I keep having
these dreams about
you, (I keep having
these dreams about you)
i have nothing to say
a lot of redundancy, mom, why
is it taking me so long?
was it because of the
night in the barn?
I dunno, I tell myself.
I can put on a pretty good show,
i guess, I'll sit at work and
reprimand myself behind the
fax machine, you told him you were done
but that was really for the greater good,
and I think about how to him, everything
has the potential to be fixed--
like people are brick buildings or
wooden shelves or long pipelines,
he's been fixing everything for a while
welding all his wounds shut and shootin'
the rats that find their ways into his room--
that doesn't change the things he said--
that I won't bother repeatin'

redundancy, like i was saying earlier.



that doesn't fix the dreams
how I changed a little with him
that I feel a little warmer with
sweet tea, with milk, with the
old men that walk into the bank
all watery eyed and spotted,
who I have to yell at so they
can hear me past half a century
of haulin' hay, i dunno,


i dunno. Dakota brought
out something good in me
the way streams wash out
little flecks of gold


i'm okay


I think.

have you ever felt your body?


have you ever felt your body?
a mellow clay mold sitting in the
bathroom, filled with pops and
quick ticks, i've often searched my
veins for pains, and they manifest
when I do, so I wonder--

about that.


and when I think about it too much
my belly starts to buzz and my chest
thickens with a warm afterglow, yeast
rising in a far clavicle, in my kidneys
and spleen--when I focus on the sounds
I can hear the pin drop of my soul, a tiny
bead on a string, a group of pink seashells
on Newton's cradle in a room shadowed in
broken evening, clicking against each other
softly, a lilliputian clock keeping time from
another century--

lost in twilight, in dawn, skipping the day,
my spirit always sinks into the everglades
a flighty anachronism, a homing pigeon
caught in telephone wires, beneath bus
wheels and modern dating--

ah,

out there?
hello?
forward message.  
I am here.

I'm a resonant body,
made love to the man I hope
comes around in my dreams
and his torso distended and separated
kissed his stomach before his legs became
driftwood and slabs of black marble--
his house was carpeted in grass with
rivers running through them
and I stood half-naked at the
stream with a makeshift fishing
rod, folding spotted paperclips
into hooks, there were no doors
but you came around the sunlight
as if there was, stepped through the
air and stood beside me--and the fish
came to you one after the other
until I accidentally dropped the wire
and it floated downstream to the front
entrance,
where is my heart?
in the misty moors
burnt off by noonday
convalescing in mossy burrows
trying so hard to make sense of
the people that become bales of hay
matchsticks and empty cotton shirts.

when when  when
and the more I say it
the more it sounds like
another language, archaic
german or synonym for
rice bowl in mandarin
the more I say it, the more
it fades from minor burn
to casualty, from rhetorial
question to plea, until I'm
sweating out in my apartment
angrily slamming clothes hangers
into the closet, shakily raising my
voice at God like a waspish child
and tearing dresses over my head
proclaiming see? see? I'll never
get to wear this one either.

curling my fingers into the bedspread--
around bottles of tea tree oil and dragging
an old kabuki brush through peach blush
holding my lips this way and that, when?
when will it be enough?


When will it be enough?

I'd forgotten about the last frost
the tv casting a flickering glow on
the opposite wall, I'd been counting
the number of times you'd said ****    (six)
still expecting (hoping) you to take my
hands and blow warm air through
my thumbs--

we left the cows (which had dwindled since I'd last been)
and climbed the rails near the house to get to the roof
it's so dark that it's light out here, I've got some song
by the Randy Rogers Band coming up through my
hair and buzzing on my lips

curse the photographic memory, I see you wobbling on the icy ridges
putting your faith in bolt heads to hold you upright--this stretch of
stars linin' up with your shoulders, your heart is crooked but beats
pretty straight--sometimes the air glistens around you like you're
still cookin' in the sun or maybe you've got some of that anger
still left over from Ashley, (who knows) I don't say a thing.

People say the night is black, but the night is blue. The night is the color of the year, purple quartz, johnny cash's long drawl, the night is your shadow, your laugh, a wily hand briefly tucked in the seam of my thigh where it all runs together, where all the water meets on Coleman land--disenchanted by our differences, scouring skin like shrikes waiting
for an opening, going in for the dive and finding that I am all melted
wax and whimpers--
lying shoulder to shoulder like we first
did up on Skyline,
boy, did I.
Boy, did I?