high voiced Irishmen and spun sugar turned to
teenaged dreams and a teenaged circus

cold beaches in October like candlewax and promises
to call
bacon on the stove and cemetery gates and no one
to answer

if-this-was-the-cold-war to
this-is-the-*******-cold-war to
how'd-you-ever-get-so-blind

to the summer of warm warm warm and
the nights you'd have wanted at
sixteen and twenty
if you'd thought about it

and the big empty road in front of you that
under Orion's patent-leather belt looks so
not empty

how you're tall
and freewheeling

but not without

“let’s celebrate a beautiful year,”
said one particularly sentimental mosquito
on a sideways tree in central park.

she and five girlfriends floated down
and joined us by the earth.
they paused over me, breathing my air

then moved on, instead
choosing his calf muscle for their joie de vivre
—his blood is sweeter than mine.

there exists a breed
of butterfly that lives
on the blood of departed
human bodies.

from afar it is mistakable
for a monarch--
the covergirl fireflower
of the insect world
who drinks from petunias.

A lion, all gold and sand and sunset, wandered
into a suburban living room,
curled up beneath the pendulum clock,
and lay against the leather couch.
The family—a husband, a wife, a teenage
daughter—were gentle. They looked at this
king at their feet, and had no thought to hurt him.
They had lost their dog, and were in the market
for soft company.

The girl named the lion Frederick. She read him stories.
She took him to the window, and showed him the
fence around the yard.

The father scratched Frederick's ears each morning as he drank
his coffee and read the New York Times. The mother
cooed babytalk to him while she washed the dishes.

Frederick had no time to think. This was his home now,
he knew intellectually.

But his name was not Frederick. He felt that.
His claws were dull. His eyes
were half-mast, house-cat-sleepy, even with the sun.
He was not a house-cat, and he forgot.

They loved him
and they loved him
and they took the wild right out of him.

He was a year into his picket-fence when a scratch came at the
window in the evening mist.
A deer stopped in its tracks, locking eyes with Frederick,
unmoving.

Frederick stood, nudged open the door through which he’d come,
and roared. The deer fled.

The lion stretched his legs and and ambled out toward gold and sand and sunset. He did not look behind.

when he died, his jackets all went
to the grandkids (world-war-two-chic was
en vogue), his medals to his sons, and his
meticulous preparations for any far-off
hurricane, blizzard, fabled connecticut sandstorm,
power outage, overheating engine,
skinned knee
to the big and elegant dumpster.

his wife in her heels-for-every-occasion, in her
quiet knowing
languages and recipes and birdseed
loved him even after she forgot his name
and hers.

they built this house bare-handed
and in the shade of the trees
and spiders and cell-phone towers
it will stand as ever
it always has.

A vinyl record makes the rounds, dust attached loose to the needle, imperceptibly
breaking
off
making
short
homes
for each
molecule
in each
black
groove.
Your hurricane breath will send them subatomic-
Superdomeward on your next mad quest
to convince your girlfriend that you are neat&clean.;

You sit crosslegged, Buddha on the brain,
corporation on the docket.
Which
one
do
you
dream
of?
And more importantly,
which
one
should
you
dream
for?
The twenty in your pocket will get you one-fifth of a silver ring
or five turkey sandwiches.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too”—it wasn’t Buddha who said that, but
it’s Buddha’s smiling voice in which you hear it now, between your ears.
“What the **** does that mean, Buddha?” you sigh, and there is no answer.

You move, and move, and you keep on moving. You leave a little molecule
on the subway, and on the bar, and on the sidewalk without feeling it, losing them to
short
homes
vulnerable.
The hurricane breath or the sunshine or the invisible rubber glove of
Buddha, or Carl Solomon, or Walter Cronkite or God or whoever does the universe’s spring cleaning
will send them subatomic-Superdomeward
and you’ll never even know you missed them.

Your girlfriend thinks it’s realcool you have a record player,
but it’s a little dusty, she says.
You touch her lower back and smile. You get eye-level with the needle,
and you blow.

