've known the happy wedding night mattress on the floor
amid the stacks of packing boxes
and the delicious view when the world narrows
to a single cherished face.

The bee, though, doesn't live inside the bloom,
and goes still inside a jar.
Touched on every side by an adoring indigo night,
there is still just one Moon.

Allow me morning alone in my garden
with just my mug and dog.
It doesn't mean I never loved you, or loved you less.
There is only one dawn--this one
and it only waits so long.

While I stared at the moon
summer slept with death's black rooster,
her garland tethered to his three toes
with their talons sharp as testament.

While I stared at the moon
frost made love to my bones,
each on its proper shelf like dishes
in a house with snakes for silver.

While I stared at the moon
half-dead men danced with half-mad women
though neither was excited, and neither calm.
Roses twined and cut them both with promises.

While I stared at the moon
my fetch sat down on a river stone,
grinning with the morning in its pocket.
I wept and the night ate my heart like a truffle.

When I was younger, one of my co-workers
was an older lady, or so she seemed to me.
She was just always there,
a woman who ate at her desk from a clear plastic container--
some sort of salad.
She was just an ample,
stationary emplacement
as permanent as the pyramids.

I thought of her then as something akin
to those funky American clunker cars from the fifties
still rumbling around Havana,
something you'd smile at
but not feel had anything to do with you.
She wore a cross that rested on her *****,
like the ones that dangle from the mirrors of Cuban taxis.

She stopped coming to work, though, and someone said she was ill.
"Pancreatic cancer" they told me, sotto voce.
I knew, as a northerner, that weather can change in an instant.
What I hadn't known is that I am made of weather
blood and bone and breath
breezing through me every second of every day.

I went to see her with some other women from work.
There, in the hospice, she wasn't ample anymore,
just a paper doll watching episodes on tv through a narcotic blizzard.
British adventurers were removing treasures from the tombs
in grainy archive footage
as the knot inside her belly grew and her hand grabbed at nothing.
"Morphine hallucinations," someone whispered.

After she died I took one of her cats, a calico I had for several years.
I still think of that day at the hospice, though
and how the clown-devil can sit silently at one's side any time,
like a taxi at the curb, bags already arranged in the trunk.

He will watch whatever you want to watch,
at that wind-down hour.
He never complains, talks over the narrator, or changes the channel,
but though we protest that we were only in the middle,
we want to see how it ends
he will click it to black, pull into traffic, and say,
"Nada es para siempre, ni siquiera sufrimiento."

A man wearing only a sodden overcoat and one dress shoe
led a seasick stallion by a rope along the beach
slowly, so slowly
like their ship that descended the ghostly green.

He said to me, "No kiss of yours can replace deck and cabin,
keel and hold. No woman is as precious as the next breath."
Sadly, so sadly
he wandered away, wearing only one earring and a felt hat.

I was, then, a Multilingual Sister of the Silent Bell
and led the abandoned animal through our courtyard
carefully, so carefully
so as not to disturb the stillness with the thunder of his heart.

Wearing only a sundress and carrying one rope sandal,
I know now that summer pavers are warmer than a drowning man.
Slowly, sadly, carefully,
I flowed that day like water from the stone of Samarkand.

If you want to find God, you can go by rail
or catch a jeepney, repaired a thousand times
and driven by a madman with a rosary on the mirror.
Tell him you seek the Divine and be certain

that he does not misconstrue your meaning.
You go down General Luna street to the place
where the Moon and Mars both must bow
to the great glittering of the Creator's face.

When you arrive, look for the Indian Laurel tree
where a crow has come down the backbone
of the Sierra Madre to wait here for you.
He knows you have lost much, your child, your home.

The Sierra Madre crow can offer only baubles,
still-warm bits of pan desal bread, and his wise mein.
He is here, like the church of San Agustin,
as mournful as the Christ, as wounded, as kind.

Go inside, where adobe bricks contain time itself,
and the Spanish artifacts reconcile gold with rust.
There you will find Dibella, Alberoni, majesty and peace.
Outside, the kind crow, the Philippine sky, the laurel trees.

I was putting on jeans.
My dog was smiling.
Sun was coming in the window behind us.
We were there
reflected in the screen
of the old tv I had fixed myself.
A second sun
was reflected there with us.

