Our mutual friend
had told you
how I used to be Queen of a very small tribe.

"It seems almost..." I said, hesitating.
"Like it really happened?" he asked.

"It did happen. But now
things are so different that it seems
ridiculous."

I sat there,
shot full of arrows like Saint Sebastian--
like him, not dying
but split and empty like a dead pew.

There are more gospels than they let on, you know.
This man loaned me two records--
Joni Mitchell
and It's a Beautiful Day.

Like poetry, it was love for life for me--
Hot Summer Day and Sweet Fire.

I left Illinois not long after
to Gypsy it in a small car with two teachers
off for the summer.

We read Richard Brautigan,
and wandered the bars in New Orleans, then Galveston
where I left both my crown and my grave in a coin laundry
on a Sunday morning.

Every movie can be improved by adding a hungry tiger into it--
a bullet-proof tiger who can talk, but
only speaks in aphorisms and maxims.
The tiger's voice should sound like broad green leaves
and love language.

High Noon with Gary Cooper, bad guys, and a bullet-proof tiger.
Citizen Kane with a talking tiger on a sled.
Casablanca with a tiger behind the bar, saying,
"Love is like the stripes of a zebra;
bright and dark touching but still apart and always moving."

Real life could be enhanced as well.
The tiger could eat people who don't allow their dogs upstairs,
who cut in line, and who take duckface selfies.
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away!"
the tiger would say while standing over their bones,
full with both flesh and satisfaction.

You could come over.
We can watch movies--with tigers in them!--
spouting maxims and bromides,
wrestling feverishly with each other and with the notion
of tigers knowing anything about zebras or hearts
except that they are foolish things
made of meat
and consumable.

I made a thing from weeds and bark
and called the thing I made--a heart.
I wrapped it 'round with wire and twine
and crossed it, kept it--called it mine.

Love my heart, love it much
despite the rot and wasps and such
and when you're done--I'll love you back
to see what nightmares come from that.

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.

I fell in love with your shadow
and lay on the floor with it while you slept.
We had an affair, your shadow and I
while you made mine visit your parents in Buffalo.

I became contemptuous of you there in bed
reading your stupid pop novels.
You became contemptuous of me on the floor
claiming a headache for the thousandth night in a row.

After the divorce, we sat at outdoor tables with friends
who nodded while we droned and overshared,
laughing, shaking our papier mâché heads, ******* down coffee
as the sun went right through us to the sidewalk, bright af.

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.

Emmeline by dawn light
borrows roses from your bed
Emmeline by moonlight
brings back petit fours instead.

Italy had its masters
who loved Emmeline with their oils
touched by God in Trinity
and Emmeline in trefoils.

Emmeline in summer
reads your letters until the fall
then she wades into the water
to the boatmen's barcarolle.

Espantajo,

I kissed you
but my lips knew no remedy
for you, standing cruciform
  in a desert wind.

Espantajo,

wrapped in
  cornhusk feathers,
no sky knows you.

Espantajo,

I could not move you
from your place in the night.
   For you,
all things rise in the west
sleep in the west
make love in the west
and die in the west.
   You married a northern woman
like un espirito muerto
   appearing in a photograph.

Espantajo,

Face away from my house now.
I have blue glass
   bottles sleeping
in the branches all night
   to snare spirits.

Espantajo,

The same old wind
rattles you
   and you call it talking.
Silencio, ****** scarecrow.
If you can't love,
can't move,
can't hold a woman,
   what good are you?

I'm trying to finish this famous contemporary poet's
fourth collection, which groans under the weight of
all the glowing blurbs on the back cover.

The famous contemporary poet avoids rhyme as if
it was a downed wire and finds form too restrictive--
hangs her skelly on a hook when she composes.

The famous contemporary poet writes a few poems,
carefully packed in vignettes, snapshots, and musings,
all the excelsior found in any packing crate.

In high school I had an acquaintance, this guy.
He'd toss out something cryptic and then wait
like he'd flipped you a Rubik's Cube.

Everything out of his mouth was a test and he'd give
you this bright smirk, like can you figure it out and
get to where I am, up here?