I saw the weather there
seventy-eight every day (every day) as long as you wait
for the clouds to burn away
they always
they always do

I saw the future there but don’t know yet if it’s
mine

I saw faceplates facades and artifacts there—painted bricks you couldn’t tell from the
real red bricks on your granddad’s house
(you don’t so much
remember what they looked like, but you are confident
that the difference is negligible)

I didn’t see much else there but the weather
boy
the weather is pretty in the afternoon

you've got a photographer's
eye
and no camera
you look real close
to remember

there have been so many
days gone in years
lost in years, etched in nothing

but this one
is somehow
etched everywhere

in your collarbone your tongue the lines
of your iris
in the stitch of your jeans

in raindrops and puddles
growing always
lightening the sidewalk when it dries

thunderchilled, shoulders icy
but only on the surface—
underneath, it’s
etched in everything

it’s something mundane but im-
possible not to miss
never the vast neverending or the
reflection in your so-pretty-eyes

not how it’s purple in the sundown
or the time you kept your feet dry
waving from his shoulders in the ebbtide

it isn’t the round he gallant-
ly orders for the two of you
or his singing voice
the salty never-gone stillness
in your eyelashes

it’s something mundane—
the no-memory but infinite patience
the time he touched your too-warm forehead
and when the water rose how he
kept you off the shore
—don’t forget that

I would tell
the six-year-old me
that that girl is my best friend still
in fifteen years
so I'd hold my tongue
when that collage is ugly
and I could say now
we never stopped loving in all that time

I woke up on Tuesday and I was older by the calendar and the law and I said “hey that’s grand”. When I woke up on Tuesday I was also older by the symbolism and I sat wide-eyed between suitjackets on the 7:45, coffee half-down and a brand new watch on the left-wrist. I made spreadsheets. I shook hands. I was The City when I took my first swallow on the rooftop. I couldn’t see the Empire through the cold-May-fog but I could see it in the mirror and on his knuckles and in his eyes. When I woke up on Wednesday I made more spreadsheets. I made more coffee. Then I was home early and Connecticut again. But Friday was the best ******* day. The sun beat me to good-morning and my favorite gone friend ate a gyro with me and another chugalugged to 42nd street on the bright red leather across the aisle. My favorite hand to touch was there for the second drink too, and I loved my job because I admitted that I hated it, and that’s okay. And he was there again on the cusp of days, and he’s there now still between my ears, and Friday melted to the next good-morning and I’m here now, city-drunk and sky-drunk and *******-I’m-so-lucky- and wine-drunk, and dizzy on the rooftops I’m imagining are better than the ones I rule, and Sunday’s coming and I will sleep for ages and hey that’s grand.

there are fewer words for this
kiss on the temple
soft knuckles
the first sip

but it's as good as
any repurposed for
less regal things

a popsicle in august
the sweetest ****-you to
midday thirst

the first snow and
realizing
you can play the piano still
after eight stagnant years

it is
wanting to stay
where you
only ever
cherished leaving

everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues,
and this is mine:

love is not blindness and his especially
his love was not blindness
he saw everything:
what was there
what wasn’t

nonetheless he rested at reading-glass distance
everything in hyperfocus and bigger, like he wanted
like a futuristic camera: oversaturated, overbright

love is not blindness—

love is literature, or wine, or a lens flare
his filled my gaps with what he wanted there
he saw more than the camera did

I cannot condemn, nor could I ever, his amber propensity
to imagine me. to beg literature is a dodge
of responsibility of which we are all
most equally
guilty

and the devil is in the details
that stitched up such an
achingly different forever
than the one he saw

love is not blindness—
his wasn’t, and mine wasn’t
—but it is literature: permission to fill the page
permission to distrust, like I did then
like I do still

forgive me my own amber propensity
to feel the paradox
there

the sky over i-95 is violet, the color of the deepest bruise
like the one you actually remember getting, that eclipsed
all the little gray-green ones from
tripping over belgian blocks, and mismeasuring the distance
to the doorframe.
the sky over i-95 cannot hold water very long
and soon it doesn’t.

you look out the new-car window
silent windshield wipers and you remember
the other times it’s rained on your occasion
(with stinging peroxide sometimes, and
sometimes gasoline, when you had a match
in the glovebox,
but mostly water).

you never stopped liking the way the big trees swayed
in the not-quite-hurricane
or the deafening of the drops on the car’s aluminum backbone.
you used to trust they’d never fall, they’d never flood
the crashes you passed rubbernecking were never fatal
traffic would always clear
you’d never be late.

