when the milk light steals into my eyes—hey it’s grownups’ goodmorning
—I let your elbow go and then I pull it back again, soft metonymy (i
sometimes remember
when you’re awake, and abashed I keep it quiet
how you’re my favorite part
—of what?—not applicable, but this morning I remember
when your eyes are closed, and I let you feel how much I
feel you in my ribs when you’re all around me)

the punctuation of the days was always mine and I
couldn’t breathe as well without keeping the dark
for me just me
and still my eyelids weigh me down a little but
I don’t mind
hey goodmorning

it was the hooded-sweatshirt, sit-close-and-pretend-you’re-cold, bleacher-seat,
whiskey-and-coke homecoming that you never had when the leaves changed.
but the leaves changed anyway.

the damp grass smelling vaguely like your fireplace as the world got quieter,
your nose in your precalc and your foot tapping and how-many-years-left
of solo fridays, you counted the suburban stars but didn’t tell anybody
how ******* beautiful they were above your head, because they were yours.

when you wore your high school colors, you were cold for real. no pretense
in your shivering, no flutter in your abdomen because he wasn’t gonna talk to you,
and you didn’t really care, you shrugged. but the leaves changed anyway.

and you changed, slowly. grew taller and smarter and prettier and then the
remaining solo fridays shrank to none, and you left. big sweet snowdrifts turned to spring
and you shared whiskey-and-coke with the city, your stars dimmer but abdomen
finally fuller, and limbs warmer and no sweatshirt because you didn’t need one,
and hands all over to hold and feeling all three kinds of love at once.

and then the accidental homecoming, and the changing of the leaves
and the hooded-sweatshirt shivers and knowing you’re so much bigger now than the
suburban stars and the backward glances of the bleacher-seat kids, but the damp
grass still smells like your fireplace and suddenly you’re small again, just for a
second but god that second, you shiver and turn around again. you’re so much
bigger than this but homecoming, this whiskey-and-coke homecoming still isn't yours.

Growing up in Poughkeepsie, the
barbells of unfaith always shook her
wrists when she lifted "I
will be gone from here soon enough"
over her shoulders. "I will love
like crazy."

Grown-up in the city, she
swallows hard in the marble mirror
and thinks "Maybe today
will be the day," but
it never is, and she ignores
the petulant inside voice saying
"Unfaith is unfaith but
so is dead-eyed
companionship, so unclench
your fists"--she hasn't yet.

she was more than just the stuff of storybooks, she was one. hair long and light and breast-grazing, star-gazing wisteria-eyed girl. a mystery on spindly legs. a fawn I looked at once and never looked away from. her lemon-meringue demeanor, breathy bubble-bath speaking voice and short white dresses, sandy bare feet and a crinkled, secret smile were all I saw and I saw them as many times as she would let me, new eyes for her driftwood shell every day. she wasn’t from where I was, nor was she going where I went, but when I said hello, she flashed her sunstorm smile at me and buckled my knees. I loved her before we even met, and I knew she would never do the same because she didn’t need to; she didn’t need me and she didn’t need anything, she was freewheeling, she was everybody’s sunrise, she had that smile.

but I wrote the book on living impossible dreams and she told me her name one day, as the horizon painted her gold and stood her still in front of me. she told me where she came from, and where she was going, the gift of gifts: unwrapping her storybook from linen scarves on the sand that evening. this big and beautiful myth shrank to size: she was real. she was flawed. she had grown from sadness, she was scarred, and for that she was more beautiful still. she didn’t need me and she didn’t need anything and, what’s more, she wouldn’t have it. her doors were closed because she wouldn’t need anything, she couldn’t need anything, she was scared of needing anything like she wasn’t scared of anything else, and for that she was more beautiful still.

but I wrote the book on living impossible dreams. as I came around more often, she fell for me right back—my far-off wisteria sunstorm was quiet against my shoulder, breathing in sync with me and drifting off wrapped up in me, driftwood-intricate and real as no storybook before her next to me. she needed me, now, so new to her and laying her bare, stripping away the mystery on her gazelle legs and casting a fearful desperation on her long light hair. instead of needing nothing, she needed me more than I was there, just like she was afraid of. she couldn’t get enough. wrapped up in me so tangled she couldn’t see the horizon anymore. she fortified her quirks so they could stand alone, they grew overbright, she became them, they became all she was. a pretty driftwood shell, a mystery covering nothing but the hole her heart hides in, scared into paralysis by its own fevered motion.

what do I do with this new shell? this new shell that looks exactly like the first one but isn’t—her eyes are still wisteria and her laugh still air-light to the untrained ear, but my hands are too strong to touch her without cracking it. what do I do with this storybook I wrote myself into without permission, this fawn that refused captivity but now can’t remember she was ever free? what do I do with my hands? do I make them weak so I can hold her or do I leave her to herself? what’s the end of the story?