I would like to meet the famous contemporary poet
and show her one of mine, plain as the flat of my hand
when it breaks her nose and the blood comes.

I am trying to finish the famous contemporary poet's
fourth collection even though it's like watching a movie
with muddy sound, in dialect, no captions.

Zebra are seen mainly in dreams,

With licorice stripes--

And bodies of cream--



Their jewelry box hooves

Are made from the moon--

And their manes were lately

Bristles on brooms.



You can take off their heads

And fill them with clouds--

If you fill them with coins, they weigh five thousand pounds.



Lions like stars--

So they hunt in the sky--

But the zebra are hiding

Behind your closed eyes.



Zebra are seen mainly in dreams--

In the morning, they follow the sun--

When its warmth is felt, their cream bodies melt,

And then, away they run.

Look, friend Jane, for a wishing star
stuck in the sky like a dime in tar;
Tell that star what you won't tell mother,
tell what we tell, only to each other.

Wish star,
wish star,
Imhotep and Ishtar,
Nile crocodile keep this secret safe!

Oh, friend Jane, tell me what did you wish?
swear on a little finger, seal with a kiss;
meetcha by the rail fence, meetcha by the moon,
mother make the evil eye when she sees you.

Wish star,
wish star,
Imhotep and Ishtar,
Nile Crocodile keep this secret safe!

Now, friend Jane, I know what you said,
mother's at the bottom of the stairs stone dead;
moon on the pond water, stars in the sky,
mother's eyes are open but she's blind, Jane, blind.

"I remember Coyoacan," Jay told the interviewer,
sitting under mahogany-and-cane fan blades on the veranda.
Leaning back, legs crossed,
He smiled easily and added,
"He didn't believe in me, Trotsky. Too bad.

"The palms were dripping that day, but the rain had let up.
Mercader set his raincoat on the table
with the ice axe under it.
Trotsky was reading.
When he looked down, Mercader withdrew his weapon,
swung and sculpted a new Winter into Trotsky's mind."

Jay shrugged, as if to say what can you do?
"The guards rushed in and beat that man like a pinata.
Each fist was an eloquent argument,
each kick a blow for the worker."
He waved His hand dismissively.
"It was too late of course. Mexico is devout, but unforgiving.

"Trotsky knew he was dying, and said so.
An aide brought a basin for any final ideas,
and someone put on a phonograph record of Russian dances.
Across the room, Trotsky could see where Death had scrawled
'Te veo pronto'
on the mirror above the sink in red lipstick.

"He never asked for me, and died the next day."
The interviewer followed Jay's gaze to the flower garden--
dahlias, the Mexican national bloom.
"The Aztecs used to eat them," he told the interviewer.
The scribe wrote this down on his pad from the hotel,
with "Bienvenida a Coyoacan"
in bold script across the top like a leaflet or a prayer card.

The snake curled around my arm is not jewelry.
Go ahead; touch it.

Oh dear. I should have warned you
that I sometimes give terrible advice.

Never mind. Let me **** out the venom,
even if never quite enough--

and if my lips taste bitter as I kiss you, darling,
I apologize.

Please, while there's still time,
be kind
by whispering me your forgiveness--
my love so saturnine.

Before loving a ghost,
understand--
it will be a tricky business.

A ghost will not wear the dress you like.
She will ignore
the meal
the Merlot
and the Mozart.

A ghost does not believe in the future that you've planned.
To a ghost,
the future is feathers made of fog
on a bird that flies away before it is born.

A ghost will not wear your ring.
She will not bear your child, or even your touch.
She is an airy
indigo
butterfly
that can hurt you, and will.

zen master
drinks too much coffee
says to class
pardon me
leaves lotus, runs down the hall
but not fast enough


zen master
visits his sister
she hands him
new nephew.
our bodies are illusions
but shoulder puke real


zen master
ponders the spring rain
when stupid
car breaks down.
meditation does no good--
******* thing is ****


zen master
says souls can migrate
from body
to body.
unsightly skin condition
will end when you do


zen master
has the hots for jane
but he must
ignore this.
concentrate on breathing or
think about baseball
_

zen master
hates Shaysie girl lots
and wishes
she would stop
writing stupid shadormas
with him **** of joke

When a detective falls in love, he does not know who to bill for expenses--
everything is up in the air.