as you watch the oversized leaves support the waterweight today
you think how every bit of that is gone from you now
siphoned slowly and quietly but
unmistakably gone from you now
you think in matter-of-fact sentences because you are a grown-up:
“I do not trust the trees. I do not trust the raindrops.”

quieter you think
“I do not trust the future. I do not trust an empty building.
I do not trust the movie theater. I do not trust the ocean,
or the river. I do not trust water
when I can’t see the bottom.”

you get a little philosophical as you get hungry and the exit numbers get high
“I do not trust the highway. I do not trust me. I do not trust the curtains
to keep me safe when I sleep, and I do not trust waking to bring me morning.”

you think in matter-of-fact sentences because you are a grown-up,
but also because that’s how the thoughts come.
there’s something that you do trust
that’s enough to warm you as this unseasonable may
comes to a close.
you never stopped liking the way the big trees swayed
and you think how they might fall
but they haven’t yet.
you think how it’s kind of okay not to trust them:
you trust something else.

                                                   (pain is lucrative.
                                                   so is smiling.)

                 a female cardinal perches outside the window of
                 the room, just as you arrive to leave again
                 and you think how she's just as pretty as the
                 candy-apple-red male, though she's dark against the tree trunk

and when you’re back to celebrate the years since leaving
you might even trust that tree trunk
and the girlcardinal you have to squint to see

                                                   you might also trust morning, then,
                                                   and night.

meantime, the sky lightens:
sundrops while the rain comes loudly still.

I was searching my pockets for a story to tell my daughter on the night before Thanksgiving when she was looking especially nineteen, shouldering the immeasurable weight of being nineteen, and I couldn’t find one with a good three-act structure, but I started to tell her about the kind of vaguely existential warm knot I always used to get in my stomach when I went home from school for Thanksgiving, and how I couldn’t decide at the time whether it was happy or sad, but now I knew that it was happy for certain, and how when you think about how once things change they are not changing back it can be kinda heavy, but you don’t have to think about it too often, and we had this new recipe for cranberry sauce this year and you don’t even have to get up early to watch the parade.

When I went downstairs at nine the next morning to put the turkey in the oven, she was smiling in front of the TV, sipping a cup of black coffee with her dad.

"heaven's really crowded," peter said to me
over black coffee on Maple Street
while we watched the kings and counselors
in collegiate sweaters
lose all their religion
like we'd lost ours.
it fell like hailstones—

they all flipped their collars up
and their heads down;
we looked cozy in the window
and we laughed like we weren't
freezing too.

"this weather's crazy," he shook his head
and rubbed his hands together for the friction;
"hellfire looks better every day."
we smiled and put our gloves back on
to revel in our endless earthly cold.

quietly we weighed his words
and decided they were heavy;
we lit a cigarette to share,
blew the smoke up at the holy high school dance
and said with youthful vehemence,
"*******."

a girl with too-long hair and smiling eyes
and two laughs-- one sardonic, one irrepressible
had very little
room to sit
next to him:

                                           a boy, almost a man with a
                                           guitar and callused fingers.
                                           strong-- hands two sizes
                                           bigger than hers.


she leaned on him (out of necessity, of course)
he held her up (to be nice, of course)


                                           their knuckles touched and she got restless
                                           she moved her fingers against his ever so
                                           light
                                                         ly


he played the game and nudged her thumb


                                           fingertips like dancers on broken glass
                                           collided
                                           quietly--



                                                    ­            like vines, we intertwined
                                                    ­            *carelessly growing up

i never had the pleasure
but if i did--
the chance to know him or
just to shake his hand
maybe tell him how he fixed it
how he fixed me
from however many miles away
--i bet he'd have smiled
and been glad to meet me too