I wrote the book on living impossible dreams and sunstorms aren’t real. she smiles but now it’s only hollow. I can’t look at this beauty I destroyed. I walk away because I have nowhere else to go and I can’t watch her shrink. she was never mine. now she’s nearly nothing.

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.

I can play an E-minor chord, I tell him.
I can play the cello, he tells me. He smiles with half his mouth
and I kiss him again.

It’s getting late and I’m measuring
the time by the five minute steel guitar and the five minute steel guitar
and we both know where I’d rather be but here—
here is okay too.
His hands are different, but they will do.

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"

we laugh twice--

first loudly; of course
they can't hurt us

quiet, freeze-dried smiles
nervously after
what if they hurt us

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

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.

9:43 on a frigid clear morning, the morning I made the conscious decision to stand as far as possible from the dropoff to the train tracks, and an older gentleman next to me, newspaper folded, saying "It's a cold one today, isn't it". And I smiled in agreement and I drank my overpriced coffee, fogging up the sky.

10:13 on the train, unwashed windows turning the sun *****-bright, and I didn't drift off for it as all the men in suits and flatlined mouths slowly did.

And 11:36 in the City, a man I had decided not to love and his sarcastic appreciation of modern art, and me laughing endlessly. And this man showing me his secret hideouts and telling me secret stories, stories that you earn. I had decided not to love him, though, and so I didn't. It was easy because he had made no such call.

And 5:52 in his marble high-rise and his bed that was bigger than my bed, on it, he told me he had decided not to love me too. And then we kissed, and kissed, with nothing-to-lose moving our hands and mouths all over each other. Nothing-to-lose tangling his sheets and relaxing our heartbeats, and making them audible.

8:04 on the night of the morning I began to fear the third rail and the whoosh of the New Haven line, a bruise on my neck and my kiss-swollen mouth flashed red and *****-bright to the post-commuters, and the man I forgot not to love still in the city, and the feeling of peaceful but irreversible damage heavy on my lap.

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

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 older than you called me by my freckles when we met, barely
stretched over the cattails lazily in sweet winds imperceptible usually through
the hot water air
at a parboil

your cigarette-and-sunscreen, cigarette-and-sunshine smell and feel I have you
now as I walk eyes closed down the autumn street
no all smokes do not smell the same, I miss you—

the world in your departure is static for the most
ironic twist of you thought, you thought that I was beautiful
I wasn’t, not while you were watching, not till you
were farther
till I was older, barely

oh if all smokes were you still
if all the suns were you
if I weren’t beautiful and you were looking
oh

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

farmland, not death, is the great equalizer. death separates the famous from the infamous, the young from the old, the lucky from the alone. farmland, stretching to the horizon, makes pennsylvania into connecticut into ireland into kansas. you can't tell monet's haystacks from mine.

I hear your voice echo on the walls of the Tiffany box—

hello hello
hello

hello

—with that southern-belle cadence
you spoke with always, like when you
told us we never had to knock, just
come in through the garage

on my graduation day I opened it for the first time
little silver teardrop on a little silver chain
delicate, like all of you, except your fingers
delicate, like the line you’re walking now

your robin’s-egg antique pickup gathering dust as I am miles away
sheepdog going deaf, legs shaky when she stands

I only allotted for that one loss this year.

on new year’s morning when we all
stomached the black eyed peas for tennessee good will
hung over and sweet-heavy with cinnamon rolls
and decadent, permanent, big hardy love
I spent my wish on the usual

and hey, maybe a couple more years for the dog.

hello hello

hello

hello

hello?


your lilting voice echoes every time I put on that necklace
and feel you, savor you around my neck for every
wine-drunk dinner and every nantucket porch photograph—


god if I would have known to wish on that

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

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.

as i skate my fingers over your
pale abdomen
deliberately, so as not to break you
i feel the quiet and the still that has
settled over us, like the makeshift
bedsheet picnic blanket in spring

we move slowly, as if we were a
flashback or a dream
and i think that our bodies
were made for this--
just this

for this languor and
the unending of it

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.