I was young.
My dog was alive.
We would watch "The Adding Machine"
on the old tv that afternoon.
I was getting sober.
The room was small.
It was years ago
and I didn't know
that I would remember that morning
forever.

She first noticed Antonio when he stepped out of a mob,
holding roses for her;
a bloom for every head in the rabble.

She took him on--
her personal little rooster.
He made love to her as if in timelapse--
an ardent insect skittering adoringly along her body.
She could have kept him in a jar, or a desk drawer.

The war came, then.
The sun went off-kilter, tilting drunkenly into the further reaches of the canals.
What use, anymore, for filmmakers
or their gaudy chattering treasures wearing ridiculous gowns,
smiling automatically at the invading armies?

Her last film was a dark comedy
released with subtitles and smuggled to the West
only to languish in a storage locker,
unwatched,
as round and unheeded as the lessons of history
in its circular tin container.

Her rooster was never meant for difficult times,
and he became tubercular--
within a month, he drifted through the bedroom curtains like a ghost,
and took to living with a flock of crows
as their underling,
but yet, he was flying, wasn't he?

She missed Antonio
and the competition of auditions and readings.
Feeling ****** and out of sorts, she joined the underground.
Wearing berets and trench coats, they taught her to handle a rifle
and to shoot fat-faced officials through the heart.
It was her ingenue days all over again.

Antonio and the now-faded diva met again after the war,
on a single occasion,
at a hotel in Suwanee, Georgia.
She ordered gin through a heavy accent,
and he flipped his good wing, tiredly.
After a silence, they both spoke at once--
"Do you remember..." they began, and then laughed.

It was, by then, the only thing to say,
and it was enough.
_

In the day of the fever,
at the end of the war,
you'll take up my hand and I'll give up my place--
my customary place--
in the hall, on the floor,

to go riding with you.
Remember the days when willows leaned low
over the canal, where we girls used to go?
And oh, the things we liked to do.
But you, My Love, you already know.

In those days when the voices were sweet in my head,
the willows leaned low, as if putting babies to bed;
there were no air raids,
no rubble, cracked and sharp-edged--
just mama's little angels passed out in the hedge.

So now...what, My Pet?
Kisses to catch up on?
Rooms to let?
Do you want to love me slow and easy?
I'll take all I can get, I'm not so far gone
that I would say no to that.

In the fields at the far end
of the old road to town,
you can see the hulk of the Junker
that the home guard shot down.
I just like to think that it fell
from its bedding of clouds
like a baby...My Baby...
where the willows lean down.

The woman with the cat face made a wish
And all the sparrows turned to fish.

The sky produced them at her command
Stacked like kippers upon her hand.

The woman with the cat tail switched it once
And paving stones turned to hot cross buns.

The woman with the cat tail switched it twice
And made Catholic bishops of five field mice.

The woman with the cat heart had a beau
Set him on a gallows and swung him low.

The woman with the cat heart clapped her hands
And made his coffin out of watering cans.

My cat child
brings order where there was none.
Let's not talk about the walnut shell of my womb,
empty birthplace of dust.
Let's talk about my cat child, proud with powers, handy with struts.

Now, listen--
I have forgotten all about you.
I've heard that I was in love once, but who knows?
Show me the evidence; I'll yawn elaborately, and my cat child will agree
that such stuff is dull in the extreme.
Dead fish, on the other hand, become more riveting every minute.

You would not have understood my cat child.
At least, that's my foggy instinct about it.
You would have objected to the damage, the **** and the fleas.
The rumor is, cats were royal once,
and I need the reflected glory and the chance to sleep during the day.

Right now, my cat child is away.
She is hungry for mice, songbirds, or someone's leg.
Me, I don't eat anymore, can't recall why I ever did--
I remember nothing, value nothing, aspire to nothing.

But once,
The feel of my mouth closing gently over the curve of your soft lower lip
seemed such an urgent thing,
like warm waves for mermaids,
a place I would do anything to get to.
Yes once,
the sight of your dark hair sent warm honey over my heart,
my belly,
my ***,
and everywhere, my love, from my skin to the stars.

Now, though,
I have forgotten all that.
What were we talking about? I have no idea.
Now there is only the glare of afternoon
and the magnificence of my cat child who has given me nine lives--
none of them worth a ****,
all as dead in the mouth as a finch with a broken neck.