I had
my cold hands against my neck
I had
a new blouse on
I had
a sad empty feeling
your sad empty smile
was mine

a clock without numbers
a clock without a body
a ghost on the opposite wall
it could never be a pocketwatch--
a young girl’s lip trembled
--neither could she

the door was swinging open
and closed
and open
and cold

winter the storybook villain
had turned to winter
the armed robber on Washington Street

sad and empty had turned from something
to all we are

there are two generations sipping tea
and countless strings invisible
her heart to her heart and my heart to your heart
all of the hearts, and the tables, and chairs
and leaves of grass
and minutes
and pink clouds

we see the finish in the distance
but these strings
and her heart and her heart—
the finish won’t last
these strings
we’ll stay

he is six feet tall, curly and blond, and john-lennon-glasses
he purses his lips, trumpeter-sans-trumpet, wherever he goes
he is the only one on the sidewalk
even when everyone is on the sidewalk
he smiles at you
“how are you today!”
and reminds you he is from west virginia

he cooks corn on the cob in a too-small kitchen
and stops after one beer most of the time
he’s the neighbor of neighbors and he’s
the trumpeter of trumpeters
if you’re listening

and he might be alone but you’d never know it
he'd offer his couch, an ear
a cup of sugar
if you should ever need

a trumpeter

yellow-not-gold library lights far off
dizzy circles and the truth
you saw the wrong direction
and I saw the door
and everybody saw it coming
but you and I valiantly didn't for longer
than the weak-stomached
didn't we

her eyes are bluest in the bathroom
in early afternoon on the west side of the building
(but you probably knew that)

those are the lights, there
and there are lions in the lights and their gold circles
are halved and the gold circles
beneath her eyes are halved
and there are lions in her eyes, too
except in the bathroom, on the west side, in the early afternoon

it has always been something but not this
always there but not so big
her eyes are bluest in the bathroom
where you wouldn’t think to follow her

you tell the story and it is
happily-ever-after, goodnight
(day is so much better still)
she’s unready still

always unready to run with lions and so she tames them
in her eyes, and in the lights (it is ethically challenging)
and the gold half-circles
are bigger

and so is that other thing
always there
always unready

you lie in the grass
just shy of sunburning
and your hands are warm
and your coffee is cold

and it’s the same world still
but it feels like a better one

there are two options when something happens that you don’t want to happen, something that changes your plans, something that takes a girl (who loves you, loves you, loves you forever like you’re sunshine) that you were going to get drunk with on a rooftop and kiss till if-and-when she fell in love and makes her into a girl whose Boyfriend Wouldn’t Like That. you can dig in your heels. you can stew and hate and surrender to the agony of we-had-all-these-plans-and-now-we-don’t. you can say I Will Never Get Over Her. you can tell your friend She Was the Only One I’ll Ever Love. you can tell yourself you have to want her forever or forget her, and you can’t forget her. you cannot ******* change your plans THEY WERE BEAUTIFUL PLANS.

or.

you can change your plans, even though they were beautiful. you can remember that she tried, and know it wasn’t enough for you but you love her more than just for her handholding. you can not-excuse her but you can forgive her. you can tell and tell and tell yourself it wasn’t right if it didn’t work, and you can believe yourself one day. in the meantime, you can have lunch with her instead of pay for dinner. you can turn her into beer and philosophy on picnic tables instead of wine in bed. you can take another girl to the rooftop who was made to love you the way a rooftop girl should love you.  you can quote books about the love you deserve because you deserve better on a rooftop, but you might deserve her at that picnic table. there are two options when something changes your plans. you can cross your arms. or you can open them.

here is the year that i rarely noticed the always redness on my index finger from the key i had to fight to twist. every day. the year that i got over you and then under you. there was the night i figured out faith. and the morning i forgot it. i bought a lot of denim this year, and i told you a lot of stories ("you" being you, this time). i watched more jake gyllenhaal movies than i expected to--"the year of jake gyllenhaal"--but it wasn't his year, it was mine. sometimes it was too pretty to believe in--sometimes i didn't--and sometimes it was like a compound fracture, and instead of setting it, 9-1-1 just kissed me on the cheek and said it's okay. some nights that fixed it. it was the year when i was a real grown-up, and nobody could tell me not to buy ***** or not to eat bacon every lunchtime, or not to drink ***** with my bacon, at least. there were mornings when i woke up aching for someone to tell me just that, to stop, to tell me how to do it. how to do this. how to be a two-wheeler. a year when i still don't quite have it down, but i think i will. here is the year when i lost you and i found you and i lost you and i loved you, and i love you, and you, and you, and you. here is the year that i had visceral dreams and ghosts in the corners of my eyes. i asked them politely to leave, and they did. here is the first year ever that i did not break an umbrella in the wind, and i did not twist my ankle, and i did not finish that book you lent me. i did not finish that mug of tea you put too much honey in that burned my tongue when i sat on your squeaking bed for the first time. this year, i wore snow boots and i microwaved soup indoors and i had a lot of sad saturdays with easy sundays. i watched my tiny town become a tragedy and a hero, and i watched bigger towns do the same, and i think i got to understand compassion, but i watched myself make you sad, and this was the year i did that too many times to count with fingers. there were nights when i only wanted to count your fingers, and nights when i wanted everything at its fastest. here is the year that a lot of people left and i drank more cups of coffee than i expected to, but i still slept more than anybody wanted. here is the year that i wore my grandfather's jacket, and an old friend's sweater. i made money and mistakes and amends and movies and little wooden chairs and painted cups. here is the year that i don't know how, but i will.