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

In my geographic corner, where it rains most often,
when it does not, I remember you
on the face of the rocks, lightfooted on the oracles
amongst the bobcats and the butterflies
and the sunshowers like curtains from real.
Years ago, but minutes; miles, no—
I cannot deny the miles.

I open my window on this spring morning and I
taste Delphi in the air, and you,
you everywhere.

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.

two bridges only went down in the fire
my architectural catalogue was largely unscathed--the
ones with the most foot traffic these days
standing tall still
but two went down.

first my most recent design.
in the city I just left it stood alone and imposing and
gray
weather beaten in so few months
and weak--not my best work, though
I gave it everything when it was commissioned.
I thought it might crumble some day.

one other was lost--the first tall one that I'd built
and the first unexpectedly beautiful
ornate thing I was ever proud of.
I hadn't been back in years when I got the call. no one-last-photo of
its sunset or one-last-drive across its bumpy surface.
just a clearer view to the skyline
--takes longer to reach now, the traffic on 95 is a real *****.

years since I'd been back
but I wasn't quite finished, not
forever

sea’s quiet tonight, iris and vagabond gray
salt coarse in our hair we can see it in the
last pink light

count the bubbles in the wake
sprouting from thin air and
imaginary whale songs

they won’t find us in the stern let me
look at your hipbones—I won’t touch
not yet it’s too quiet tonight

there’s orion, and there’s cassiopeia
stars swimming white fish in our
***-eyes

gulls’ heads tucked under wings
in the corners—goodnight goodnight
little gulls, dreaming you’re doves

even sirens sleep this moon
soft voices slumberous
smoky, hey—let me look at you again

under the velvet dark, sea in sterling drops
on our lashes, let’s take a break from steering
let waves and mermaids take the wheel

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'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.

coffee appendicitis and baby tragedies
a toxic fixation and his nineteen fifties apathy
his clothes hung loosely over you.

you are sleeping on his bedsheets but your own bed
they smell like him but feel like you (**** them)


and you can listen to him smile through the door


but you cannot open it.

the long thin fingers of a girl of twenty-four
wrapped tight around the handrail of the L-train
bright-blue-eyed but for the temple bruise

                   he loves me
                   and the mess I made

everything tattooed (everything everything)
invisible on her cheeks and in the hollow of her shoulderblade
her lower lip and wristbone
but for the temple bruise
darker by two shades

          a four-in-the-morning-night cottoning her tongue
          not-the-first of many and her long thin fingers
          white-knuckled

          little joys to light on the handrail
          not his warm-hot-ice-hard chest
          or his loud voice (woulda been real handsome
          if his eyes weren't so cold)

but for the temple bruise

                                                         ­   i
                                                           ­ fell
                                                            in
 ­                                                           love so many times that day
                                                            t­he first sunday of its kind--not drenched
                                                        ­    in imperceptible airdrops

                                                       ­     the red-brown beard of the business suit
                                                            ­and the freckles undermining the punk-rock
                                                       ­     vibe of the dark-eyed fox-girl

                                                       ­     but the thin white knuckles
                                                        ­    and the temple bruise

                                                         ­   --none more than her

you rise before the morning does, watch the black
sky go gray through the shower curtain
lacy shadows cast on summer-night skin
not ready to awaken, blue eyes half-mast to
squint away the fluorescent intrusion as your
mother butters toast for you that you leave behind,
your stomach sleeping too.

yawning, you thank god that the possums are
exercising better judgment as you hold
the wheel at eight and four, shake your knees
at every stoplight, sing billy joel top-volume
to stay alert while the clouds go pink and gold.

you join the real-world almost right away,
asleep before you hit the tracks at westport
tickets tickets tickets grabs your ear, but only just.

your coffee cools in its thermos, forgotten in the
new haven line haze, your nerves all perked up
fighting with the fog between your ears. your nerves
all perked up. your nerves all perked up. you try to
kick the fog to no avail. you all but sleepwalk
down the platform, you barely watch the gap.

hey, wouldn’t it be crazy if he came your dream-voice
whispers to your conscious yes it would be crazy your
conscious chuckles at the thought.

you trip on the overweight businessman’s pennyloafer
and you think how much you need to *** and you toss
your cold bagel in the all aboard trash can and you
think about how crazy you would be to hope to see him
and you hope your backpack isn’t slowing traffic too
much and your nerves all perked up your nerves all
perked up and you shake away the fog one last time and
you get to the end of the long hot platform and you—

hey wouldn’t it be crazy if but yes he’s
there and yes you
don’t know
what to
say but
yes your
eyes wide yes
mouth open
yes you don’t
know what
to say but