Here I am, grime-faced at the bottom of a mine shaft.
Here I am behind this ever-changing Halloween mask.

Here I am gorgeous, touched by God and given favor.
Here I am, so eat my dust, see you ******* later.

Here I am untouchable, unthinkable, unclean.
Ask dear mother, she'll explain exactly what that means.

Here I am quiet, just a watcher in the wings
made of shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings.

Here I am inside a book, inside an old cocoon.
Here I am reflecting light as if I were the moon.

Here I am in love with you, a fool to end all fools.
Here I am, a joker queen who can't tell **** from jewels.

Here I am to dazzle you with swooping magic madness.
Here I am one hour more, paralyzed with sadness.

Here I am, an urchin girl without a *** to **** in
to fetch your smoking pipe and tell you where you can put this in.

Here I am for Jesus, here I am for Puck.
To those who'd like to pin me down, I wish you all good luck.
___

Line 8 taken from "The Walrus & the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll.

Love has gone mad, like you my dear
and keeps night in a wine press like a caged bird.
I will save it, says Love, turning the handle
to birth a morning with broken wings of red curd.

Everyone here keeps their mouths in jars
to prevent you influencing their palates, dear.
Anyone with any sense has placed locks on every vine--
all that grows down the rows is the silent brooding volunteer.

Morning whispers madness through your skin,
and wears a crimson cloak made of feathers and strange paste.
I will marry it, says Love, hand in hand with Oblivion
serving wine heavy with grape skins and an odd metallic taste.

I cannot love you anymore.
I cannot argue, not another word.
Love has gone mad, like you my dear--
enjoy together your strange vintage
of dark mornings,
heavy tannins
and Love's dead, wide-eyed bird.

My love of the morning
my love dressed in dawn
My love early risen
and risen, so still
My love whom only
the noonday could ****

My love of an hour
my love in the dust
My love who only
does what she must
with a folded lily in folded hands
my love whom the afternoon reprimands

My love of the dusk
my love of the evening
My love barely listening
my love barely breathing
Who is my love whose love only leaves her
and lingers in shadows where no one receives her

My love of the night
who desires the moon
and the stars all gleaming
through tired trees leaning
My love of the earth, my love of the grave
my love of the sky, the blaze, the wave.

so much depends
upon

the red wheel
barrow

Tiffany! What did you give William at the concert? He's talking nonsense.

Raking leaves--walnut, maple, mulberry, ailanthus--
I saw how it was.

My dog Molly--sweet, skittish, a rescue--
knew the Aussie was the favorite.

She hid his favorite toy in a pile of leaves,
but not well enough--I saved it.

When we were finished, all the leaves at the curb,
the toy was gone, second time the wicked charm.

When you lose something--you lose the place you were
when you first saw it, who you were with, what you were doing.

Fragile things can fall and shatter and when you see them broken
your heart can break a little too--and there's nothing you can do.

I am thinking about broken things, lost things, hidden things.
The leaves have fallen, grown again, fallen again.

My Aussie is gone and the pure clear blue of September sky,
the lofted toy, and Molly too, have all passed.

Today I sit outside, careful with the mug on the chair arm,
even knowing that everything--and I as well--will fall in time.

I didn't win the pageant
because those ******* wouldn't know beauty if it beat them over their 'do's with a porch plank.

My Mediterranean sultriness was not what they were looking for;
them with their politeness and their narrow-lipped smiles holding back the churning reflux that their hearts produce.

They are not human.

As a baby, I was different.
I spoke within minutes, asking for a mirror before milk,
and sharing Portuguese brandy with my father in the library before the month was out.

Let others become checkers at Target.
Let others slave in the shamba under a broiling sun.
They do not have my sculptured cheekbones,
and so must scramble and struggle while I laze under an awning in a cafe,
accepting the dazzled worship of waiters named Jean-Guy.

But look, it hasn't been all roses and honey, just the same.
I stayed barefoot until I was twelve, by choice.
I whipped all the local boys,
and was the terror of the American compound.

I first considered pageants when I was caught siphoning gas from a diplomat's car.
The diplomat took me inside and stood with his back to me,gazing through his wife's sheer curtains at the stucco buildings across the street, and said,

"There are other things
you could be doing."