on good days, I deal in thoughts like
why do banana peppers taste like that
can I carry twenty-four water bottles a three-quarter mile, or
I think this tree’s a little taller than a year ago

on other days, I deal in
how

there's this 1945 jacket that i have, this military-grade thing, and it has these white paint splatters on it from probably 1968, or at least i hope that's when they're from. i like to think this jacket that i have has seen the revolutions i missed, on the shoulders of a soldier that i knew in his white-haired days, whose nose is feminized on my face--it's too big, but it's his, and so i like it there--and who learned to walk a second time without flinching, whose goodness never needed flowered language, and whose goodness i take with me where i go. and then on the shoulders of a soldier's son whose legs hyperextend like mine, who falters unforgivably and breaks what he loves like i do, and who also loves wine and music, and who loves the best he can. there are all these pockets in this jacket that i have, and these rows of buttons that take forever to line up, and a little tiny hole in the elbow, and strings all at the wrist. i pull the strings like i pull up grass and i pick at what's healing and when i was a little girl i wiggled my baby teeth before they were ready to fall. i forget that 1945 was a long time ago and every string i pull is one string less for the next soldier, or soldier's son, or soldier's son's daughter who tries. one string less for the next revolution, one string less for the picturebook wedding, one string less for the girl-on-the-side. but this jacket that i have, it's still stoic, and it's still good. the soldier that i knew in his white hair is good still from where he is, and i can still see his blue eyes in mine, and i can still see that the soldier's son loves even though he falters, and so do i. i try to pull out fewer strings, and i try to be a soldier--a good soldier--i always try.

the imagination wanders.
that's all it does, really--a flâneur
masquerading as inventor
inverse
or escapism.
behind his eyes you're more than what you are

you're pearls and quiet promises he swore he heard
you're emerald or
a lighthouse.
behind his eyes you're more
than all he wanted

the imagination wanders--
his, out-of-town
--and you are left. and less
(but all he wanted, the playful universe reminds you unkindly)

he wanted a decadent contemporary reimagining of a jazz age novel
and you're less

yes how fitting that she is what she is
inescapable and terrorized by what she is
and tries on deaf ears to illustrate that color is terror
when it fades, and when it breaks

how fitting that she left the winter in her wake
how fitting that she didn't feel it following her, shadowed, sinister

that one word gaining myth and momentum as we go (and we go, and we go)
it does not define itself; how fitting her frenzy to define it
in the inherent vacuum where it cannot breathe

how fitting that she stumbled and reversed the seasons
and that orange blends with autumn ground but not with april
and when it fades, and when it breaks
it isn’t ever overlooked
or forgotten

i told you the verymost secret truth to ease the parting blow. so you'd forgive me that the only blow was parting, that the bookshelf wasn't big enough for us both. when i told you all those other truths you thought i'd be the leatherbound dictionary that stays the digital age but i let you in on the verymost secret one and now you're not so sure, huh. you're not so sure. i'm not so sure. the definition marked by post-it is a word that is not officially recognized. the english language never was so much my thing; i stumbled all over it in nerves and inescapable sincerity that was too close together on the cookie sheet and came out wrong and stomach-aching. i stumbled all over in nerves. i roll back my shoulders and i say "good, how are you!" and i make lists and lists and lists to plan my heartwarming. i sit in the sun and i write on my hand how much i love the sun but my hand doesn't say anything back, that was your thing. the sun might not be real, now, even though it's warm. 

i am really very good, i think. but i don't know unless i tell you. what i tell you might be all that is real, and that might be why the verymost secret truth is all that blurs my vision now. i roll my shoulders back and i say that i am really very good. and they say, good! but the parting blow was all i could give you, so i can't tell you good, and the secret truth is the one that stays, and the digital age crawls forward, and the leather cracks, and i miss you.

