crash crash crash was the calm smooth
hudson current
percolating like your
electric kettle soul
earl grey hands wrapped around

crash on the pillowtop
the closest thing to injury you knew
the still crash the
crash they bottle on the radio for you
crash lulls you to sleep
crash crash crash all you heard
all you wanted all you didn’t know—

mirrors shatter
mercedes tangle with birchbark
little quarterbacks forget their names at 22


hello?



he drops the phone
forgets how to
pick it up
you fall in line
try to
forget too

small pieces of paper stuck to her molars
she wasn’t from the country she said she was from
ex-PAT! her charming garbled R’s were
gone that one night.

we all said, J’ACCUSE! and she was like, what
because she wasn’t french.
she could’ve passed though,

if she kept her tongue quiet. I mean,
it moved the right way, at least.
and she was beautiful, if I may speak so plainly
and very susceptible to the cold—
blue-white hands tucked up into sleeves
when she sat hunched over with a hot tea listening
to a radio broadcast from 1970.

it was in san francisco that she fell in love
(not with anyone in particular, but that’s almost
always how it works, non?)
after 1970, but she hardly knew the difference
except that the cars were more aerodynamic
and all the boys had names like Blake and James
and Noah and it was harder to come by a bed for the night.

she had small lungs, the better for whispering, but she
felt like she was more grand than a whisper.

french girls could whisper and still be grand (ma chérie)
so when she packed up and erased the country, she took
a new name, more cosmopolitan, with her,

ma chérie.

what do you learn but how to close your door when it’s coming
what do you
what do you learn but how to only whisper, never yell
only let them see you when you’re pretty
only let him touch you when you’re cold

since the morning you allowed it I’ve taken full advantage of your loving me
I’ve watered my impatiens with your loving me
I’ve thrown back my gin and tonics with your loving me in mind

and I haven’t paid it forward
I haven’t paid it lateral
I haven’t paid
haven’t paid for anything
and they’re catching up to me
the barkeep thinks I’m new in town
the doorman shakes his head

and the door keeps revolving as he stays obsolete

I keep loving you inside my scarf
and the wind takes it
when february comes

you’re tall now and your elegant shoulders are
rolled back and your collarbone frames your diamond
pendant like a picture
you don’t always wear the athenian owl anymore
you’re a little past your own poetry

they’ll all say my
how you’ve grown
haven't you

one thousand four hundred and sixty or something like that
fewer days than words from whitman’s mouth
makes sense. he knows more than I’ve learned so far.

but I’ve learned, so far. let’s get a little saccharine
sometimes the mosquito bite on your brain lasts years longer than it deserves
and you can’t walk away till you’ve walked together for awhile

sometimes someone else picks you up at the corner and
you wish he would’ve been there all along and then you
realize thank god he wasn’t cause he’s
beautiful but there’s no bigger beautiful than the
beautiful you squeeze into your final days

and he’s beautiful.
you’ve lost count of the drinks thrown back that brought you
to all the doorsteps you never would’ve seen
all the mouths you’ve already sort of forgotten

and the nights with your legs resting on
the legs of people you love with more love than—

here is where you learned to say I love you
sometimes
and when you can’t, to say something else
squeeze a hand

here is where you slapped somebody’s shadowed cheek
and found the remote house that’s kind of home
and where you’ll have to go away
but not without leaving
a little bit of you
everywhere

this friend of mine was never good at smiling in pictures. he tried really hard, but it never worked. all gums, all eyes that didn’t follow suit. he wasn’t great at smiling in real life, either, except when he stopped thinking about it. I saw him smile more than anybody else did, probably, but not enough. and then, like all friends from a home that is dispersing, I had to go. he said I love you by the dam and he meant it like a friend and so did I and that day, before I lost sight of how much he meant it, the sun went down and neither of us smiled with our eyes but we smiled with our mouths and we knew it was all all right.

then I lost sight of how much he meant it and we don’t need to talk about those years, even though we still don’t talk now that they’re gone. I think he grew into his hands and his heart, and I think he found someone who taught him, really taught him, so much better than I ever could, so much better than even he thought that I did, how to smile. I think she loves him more than he meant it when he said it to me, in quality and in quantity of ways. I think he packed my secrets in a box on a shelf in his hometown closet or maybe he dumped them in the recycling bin, and that’s all right, and I’ve found where I feel right too.

and having not seen him in a long time, having not talked in longer, having not hugged him in longer still, having not known him the best or ridden in his passenger seat or punched him in the shoulder, having put so many years between me and my best friend,

the picture that I saw today, the first ever of his smiling eyes

well, the pine-tree fireworks light up better like that. mine did the same.

I. The Flitting



just like me to
be the one to lose my nerve
I don’t even think of you
sipping your coffee and yawning


           his honey-throat spreading imagined hospitality like butter
           on toast—the bard of Royal Street ringing bells of that
           known once and only, that forgotten bard of Montmartre


                                 e, e, e, e,
                                            e, e, e, e, e, d, c, d



I walked up and down and up and down
and up and down, wrought-iron
     balconies and
          hanging plants and
                circus clowns and
              cocktails named
          things like Aviator
and Little Josephine
     in my ribs.



           hurricane season came and went
           the apartment Jacob rented painted
           salmon by the new tenant
           I kept walking
           all I heard was jazz




II. The Splatter



I met a man all the way from Delhi
at the mismatched
butterfly-printed breakfast table.
He said

           “Where are you from?”

and I said a little town near Philly
and he said

           “Where are you going?”

and I said I haven’t got a clue.


He told me they let you
paint the walls with pen strokes
and they never paint it over.


He said to love thy neighbor ‘cause she looks okay
and when they ask what brings you here
to smile and tell them

“Well isn’t that just none of your **** business.”




III. The End



it was
          just
                 like
                      me
                 to be
            the one
         to     lose
      my nerve—





I step off the plane
humming in my best
imitation honey voice
a little drunk on airplane wine



it’s raining here
and I only remember
that one line