Soon I was shivering,
my arm dangling boneless over the edge of the dining room table,
smiling at the patterned copper ceiling.
I had still been in command of myself when he lost all his polish and said things to me that were not diplomatic, but rather,
the shouts of a drowning man finding shore.

So anyway,
these ******* looked at me critically, as if I were a steer at auction,
each of them a little complacent fat cask of petty.
I knew I couldn't win,
and my mind turned, as it always has,
toward ways to rain down destruction on my enemies' heads.

I have a little French cahier
that I write down my dreams and plans in.
If the gendarmes ever find it, I'm so ******.

But never mind.
The world of pageants plateaus early--
you're done at twenty, turned loose in the streets to blink big-eyed
at the onrushing autobus that will flatten you dead.
Does this sound like me?
Does it?

I am a girl without an umbrella,
because it never dares to rain on my perfect creamy shoulders.
I own no pearls,
but I have six different divining decks,
one for each day of the week, and then I go to Mass on Sunday.

I didn't win the pageant,
but I escaped to Algiers and met a man.
In the morning, we start out together for Kilimanjaro--
I shall be barefoot, in my element once more,
and Macomber will have some sort of accident and leave everything to me.

Heft those trunks, bush guides,
I forgot my mirror and am keen to retrieve it
so that I may kiss my image as one would Cerberus,
if he were female
and as pretty as me.
___

My voice slipped out as I slept,
taking the path between rows of white narcissus
to the upturned boat, just port side and starboard side,
no deck, no keel, with the world below and beyond.

It had normally slept in the blanket of my throat,
silent, cupped in a chrysalis.
Now it went up and down upon the earth
filterless, making many enemies, there when I awoke.

I hid my voice inside a bell, but it was only louder.
I stuffed it in the pages of a newspaper, but caged birds repeated everything.
I set it in the hands of my lover, and my lover left, cursing.
I hid it in the sound hole of a guitar and it spoke in every language.

I taught it manners and it died of boredom.
I taught it doublespeak and it ran for high office.
I taught it sanctimony and it attracted a congregation.
I taught it flattery and it was beloved.

Desperate, I taught it poetry and it lay down again in my throat
where my bones fell in love with it.
A doctor diagnosed the shaking as palsy
and prescribed a pilgrimage to Branson or Las Vegas.

When I met you, you were day-sleeping in somebody else's car
and running around scrapping all night.

With your shaggy hair and that roll of your shoulders,
you made me jelly-kneed right from the start.

Sunny, you kept your loneliness hidden from your running buddies,
your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars in the Texas night.

I kept you coming back by feeding you, like some Italian mother
with a full pantry and a real bad crush. Come onna my house, birichino.

You had nothing, expected nothing, and were fearless, so fearless,
but when I fussed over some new cut you turned boneless as butter.

When I drank you turned to a rumor, gone like smoke, hating the stuff
yourself, and somehow above it. You made me want to kick loose of it, like you.

How did I charm you into staying, my gorgeous one?
How did we teach other what love was, with your silence and my words?

Til the day I die I know my heart is full of you, and all that you gave me.
I held you in my arms as you gasped and ran free, in the black hour of your end.

Oh, I learned to care again, about life, about myself, about it all,
but it took a long terrible while. and it was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Girls always fell for you like autumn leaves, light as sighs, stars of a moment.
I know how lucky I was to be the one you gave your heart to.

It's been thirty-two years and I still say your name and picture your face
every day. Even the angels won't be able to tame you--I won't let them.

Wait for me. When my hours are over I will find you. I will come running.
_

I was young once, living on hope and ten dollars
in an upstairs flat in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I used to eat at The Busy Oak, where junkies and drunks lived in the weird apartments on the second and third floors.
I went to the movies at The Washington.

I remember buying a jacket at Joe's Army Navy Surplus,
and a bright red scarf at some corner boutique where 80s chic was so thick that it made this ordinary girl feel out of place.

The sky was a brilliant September blue that day,
and I was on my last fine free days of being semi-employed,
an art I had perfected all through my twenties...

I needed time to read Vonnegut and Tolstoy,
and to go see Far From The Madding Crowd and Desert Hearts.

Late that afternoon I sat on the wood floor of my little place,
listening to Joni sing I Had A King, while I read the album jacket and my dog slept in the only chair.