The metal makeshift flowerpot sat in the middle of the sundrenched floor, and she breathed deeply.
She was hot to the touch, but nobody did, and her metal shoulders were loose, and she smiled (as a flowerpot could).
Linda came in one morning, stepped to block the window, arms full of magnetic reeds.
The metal makeshift flowerpot sighed. Oh.

For afternoons that piled, she sat in heavy dark,
Immobile from the magnet arms and blind from her favorite time of day.
Linda thought she looked so pretty, and the room was as she had imagined.

The metal makeshift flowerpot was glad to help the house’s market value, but she couldn’t hold the magnets any longer
So she held her breath instead
And Linda never knew the difference.

a man without a country is what he called himself, but this was his country, make no mistake. a man without a home, is what he meant. he overheard two girls joking a few years ago, they were saying what if we just lived in the tunnel, then we wouldn’t have to worry their voices bounced off the bricks, louder in that tunnel, where he was, where they wouldn’t have to worry but he did. he sighed into tobacco-yellow fingers. a few years ago, this was. a few years of rain and relentless seasons’ change and the kindness of strangers fewer and farther between and kids that will never be that way, that pretend they don’t hear him and they don’t see him and maybe they don’t. a few years of that’ll really take it out of you. his voice is deeper now from underuse and cold air and tobacco and being just so ******* tired. the kindness of strangers stops short of his hard palms most of the time. winter’s end just doesn’t feel like much anymore. a few years of that’ll really take it out of you.

a t-shirt loose framing my hips
i am typecast the antithesis
of your tight *** and your
grenadine lips
tight too for your own back but open
so open
for everyone else's business.

four years you've been together (he's so sweet)
you ignore his hard red hand and his tattoo--
he's all you've got
and you **** it up and smile and you drink till you're interesting
because they wouldn't like you if they knew you weren't
interesting and you'll never be more
than what you are, Small Town.

your eyes are surface-only and the brown that no one notices
except on you because you're better (you tell yourself)
you give hell to yourself
baby you could tell yourself the truth (but don't tell him)

                and you look at me like i am nothing.

but i'm buoyant, you know, the antithesis of
your solid sinking rock heart

                i look back like i am everything.

grenadine smiles only sick-sweet and those
surface eyes make sad effort to hide infernos
i'm on fire, though
and to put it bluntly
it is brighter than yours.

the t-shirt's loose around my hips,
but they are there, underneath (where are yours?)
and my lips are tight only when you're here.
you look at me like i am nothing. i am everything, and
no words will break you (more than you are already broken).

                my eyes are blue and my smile is real, and
                no words will break me either.

"i'm tired and god
**** it i just want this day to be done.
that girl in the blue sweater makes too much noise
and i'm tired, okay? i'm tired."


"she is beautiful, just beautiful, and you can tell she doesn't
know it. i'm glad she can't see me staring and god, the way
her curls fall down her back like she dropped them there by accident.
she probably did."


"the great depression was a real *****."


"'thank god she's talking to me again. does this shirt make me
look fat? would she be ****** if i distracted her?
i don't think she even likes wuthering heights, anyway."


"i miss dancing so much. i love this book but not enough
to make up for the pain that's not in my feet anymore."


"i lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering
among the heath and hare-bells;
listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet
slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

mid-march sun kisses your shoulderblade but then it rains
and your equilibrium is temporary it collapses somewhere out of frame
and the voice that has been everything says you’re doing something wrong before it dissipates
and different palms on your back say you’ll be okay but I know it hurts
and he almost understands
and they almost understand
almost.

mid-march sun used to drop in every once in a while but now
the ten day forecast says rain rain rain and now
there's no one to blame
and no one to tell.