At a mixer for suspects, he invites me to dance via loudspeaker.
Radiant in my white dress, I resemble a snowy owl
even down to my carefully bandaged hand which he takes without hesitation.
I whisper in his ear:

I am Leon Czolgosz.
Your heart is the President of the United States of America.
We are dancing in Buffalo, city by the Niagara.
My detective, of course, falls hard.

The next time we meet, I wait for him in the bullpen at the police station.
They know him there.
They hire cellists.
He confesses his deepest fantasy to me:

I want to speak words of love to you
via telephone
with our hands naked and separated only by the safety glass.
I want the call recorded
and broadcast to wild lovers around the globe.

Shortly after, we are married. I wear my favorite bearskin robe.
My small black cubs frolic nearby,
climbing the pews and then tumbling gaily down again.
My detective is resplendent in his tuxedo.
The hired band plays Funiculi Funicula.
I snarl when my detective gets too close to the cubs, and this inflames him.

At last, we lie in bed together, like busy machines come to rest.
I am wearing nothing but the revolver-shaped earrings he has given me.
My detective wears a felt fedora
and a look of smug adoration like a daredevil over the falls in a barrel.
I am The Queen of the Mist,
suspected in various thieveries, check kiting, and jaywalking.

Our love is an aviary
where birds wheel above the thundering water like intelligent confetti.
Look in your mailbox, I tell my detective.
I have left you a valentine and an Easter egg.
He asks if, after all, I am his mystery client.
I enter a plea of innocent.
My love is happy now, laughing.

My gibbet is a fine and private place
where a lady may tarry of a summer afternoon
elevated and untouchable--
an ideal love just out of reach
like fruit for Tantalus, all pointless sweetness.

Allen Ginsberg appears from out of the crowd,
pink as a schoolmarm, fat as a Christmas goose
carrying his harmonium
singing about plutonium,
barefoot as any angel, toking on the Golden Blunt.

He looks up, mistaking me for a caught kite
dangling above the street in my gibbet
making other women's children
point and cry
demanding candy or weather reports.

Someone climbs up and ties tin cans
to the bottom of my gibbet
in an atmosphere of giddy holiday.
I die and begin to stink
pieces falling away like confetti.

Here I sway to this very day, high above
the Emily Dickinson Parkway
a paragon of virtue and demure reserve,
dead as hell
black as a bowling ball
ring still on my finger, an ingenue of the afterlife,

until gentrification when they'll take me down
because gibbets are out, they're upsetting,
like poetry,
like dead dodos
like buskers in the subway, beautiful, buried, irrelevant.
_

In a nutshell, meat and wings
and infinite other disturbing things
that rise and rule with iron fist
the little nest that crowns your kiss

Curse the summer, curse the tree
that swelled such nutshells patiently
gardener saw, gardener knew
even as those nutshells grew.

Ooga booga darling.
It's me, sunflower face
the fox-hearted misdirected letter of your dreams.

I live in the space between the walls.
I play Candyland with brain-injured devils
for a *** of chilly blue dawns.

I raid your fridge while you dream of dolphins.
I tip toe around your place, judging the art,
boiling the pasta, making a mess.

That's me saying "love me" from the heat vents.
That's my voice on the tv during your ballgame,
making you ***** with the settings.

Give in, please. I haven't got all day.
Once, I was an Egyptian queen.
Once I was a Dutch laundress.
Now I live inside your Jiffy-Pop, getting hot, expanding suddenly.

It's me, sunflower face,
the fox-hearted misdirected letter of your dreams.
You'll wake up in love with me.

You'll wake up as a black horse wearing a feather plume.
You'll wake up to find me in bed next to you, staring.
I've put my stamp, my kiss, my spell on you.

Easy my high-stepping Friesian, shh shh...
It's all right, I'm a specter and I've got the cure
for all your missteps, I'm an oval track, fresh spring clover,

a pinch of salt, and a lot of black cat!

Oriental Bittersweet,
her arms full of swans
never meant, no really never
meant you any harm.