My door was open, as if to let the future in;
I was getting sober and I was getting older.

Who knew then that I would shortly get a real job, a car,
and marry some other damaged soul?

Who knew that the Busy Oak would become trendy stores for out of towners,
or that The Washington would become a stage theater?

Who knew that I would ride by those places every day, a couple of decades later,
having divorced, come out, come clean,

Or that I would still listen to Joni sing about kings and seagulls,
and still wear a red scarf against the chill?

Not me,
whoever I was,
waving to her future self
going by on the street like a ghost begun
but not yet walking the earth.
_

Back in bus-and-duffel days
turned out, less to than away,
half-high, with no plan,
I went up the coast.

San Luis Obispo, Carmel, San Fran
and on up to Portland.
That's where we go now
--people my age--
but this was then
when I had no means, no ways,
and just my naivete.

Out in the water, somebody said
to watch for the whales.
They live in the dark underneath,
and like me, come up, then back down
without learning a thing or so it seemed.

On the bus some guy liked
Gordon Lightfoot
"You've Been Talking In Your Sleep."
He spoke my language like a native
better than the pidgin kid that was me.

He told me a blue whale's heart
weighs as much as a grand piano
and can be heard from two miles away.
Bye daddy, behind me down the coast--
thanks for kicking me out.

I wondered, as Seattle became B.C.,
what if it's all just big empty water,
and me lugging some big booming beater for nothing?
Or what if I'm all ears
but the watersong was never for me?
What then?
And what now?

I look out these days not at California coast
but at Michigan lakes,
cold and deep, choppy or still.
I know only that I still don't know
and never will.

When I was younger,
I washed lettuce heads in cold water.
I would set them on my cutting board, gently,
as if my hands hummed with lullabies.

I lifted tomatoes from their cardboard carton beds
and lined them in a row like nursery babies,
my starched jacket always white and clean.

I knew romaine and bibb,
beefsteak and cherry.
I kept my hair tied back, my nails short,
the right knife sharp and at the ready.

I didn't know, then
that lovers remember the wine, not the greens;
the sugar, not the side plate.

I wish you were here to kiss my hands
with their swollen knuckles and cut scars.
What was I doing with my tenderness
when I had someone who wanted it?

When I was younger,
I had a paying job, a small talent,
and a driver with a dolly at the back door
coming every day to keep my walk-in cooler stocked.

I thought that was bounty.
I thought there was no harm in staying on through another fall,
never considering that what I made was not mine,
Or that someone else was paying for it all.
_

swallow builds its nest
from objects it can gather
steal lipstick, why pay?

I asked the Unabomber
if he had ever been in love.

You know--before Montana--
before wandering the unforgiving winter woods
holding a frozen tulip
and a rolled up poem
nestled inside a pipe as if you were a minstrel.

I asked him
if anyone had ever inhabited
the slow-cooking smoker
of his heart.
Was there ever the very emblem
of desirability
in the formula of anyone's eyes?

In your Harvard classes
full of second-week quitters
and callow
nattering plebes
was there never any elevated romantic
who might have solved for the
impossible equation
of your isolation and your need?

Oh Teddy,
you coward,
you murderous nutjob,
if the one whose heart could have stopped you
were to speak at last to your wobbling soul,
could you still be fixed
even now,
or are you already ******?

Perhaps my question itself
is like postage on a parcel
that can carry your remainder
softly out of shame
or suddenly into Hell?

Lies looking for girls to tell them
gather in groups--
little ions looking for a charge.

Girls grow up greedy to spout the wildest stuff
about each other
or boys
or you.

Girls spend hours in front of mirrors
telling lie upon lie.
I'm ugly/ I'm pretty/ that's enough/ never enough.

Girls grow and haul a whole hope chest stuffed with lies
behind them to college,
to the altar,
to the nursery.

Lies looking for girls to tell them are never lonely for long.
Diogenes ran a girls' school until he lost his mind.
The students lied and said he went sailing.

Sit with me. Talk.
Our mothers did the best they could.
We'll always be like sisters.
This tea is good.

Lies looking for girls to tell them
don't stop when friends go home.
They circle when you're
anxious
afraid
alone.

At sunset I shake all my gathered lies from my apron to the sky,
and when they work together,
oh my
how the feathers fly.