the evening when you have-to-realize
your voice is steady soft but your eyes give you up and
he holds you closer (just because) because you let him, now
nothing-to-lose while you lose him, now
and your eyes give you up while your voice--
This Is What You Wanted.
and he touches your jawbone featherlight with strong hands
instead of talking

the last days the most beautiful, per always
and tears on call for a drop of coffee on your jeans
or nothing
or writing in your datebook with the pen that was his--
This Is What You Wanted
the room to move your elbows,
and level ground

and the scratch of his chin on your forehead for
not-quite-the-last-time
and remembering before you memorized his cheekbones
and fingertips and the song he didn’t know would make you sad
remembering when you shook hands and talked television, siblings, weather

you wake up for the new dawn and the
It Will Be Okay, but first, it won’t

in four, three, two

one

pretty face bright glowing-- colorado freckles frozen
artificial sun, perma-smile.
lake michigan eyes.

        his white teeth and rosy cheeks
        a little taller, hands on her waist


in front of a church. on his bed. on her bed. on the dock. holding half-empty green bottles.
                                                    ever balanced
                                                             never crying




except in the hallway when everyone else is sleeping.

                       i don't want to be ******* lied to, she said

and he breathed out heavy, shook his head
it wasn't a photograph night.

do you remember walter?
do you remember, walter?

boats and boats and boats dotting your ivy shoreline
he stood there like a statue like a king
remember?

do you remember, walter, how we said we'd fight the world so we'd be free?

the white balance on your entire world was turned up.
the volume on your entire world was turned up.
the contrast on your entire world was turned up.

do you remember walter?
i remember, walter.

*i bet you're fat and married and you're always home in bed by half past eight

greece, even, in the nostalgia decades sometimes wore american clothes
but she spoke no english, was starkly unilingual
save for the french "sillage". she was the reason they teach you safe ***
and abstinence: the reason they couldn't trust you
she dressed more american than everybody else; she was a beautiful cockeyed anachronism

your jimmy stewart baby blues on her, brandy-sanctioned
better than the everyman. and a hallucination of your stand-in therapist
asking you "why should there be guilt if there is pleasure?"
and you replying horselike/illogical "it is the unconscious fantasy that i can be torn apart"

insipid, her blue eyes her blue dresses. the only-ness of her. her laugh like oleander.
she was Strong and Independent and she Didn't Need Me, but she had me anyway, for a minute.
i am cross-legged on the ugly wool blanket we made love under first. the first of many but empty.
i am cross-legged and my fingers restless, invisible piano keys trilling to the wee hours. many but empty.
the skin of my index finger bitten raw, the skin of my lower lip bitten raw.
the pretension of her jabs at pretension. her manufactured offbeat passion. her cat, her moleskin notebook.
ordinary, but only. insipid but aquamarine and clear as bells. she Didn't Need Me.
the first of many. and empty.

grand(iose) gestures but constant assurance
Our Ceiling Is Low. Our Days Are Numbered,
let’s not do this anymore.
is that what we decided
let’s not do this anymore?
I’m drunk you’re drunk
Okay

grand(iose) gestures and lights out
and darkness fumbling and
I Don’t Know What I’m Doing
we’ll figure it out
and how low is our ceiling, did you say?
what number are we at now
three seven nine let’s say ten
let’s not do this anymore
just one more minute
Okay

grand(iose) gestures and breathing and
quiet and finally
and sleep-sweat and the wee hours
waning
let’s not do this anymore.
okay
Okay

a fine line is drawn daily between the by-yourself and the alone, and between every little heartbeat of together, and between not old enough and not young enough, but sometimes you land right on that line and you sing about it in a singing voice that sounds different from your talking voice and all the voices blend together across the country and it sounds like a tribute to tonight, but “tonight” has broadened in the scope of your wonderful gymnastic balance and it’s every night that you can see stretched out in front of you, it’s every time the sun goes down and sometimes you’re all the heartbeats of together and it tastes like dark coffee or light beer and instead of singing about it you shout about it, even if there’s thunder in the clouds and the sun is waiting till past tomorrow to come back, it’s there somewhere just like how the other voices are there somewhere even when you’re on the left side of the line, and right now, tonight, is the same thing as all the nights and it’s the only thing that fills your head as you fall asleep right on the line between the half-light and the morning. and it’s a fine line too, that one.