Oriental Bittersweet
cuts her body with a blade
and never sees, no never really
sees the mess she's made.

Oriental Bittersweet
has horse blanket hair--
blacktop eyes and blackstrap tongue
and promises she cares.

Oriental Bittersweet
knows EMT's by name--
she'll take you with her, with her taken
here she comes again.

I feel forsaken
like a rolled newspaper in the rain.

Is that You? in the window box?
Is that You? magnificent in a woken engine?

I don't mean to be sullen,
a crushed flower with a brave yellow bloom--

I'm a vine growing in through the window
of your abandoned holy room.

Oh honey. My fingers flat upon
your smooth chest made of smoke,

I am rain falling ever further from her cloud.
Call me back---use your voice of *****-shaped leaves.

I will come, across the lawns and waters
to kneel at your feet
and sing.

If milkmaids dance,
I haven't seen it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't happen
when I'm asleep
or dying.

If apples can be poisoned
I haven't tasted one.

That doesn't mean to trust your grocer,
lover,
or restauranteur.

Oh, you, decked in white blossoms like some ironic saint,
evangelizing my arms, my tongue, my will
like the loving dead.

I know now that I was kissing a corpse--
one heart beating for two,
pony for dray horse, dragging along.

I can't swear that I'll be smarter next time,
but I mean to be.

I 'll remember your face, your ways, your smile,
turn my head like a lady
and spit.

I can't recall what this place was like
before the renovations.
There were difficulties--
bombings, whatnot,
and the removal to the madhouse of the construction foreman.

Blueprints are lovely, don't you think?
Smooth and blue as calm seas.
Birth, though, that's a ****** messy business--
the screaming gobsmacked arrival
held up in the hands of the midwife who never cuts her nails.

It's not so much that I love this place as that I was presented with it.
I woke in these rooms
with the hammering already in progress.
I long for waterfalls and love,
but have skin like bricks, and hair like shingles.

People say, make it beautiful, you can do it!
Be your own fetch, a siren of the flooded basement,
luring yourself with your own song.
Make it your home away from home as drowning sailors do,
find the bright side of blistering paint and warped floors like heavy seas.

All right then. I have tattooed the name Rán
on my arm, see it when I hold you.
We are limited only by burst plumbing, crumbling rebar,
and our own imaginations.
We are castaways keeping our heads above water
in our Rubik's Cube Winchester House
of gorgeous possibility.

I had a planet,
just a little one
but still.

it had activities--
recreational
illicit
volcanic.

from a promontory above one of its seas,
I pondered what to do with a drunken sailor
early in the morning.

I had to rent out my little planet
due to the commute.
Years passed.

When I returned and saw
what the renters had done,
I brought the flood in my righteous anger.

Things are better now,
lo these many months gone by.

I have a koi pond with native goldfish.
I sleep in until lazy o'clock
or until the stars wheel above my gingerbread cottage.

The sailor got sober, survived the flood,
and sings, "Weigh-hay and up she rises"
when I stir

both my happy ***,
and the coffee he has kindly fixed
the way he knows I like it.

I have a planet,
just a little one
but still.

Some wore armor,
those freshbread women
with plums for eyes.

The River God said,
a lot of good it will do you,
then sank down
into a water lily dream.

One went to him
holding a blade made of summer.
Some say he married her
but she never came back to say.

Some wore bracelets
made of fall leaves and owl call
with sorrows lined together like dolls.

The River God said,
one is wise, five are deceitful
and none can sing, or love.
Then the water iced over until spring.

The women went to the silent edge
bearing a robe made of crows and rushes
but when he didn't appear, then or at any other time,
they gave the robe to the morning.

Some wore armor,
but most wore willows.
They were freshbread women
with plums for eyes.

Take an hour from the morning,
pick a peach from the pile;
one kiss from the courtship,
one foot from the mile--

Eve took an apple, said it wasn't very much.
Eve took an apple, said thank you very much;
now I know how it goes
and see how it is--
He just don't like me taking anything of His.

Take an hour from the night,
won't get it back soon;
poison in the peach pit,
crazy in the moon.