Verse

See the crone that comes
through the thorn-walk and the breaks,
with a ribbon for the coffin key
and a dead-scroll curled with snakes,

she will never die.
she will never die.
roll her bones through the catacombs--
she hasn't the grace to die.

Inverse

My eyes were tired, so I set them soft
in the cotton-bedded heart of a pale red box;
deep under the earth with the coldsong quick,
was nothing--and nothing--I reveled in it.

Verse

Hear the crone who lies
with a dead tongue, poison-sweet,
words chopped blind with a kitchen knife
tourniquet-wrapped and awfully neat.

her teeth in the flesh
her teeth in the flesh
slips gangrene dreams through the finest screens
making rot-milk sold as fresh.

Inverse

My soul was sick, so I intertwined
its feminine face with androgyne,
to speak itself twice in a language of thorns
to bleed--to bear--where vermilion's born.

Verse

Bury the crone who's filled
with a paste of hate in her hollow bones,
a candle kept in the bag of her gut
to wax the devil a hag-head stone.

she will never die.
she will never die.
resurrected, insane, infected,
she hasn't the grace to die.
__

sky,
earth, sky,
never try
piloting prop
when you're sad and high.
last night i dreamed that i
cleared my head, got out of bed,
and walked down the wing to kiss you.
never take random pills with warm wine--
sky, earth, sky, fall, roll, rise, you, us, i.

Hearing from you is like being operated on
by a blind doctor
trained in church
by the deaf dead.

The crickets have come
to sing summer out,

smooth black invisible chirring
like planets spinning.

I have fed the little rat
who tips the tray--

each of us awake in differing skins,
on a yellow-leaf evening

under white stars.

The restaurant was a Chinese box.
My order was wrong,
then right,
then wrong again.

The waiters were men,
then women,
then men.

You were angry with me,
then not;
then you weren't you, or at least,
didn't seem to be.

An alchemist came and turned the soup to stone,
the stone to a poem,
together to alone,
despite all assurances printed on the menu card.

Lunch for 2.
Dinner for 4.
In your hand an apple,
then nothing; then a core.

I said, "My love...my love...my love...my love...."
as I dug with my fingers all the way through the world,
to find a hard queen, a woman dissolved
in your eye looking back saying, "Now what, girl?"

I see where David Berkowitz got Jesus in prison
like they always do.
Now he runs a ministry, adept as he always was
at delivering
succinct
sermonettes
delivering people to God.

He was a postal clerk, always involved
with the Message.
Such converts have a carnival of explanations--
the devil
the neighbor's dog
and other invented booshwah.

Susan Atkins got Jesus in prison too
and wrote a memoir
about her redemption, her will turned over
from Charlie
to Christ
but it could have been Moonies or Ekankar.

There is a rat who lives in my garage.
He hasn't heard the Good News
but he never
hurts anyone.
He has published no book, leads no prayers.

He likes to hang out behind the shovel
that has never dug a grave.

The authorities let Leslie Van Houton, Caril Ann Fugate,
and Nathan Leopold out.
Karla Homolka changed her name and might be anywhere,
at services maybe,
holding a bible and smiling.
___

My mother used to say
"You'll fall and break your neck,"
with uncharacteristic hope in her voice
like gilt edging on a pendant.

It made me want to fall and break my neck
just to please her.

It made me want to hold on vicious hard
just to vex her--
to get down and dance like a Hottentot
around a *** of missionary stew.

So, last night I was up on a ladder hanging a picture.
I had little nails in my mouth,
a big old honking hammer in my hand,
and my foot on a banana peel.

Yep.
Fell and broke my neck.
Who's gonna feed my dog?

It was off to the nursing home for me
where I couldn't feel my *** or my broken bones.
Cantcha hear me knocking, I'd sing/scream
from behind the edges of my teeth
like a tornado in a jar.

I wanted to ask all the nurses personal questions.
I wanted to wheel down the hall like the runaway Number Nine,
making train noises and peeing in a bag.

These beautiful dreams that ne'er can be,
Roses forever left unbloomed;
How melancholy the dubious hour
When Desire's crimson comes to ruin...

Ah, what ****!
Somebody else will get my apartment,
After I circumvented the waiting list
By finding out who I had to kiss.

My mother used to say,
"You'll break your neck,"
And the ***** was right.