your young smile, not metallic, caught me off-guard and quickly. it belied your voice, which was apt to project across the verdure, and was so much stronger than mine. we caught the end of summer and wisps of each other’s colds, but only from across the table. minty breath in words, never louder, the crook of my arm with a scent like I think yours has. we slid downhill, momentum loosely attached to our shoulders and flying out behind us. and like a careful demonstration of the unreliable nature of time and structure, we stopped hard at the bottom. and we waited. and then when the sun set, we disappeared. or rather, you did: you and your young smile. your voice gone from the verdure and no mint in the air, my throat clear and my hands empty; never loud and never closer—caught off-guard and quickly.

one, two, three.
hours of sweater lines written on your cheek and
your undereye circles tender to touch and
water in both places and
your shallow breath, violent
saying you’re sorry, sounding like nothing.
sweater lines in the mirror and no way to make him know, and
what that does to you.
one, two, three—
what that does to you

one, two three.
remembering how you don’t like flowers, and
how you are supposed to, and
white knuckles
he asks you to explain.
if only

one, two, three.
four.
unplanned, the monster in the closet
that hasn’t brushed your open palm in years, and
you forgot.
he said don’t worry, once, it wasn’t real
it won’t ruin you
he said that

four.
backs against cold walls, this time, and
long long quiet.
one, two, three.
his undereyes, too, this time, and
your involuntary muscles, violent
unmetered, sorry,
always.
one, two, three, and

four

here and again, where ruins used to be
and you'd step with abandon in your white dress in front of me
only a mad hatter and an alcoholic fool for you, my Alice romanesque
with wonderland on every inch of you

apocalypse acropolis and columns lit from behind but you
lightfooted, Alice, were always so much prettier than tourist traps
and the drinks were stronger across the pond

so here and again, two years dry and two years older
(both of us but mostly you)
and the sand in your hair, long and light and gravity wet and romanesque
like you (and only you)
alice, they call this an impasse.
but you've been drinking too, tonight
and (finally) the stars are blurry for us both


and your mouth is so red
and romanesque
and so close

Nineteen forty four: A broad shoulder silhouette in the milkwhite skyscape.
Winged coy mortality whispers lovewords to his temple
touches fire to his inner thigh and he
pushes her aside and says Maybe tomorrow,
I'm working late tonight.

And he is cold and american but he tells himself
He is Cold! and American! And even in the
sandbag eyelid opal gray morning when his skylegs shake
he is cold and American and his copper girl's
thrilling reproach cannot warm him red
until he unzips his vest and invites her in.



but in forty nine he is twenty seven and American. in forty nine, to be American is to have no skylegs.
but baby death writes him letters while jean marie in her cap-sleeves looks pretty at his side.
and he likes jean marie, he tells himself he likes her better. she is pretty and she is sturdy.
she can make love without leaving burn marks.

but he wears slippers and housecoats and he has no skylegs.
and jean's cap-sleeves show no skin. fire hurt to touch but at least she let him.

and so twenty seven and scared, he reads baby death's neat tiny scrawl
and feels her breath on his earlobe
and winged
coy

he falls to forty four
and flying

heartbroken, housebroken
I lost your nuance, pray remind me
redness across my chest, heat and too many voices at once

heartwarmed, housewarmed
big sweaters, his sweaters on your shoulders, no makeup
the basement with gray fabric trees, and baby kisses, and baby steps.

the milk-foam and the let’s-meet-again espresso hiding untouched posited tomorrow
among banana peels and pearls and tissue

and after, cranberry stains on teacups piled in the kitchen
(a very narrow human interval between two tiger heartbeats)
and tight sweaters, grown-up make-up
that same basement, blank before morning

and the Philosophe, my favorite couched villain over us
too many voices discussing horticulture or eternity
I Do Not Recognize Eternity, is what I told you

tigers slow down for the night, sometimes
--the quickest change of heart, is what you thought

and I, again, chose the stars.

it was
in the congregation of ochre skin around his knuckle
that I knew to feel more coarse but more detail-attentive than the skin of his cheek, and it was in
the ribbing of his t-shirt, and in his ribs.
when I kissed his mouth that Saturday, we thought quietly together
“we are kissing on the mouth, we are kissing we are kissing”

tonight, when I kiss his knuckle almost imperceptibly,
I cannot hear his thoughts, and mine are “I would sooner be nowhere else”
and “happy birthday” and “I’ll need a haircut in a week or two”