Eve took an apple from a serpent in a tree.
Serpent had an angle, that's some geometry.
Eve ate the fruit,
tossed away the core--
if you want to see some skin, that'll cost a little more.

Take a peach from the pile
and the whole stack roll;
make you pay forever for the hour that you stole.
One kiss more, one kiss less,
stay for the dance
then take back the dress.

Eve tried the cider that she got from the well.
If Adam gonna watch, then she make him wear a bell.
Snake bit the man,
bird caught the snake--
cat catch the bird and give a little shake.

Take a dime on the dollar
and a foot for the mile;
get a little somepin somepin
just for a while.

Eve take an hour from the hourglass round,
Eve leave Eden say I'll see you around.
Adam write the book
with a broad brush black--
write all you want, but it won't bring her back.
_

Oh your friends call you Lily Paloma
but that's not the way that you are
It's too much of a gentle misnomer
for a shooting star
                                                 --Al Stewart
It's not the way it looks
the moon in the sky
your face in the mirror
the thing that was done or not done.

It's not the way it looks
the moon, lonesome rock out in space
ask the fascinated tide
about the gravity of lit soul

It's not the way it looks
your face in the mirror so lined
ask the devils, those angels that free you
from a birdcage of bones

The mirror limits vison
the moon limits sense
and everything you are or are not
will, in time, incandesce.

A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red
in the maple's crook she's hiding.
Her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

A carmine blaze upon her breast to mark the place she's bled
like a penitent confiding
A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red

The purple splay of sunset now reveals a fraying thread
in her tiny breast subsiding--
her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

Beneath her injured wing, she hides her tawny head
as the sun is lower gliding
a crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red.

The summer grass, soon bereft, would take her place instead
except for circumstance dividing--
her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

The presiding night has finished; the ceremony said--
her new master toward the threshold swiftly striding.
A crippled dove is dying; her wound a dusky red--
her heart her wedding song; herself the newlywed.

Go down to the greenhouse and gather the blooms,
then scatter them all in separate rooms--
the rose on the grate of the fireplace cold
to lie there and die there as we grow old.

The arrangements are odd and enigmatic,
the occupants frail and most asthmatic
afflicted with allergies, fear and despair
made worse by the stale and fetid air.

Though we gasp our devotion like fish in a boat
and confess our passion by rite and rote,
we're as blinkered as babes, as clear as bells
as we rise from the drink on our half-assed shells.

I have two sharks inside me
swimming in tandem and holding my heart
between them like a little family
walking in the dark.

I send them gulps of air from outside
as if I were some sort of oxygenated charity
with a face and feet, operating in the world
on their behalf like a proxy or prosthetic.

Oh fishies, confined and angry in the bowl of my ribs,
here come those old blues again.
Why does life go on so long, demand so much,
slowly dribbling out the cracked glass of years?

I have had ideas all along, fine ideas
to open a ministry in a dumpster,
a ballroom in an attic, a cemetery
on a space station with the whole Earth for Ouija board.

I'm scared, fishies. Will the moon call you
and will you answer her tidal madrigal?
Will she require three voices, you and my heart?
Will you rise in glory, leaving me hollow, in salt and sorrow?

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.

I am ten crows, twenty-three starlings,
one tree, a world of racket, every dusk that ever was.

I am a holy heart four angels defend,
other times I am nothing but flesh and fingertips.

There are four seasons, three necessities,
two sides to the moon.

The window has eight panes;
I am in them all.

A priest arrived by ambulance
to bless our sudden kiss

A doctor brought his bag but cannot
treat such things as this

My jewelry is just colored rocks
like pretty polished hollyhocks
in silver settings gone to curls
the same as any other girl's

but I could be your only love.

A flautist played our melody
in notes so fine and clear

That summer brought her midnights close
so that the moon could hear

the notes, the song so marvelous
the player played so long for us
the priest laid down his holy flask
the doctor blushed before he asked

if I could be your only love.

An urchin took a photograph
of you in uniform

You gave me spice and chocolates
to keep my fever warm

and lucky is the lucky bird
who calls and calls a wafting word
In this peculiar pregnant dawn
his curious and constant song

that I could be your only love.