I returned to my body in an access of spite,
with my stupid neck at ninety degrees
and I was back! Just like that!
Happy Mother's Day, Frosty,
From your darling young, your serpent's tongue
falling hell-for-breakfast beyond your grasp.

Mariana in the morning
by Morning's light possessed
all afternoon she walks the cliff's edge
trying to forget.

Mariana by the window
in a yellow aster smock
She knows November brings the end
of all your foolish talk.

And the mermaids come to die
on her lonely rocky shore
they ask her for her anodyne
then ask for nothing more.

Mariana, bride of Sorrow
in Sorrow's cottage kept
She counts the coins the stars deliver
and medicates the debt.

Mariana, in her silence
braids the horses' tails
She knows November brings the ostler
with his shoes and nails.

And the mermaids come to die
on her lonely rocky shore
asking for her anodyne
then asking nothing more.

Well ducks, it was the place to gather in those days.
There were ceiling fans that made one think
that Baron Von Richtofen might fly in at any moment.
I wondered whether a man wearing coveralls had to climb
up on a ladder each morning
to heave the blades into motion.

They served a concoction of fruit, gin, crushed ice,
the low notes from Hernando's Hideaway, and who knew
what else. It tasted like children's party punch
but made our high perches start to  pitch
on the rough seas beneath our jelly legs.

Down some white stone stairs, there was a blue pond
someone had stocked with mallards, as green and gold
as my jewelry. They were free to fly
but could never leave--the desert
would have turned them to cardboard.

We slept with scorpion nets. One night I dreamt
that a handsome man in a uniform of water lay with me,
told me my hair was good rope from India, and
that I had been a snake charmer
in a previous life. He kissed me and it stung.

Ah, love, there you are looking at me through your new
telescope, your young face behind the lens like an egg.
I gave up gin, and traveling, and most other things long ago.
Now I'm talking to you with my bird beak,
free to choose but forbidden to leave

except via packing box, to be sent by air mail over the dunes
to the oasis bar, c/o my younger self, cash on delivery, payable
in florins, code phrase "wing walker." The Baron will be there waiting.
___

There are ways and then there are ways--
yours put foreign powers on DefCon 5
out of pure jealousy.

Night shift at the factory is enough to melt skulls,
reverse the flow of hearts, turn bones to industrial byproduct
out of sheer boredom.
I loved you wearing jeans and safety goggles,
better than gown and pearls any day.

We took a picnic lunch to the city park,
and set our eyes to floating on the gray waters of the
flammable, compromised river that cuts through it.
"This is fun," we lied,
and fed bread to a one-eyed pigeon
who kept missing with his first peck.

The customs agents had stopped me the time before;
they searched my emphysemic, cookie-cutter *******
right down to the wheel wells.
Holding up my rubber boots, one of them asked,
"Do you work at the plant?"
Well, what do you think, *******? What do you think?
So you got even with them for me the next time--
you, fluent in Russian, Romanian and doubletalk
pretended not to understand the agent's fractured schoolroom parlance,
and mumbled until he let you through just to be rid of you.

How crazy that you should be Catholic--
I've never seen a craftier shoplifter.
Each time the grid went down, I kissed you for your pilfered candles,
your flashlight, your ****** little radio that kept us informed
as I buried my face in your sweetness like an irradiant.

There are ways and then there are ways,
and yours are the finest ever to grace my ******* box apartment
that I had to be on a waiting list for years, to get.
Everything is always in short supply--
once, you backed me through a rope of yellow hazard tape
and right into a defective forklift
with a kiss, on work time.
My shoe soles picked up God knows what from the filthy floor,
but my heart was happy
as the assembly lines rattled behind us.

There is plenty everywhere that can poison a person,
or sow cancer seeds that will explode later on.
We gave that year of our lives to the production of jugs of kitchen cleanser,
since banned.
Everyone who worked there had red hands and brittle nails,
despite the gloves, despite the icons some of us prayed to.
Oh well.
I was happy,
and even though you left just as it all seemed so good,
that year was pure, flawless, redeeming even,
like love can be sometimes,
and as your ways definitely were, and still are,
in some other woman's bed
in another town,
where you mumble into her ear in Romanian
and she holds you closer
for all the good such motions ever do.