*hi,
I love you,
yes

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

he caught her eye across the diner. put a quarter in the jukebox.
told her to choose a song, on him. she giggled and chose
the rolling stones. he said "take a walk with me"
they walked through the woods where the highway had been
before the flood in 1994.

talking like new yorkers talk but softer he took her
hand and he said "let's skip rocks let's get hot"
and soon she couldn't separate the smell of damp grass and sundown
from the smell of ***.

he said "let's play car-and-driver" and she told him that the
dented white sedan belonged to a waitress,
the rusty pickup to a cook, the black lexus to a businessman.
he said "you're good at this" and she blushed.

he kissed her very violently on the drive away. the sky was orange
and it drizzled.

Let’s go back to 1.
To start again, to meet you, to seventeen, to yellow
and hugs, to hammers and strings.
Nobody knew me then, and I ****** up
told them the true story.
Let’s go back, and I’ll tell you a different one.
It started out a prepschool fantasy. I had a
Great Perhaps, and you
(were there, probably)
And then I ****** up, my friend.
I’d like to revert to 1: a second round
I’m ready, now.
Hello, nice to meet you
Would you like to have a drink with me?
I will say yes. I will be thin again for you
And when you touch my arm
I will not shrink
from you.
Let us. Let me, at least
Revert to 1
and promise
(I do—to do better now).

On money-soaked leather, we’ll make angels
no I’m sorry—we’ll make amends
I will talk breathy and flutter my eyelashes; I will be Daisy Buchanan
a rosewater anachronism that needs no cigarettes and no pretense, only
Attention
(I stood at, when you said goodbye)
There will be no end. There was no end. Not a goodbye.
On rust-red rooftops we will soliloquize
(about what?) (it doesn’t matter)
We will throw lit matches and watch how fire makes its mark
And we will separately wonder where it goes
and—are you listening?—we will watch the sunrise
and I will tell my daughter about that day when she is older.
A prepschool fantasy. We will drink to the word “contraband”
and it will be 1966—the rich kids’ 1966, the whitewashed one we pretend we are ashamed of.
I will be Daisy Buchanan, and thin again for you.
Let’s go back to 1. I would love to
try again, and better now.

the gold lion cub flanked by his father,
soft chest for shelter and memory, like I thought
you might remember me

what is there, though
what ever was
I clench my heartstrings without trying when you pass
raise my voice so you can hear all the fun
I’m having without you because I miss you
I miss you I miss you but that’s just it

why

this cerebral museum I’ve kept of you, you
so brilliantly and always tear it up
remind me why I shrugged away your
irish spring forearm every time

why do fools fall in love and why does
non-love stick so stubbornly to the teeth
why are you still here
why were you ever
a forearm pushed away is all you were even
on the best days but

like you know my clenched heart aches to remember
you as you should have been
always the bull in the china shop,
always the beggar for a sad farewell,
you shred me

and then I mend, and forget
again, and again
just like I did when you were here
why are you still here

if I could just stay torn and the
rose-gold camera lens could take itself for what it is
allow a bit of real into my memory of you
your freckles
your venom and too-tight grip

I could grow a mane and lose the shadow of the lion's chest
rest my head on something better
feel the sweet African sun before extinction comes

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 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.

"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,
"*******."

hello, sweetheart in the lightbluejeans, what’re you thinking of
whatever happened to gumdrops and thankyou notes and long skirts that say
‘I am a forward thinking woman’

how your eyebrows in self-photograph are the spitting image of your grandma’s
and how she never had a funeral and neither
did
you,
but you’re
****-sure not living anymore, not since the world-bruise and the ankle-bruise
and your protruding soul-bruise (your soul is in your hip bones; it bangs on the doorframe
when you walk into the kitchen every time)

you don’t remember the year but there was one
when you knew it all would be beautiful
for you
how could it not

back up to that long-gone January. that evening in your best friend’s car
when you choked on the phone that it physically hurt to listen to the sharp voices
no matter what, but especially when you knew what you knew and you *******
knew what you knew and you couldn’t
forget
not that January

not that May, when you told him you’d decided to be better
not that December, when you told somebody else
not ever—you were better but you wouldn’t forget
not ever

you set your course on what you didn’t know—what you didn’t know
would never, never hurt you, and

your best friend said go. he said do what you love he said
no one loved like you and you had
a smile and a way with words and the world deserved you and your
big, big love
you were full of love
you were love

and then he left—your big love wasn’t the kind he needed and you survived,
but a little less wholeheartedly because you were missing a little bit of it
and you saw that sharing the whole thing was
what everyone said it was
after all

you were a little smaller the next time when
somebody else told you what you were—beautiful and big and
worthwhile—so many times that you said what the hell and you
kissed him
and he took that kiss and turned it into red
red
red wine
and you had no heart to tell him you preferred white; he had you already
you had him already
and no one would go un-
bloodied

and what do you love? your best friend that day
assumed you had an answer—so did you
but what the hell was it,
you ask through the *****-fog
what do you love?
do you?

