there's a ringing in my ears that
sounds like the feed trucks roaring down 50
and  broken country music coming through
an ancient stereo, sounds like the way your
thick palms look when they pull a cap off a Coors
bottle, and that side eye you give, why do you keep looking at me like that?

Like what? As if my looks were incendiary glares and not photographs, I'm only taking you in, not taking you out. Like what? Hasn't anyone ever traced your lips or wondered if God built you out of brick? Laid silk over your harsh corners and sanded you down with a smile--why am I looking at you like that?

sounds like I put myself here and effectively took myself
out, sounds like you're one of kind and so different
and i've never felt this way
but I've heard all of those--

he's not waiting but i am, maybe for some kind of epiphany,
some kind of insurgent thought--an outpouring of light in the
rooms he thinks are lit, i wish I could light candles down his
tenebrous hallways, hang lanterns in the crook of his elbow,
make sure that the shadows only ever follow at a distance
but I can't assuage the feelings you haven't found, the fleeting
thoughts you ignore, I can't smelt the ore from your blood or
even pull a
splinter from
your palm.

He told me once he was in no hurry, no rush. But I've felt like i'm waiting on him, how strange, he'd probably say. Probably tell me
at least once more how much sense I don't make--but I tell myself that only a few people beat for me, run the tracks at the same speed--
that my explanations are enough for every other part of myself
and trying to explain that I am many, that I hang fire and break beds with prayer is like trying to describe colors;
warm, but not bright. Rich, hearty, elegant. -- Untitled. 1994. Oil on canvas.

you will be able to say
once in a while
during the brief
jaunts in our underwear
the glimpses of green lace
under a white cotton shirt
that moved across my shoulders
on the hardwood floors, our heels
stomp and slide, and my thighs
quiver under weight and laughter
you caught me and I turned
turn to hold your neck


but I pause to bring you close
to hold you, as if you were
a vase of baby's breath and ferns
to look you over and wonder how
one moment I was sitting here writing
this on the couch on a september evening
and how you are here now,
with a strange familiarity
and the watch on your wrist
softly clicks forward
but I can hear it from
inside the glass, atop the second hand
sweeping over the ticked surface
reflecting the sweet blue daylight,
the warmth of your body and
the gentle harmony of two people
who have found eachother.

we the daughters of sliced sunbeams
and those who chase gales in between
the pasture gates and barbed fences behind
the silo--

who think there's nothing softer than the way
honey sounds drizzled on toast or daisy petals at the supermarket
the women of ferocious silences, standing before
dozens with trimmed smiles and deafening inner beauty

squeezing our fingers down barley stalks and sewing
the roots into our dresses, we've tried six ways to sunday
the rules, the book on being wanted, before realizing that anything
born out of self-indulgence wilts away
all the work we did to grow and plait our hair with vanilla,
dipped in sweet almond oil we had no idea
that pretending
could only get us
so


far.

didn't have to try
the *** on top of
the fridge from texas
to suggest *** or
heavyweight championships
you laughed when I said
whiskey smelled like vanilla
and again when I took a swig
of apple moonshine and
cringed, yeah, not even
I can handle white lightning
consequently I started humming
that song by The Cadillac Three
the soundtrack to letting go of
waiting or worrying or wanting--

the chrysanthemums on my coffee
table have lasted about three weeks -
about the time frame of things that
need to go

I say something like
I want to know everything about you
and that's not me lying, just my genuine
curiosity out there in the open so when
people ask about you, your favorite
flavor of ice cream will fall right off
my tongue, a thousand little facts
about your truck or your garage
or things I picked up just listening to
the sound of your voice

I like to know people the way I know myself
but maybe i've been careless, maybe i've taken
hearts and made them cranes, taken their soft
rippled surfaces and flattened the corners,
maybe i've been too negligent in the art
of loving, in making sure i've not made
a home where there ought not to be
because i'm good at finding a place
to nest, in the rafters of their chests
and most don't mind birds but


girls aren't birds
girl's aren't birds
and don't have the right
to come in and say they have
all the answers

so i'm out on a county road and I'm saying something like
i'm sorry, please don't leave


I'm sorry, please don't leave.