My lost friend
is dreaming now of moon-silvered streets
and the lawns in tones of blue and green
like peacocks in repose
Is your lover, my lost friend
one of those?

My lost friend
has disguised herself in the ivy vines
twining around the garden stones
where the gray cats sleep
Is your lover, my lost friend
one of these?

My lost friend
wraps her heart in fox fur red and black
and waits in the dawn for the light to come back
across the lawns in morning mist
Is your lover, my lost friend
coming back to you like this?

The conspicuous Christians
fill four booths and keep the waitress hopping.

12 adults
5 young children needing high chairs in the aisle
17 orders, all different
5 special requests
2 plates sent back
1 spilled coffee
separate checks, please.

after an hour, they leave
dishes, napkins, crayons, sticky syrup spots,
straws, spoons, forks,
and
1 tract
with
2 crisp 1 dollar bills tucked neatly inside.

Teacher says that every time a bell rings
she is awakened in the night and lies there
remembering the bay at San Sebastian.

The stars in the sky there are local,
drifting up from modest houses in Loiola.
They are as close as cats on a sill
and are able to both warm and wound.

Teacher says that when her heart beats,
she cannot sleep, recalling the day of drums--
the Tamborrada, and the clouds that gathered
in search of their pilfered thunder.

During the Aste Nagusia, or Big Week.
La Concha Bay is home to stilt walkers wearing
huge papier mâché heads. The calm waters
are like mothers who knew these giants as babies.

Teacher says that there was a man there,
or a woman, or an enchantment she cannot describe.
Perhaps all three, a trinity born of sangria, celebration,
and one bell beneath the drumbeat, a ringing bird.

On these recent nights, far from the Basque country,
she is startled by her doppelganger lying awake beside her.
The lesson she cannot teach is that neither knew of the other,
though the invitation was always there, a tongue in the bell,

Like an arrow in the flesh of a saint or an invitation
to La Concha Bay, and the days to be lived beyond it.

There is a thing I wanted so much--
a thing always denied.
The evil and the angelic made a pact

and placed this desire in my heart
like a ticket hidden in a boot
worn by someone desperate in a station.

I tell people this desire is over--
that I visit its grave on holy days
to leave woven weeds,

but there is no grave because it is not dead--
only paralyzed like an aster when there is no wind,
no sun, no moon, no garden.

There is someone coming up the stairs
to hurt my heart, and they are so lit with beauty,
such an ordinary marvel.

The hallway floor is wood, the light there yellow in autumn.
It is morning, but the birds are mute.
My heart stops, the visitor walks past, the world ends,

but no one notices. There is no fool like an old fool,
no desire that cannot exalt or destroy,
over and over, in silence, like Shiva in a recurring dream.

Dear Katie,
                  please pardon the confusion--
mine,
yours,
the weather's.

In group they wanted us to talk about
someone who really loves us.
I started to laugh
                            like slipping on ice
I couldn't wave myself fast enough
                            to save a fall
and the laughing became an ugly cry.

They like us to do things with our hands here
so I made
                a love potion for you.
Yeah, too late. like checking a smoking oven.
But,
       I can still portion by intuition
like how much to kiss you in the morning.

I used
a pinch of rust from a love lock
the memory of five black tulips
and 1 tsp essence of caramel fudge ice cream--
       Jeff Buckley ballads to taste
        baked at 350 until the moon turns silver like your poetry.

Gosh Katie,
                   they took away my books,
said I needed to engage with others.
I went back to group today and said, whoa, back up--
let's do that thing
                              from yesterday.
I pulled my **** together this time, not like before,
and I said,
                Katie mon amour
                 Katie je t'aime je t'aime, je t'aime.
This one ***** goes, you're not French,
you're not even Canadian you ******* freak

But she never stumbled drunk up the stairs with you,
poetry ringing in our ears and the summer night on our skin.
More to be pitied than scorned,
                                                    I can hear you say.
Anyway,
              love ya girl
Katie mon amour,
              Our Lady of Tulips and the Silver Moon.

The muscle cars have aged out
of high school hamburger stands
and live in landfills
or junkyards

but some survive.
The codger across the street in the end house
keeps his in pristine condition,
replacing its parts, babying its body

in ways he can't do for himself.
I see him rolling out down the street,
into youth,
joy,
music,
health,

until he rounds the corner
and disappears.