and now
what’re you thinking of, honey
how the next one and the next and the sunglasses future
is cracking summer ice, not stone, and you’ll
kiss but not say
iloveyou
it will be misty and gray for you
you’ll plan on only what you know in sweatshirts and quilts
and you’ll shut the shades

and even this January
not forget

not since the world-bruise
and your own

All right, dear—
open your steno book and
transcribe every other word:

I, I
                 missed, missed
                                                   you, you.

When I ripped the first bag of chamomile,
distracted tearing packaging,
and on the second water’s boil
and on the bittersweet lemon peel I
threw in on a whim,

and when I cleaned the dishes, not well enough,
your earlobes lodged in my mental faculties,
and when I emptied the soap so you
wouldn’t notice.

I made dinner—don’t write down that I
burned all but the potatoes, dear.

I want you everywhere; transcribe that.

There’s a vase in the cupboard but
let’s keep the flowers on the bed.

I remember my teenaged phantasm and I lace soft boots to draw
tall grass and sand dunes and hothotsummer,
a pair of teenaged lips on my teenaged lips in sundown,
the little wreckage of the family behind walls invisible from distance,
and the perfect quiet of strong teenaged hands, the I-never-want-to-leave only
in that we know so certainly we will
come fall—
the beauty in the shooting of the star
and not the star.

I tilt the rearview, sweater on, and leave to you.
I picture the soft reeds and pebble beach with-you-near-you and I think
how I could take you there and live a baby flame fantasy with a flair
for the dramatics and more fallapart than meets the eye or the mind’s eye, even.

I could kiss you behind clapboards
like goodbye is on the weekend
and cry to Cassiopeia that why-does-good-always-*******-go-away.

But it doesn’t always, not just yet, and so I leave my young Hollywood vision
to my young Hollywood visionary and I take your hand to pass
the quiet sad beach at miles on miles an hour, because I want
you for longer than the starry summer
and Dad’s averted eyes.

midnight taffeta calves, your mom’s rose-gold
diamond pendant resting between *******
too-long hair tamed, fastened at your nape

this peculiar impasse between pretending you’re
prom-young and you’re midtown-gala-elegant-old
you’re a little both, at twenty-one, and a little
drunk—fourteen-dollar champagne, picklebacks
and the desperate paradoxical preservation of this memory

you can hold your cloud-head up beautiful still
so you hitch your dress
runrunrun behind the Rhodes
crouch down in the thorns with every-elegant-one you love
twenty-one, desperate, ebullient, ****

and ****.

stand up straight again, glowing, sage
check your coat and dance
nobody’s the wiser

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.

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

on Orion's belt, she spends her wish
though he hangs there, unfalling, why wait,
she wonders, why wish on empty air
(she forgets, though, that even Orion,
brightest warrior, isn't really there)

and she dreams in most conventional
metaphors, and she scolds herself: her
unconscious architect
would not be commissioned for the
Golden Gate Bridge, or anything, if you
know
what I mean

when she closes her eyes (awake)
she sees the colors like his synesthesia
though he kept his finger paintings locked away
and his fingers without prints
never there (he's never there)

and good mornings come in pairs
and nights look unempty (don't tell
her what they are)
why wait, she wonders

god forbid you wait

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

sumatra drips like crocodile tears in
the four-cup *** just half-emptied by nine
big and bought on faith in un-lone-li-ness
drainpipes eroding from her miscalculation

swallowed black and quickly
her white teeth uncompromised so far
her step-by-step morning still clockwork

but when she was eighteen she watched the
cream like squid ink clouds turn it
the color of his summer skin
drinking up the baby hangovers to the
last drop

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

“Be careful walking home,” stout Patricia
told us through a mouthful of affogato.
“The wild boar aren’t out much this time of year but
watch for the porcospini,” she snickered
wickedly,
“the porcupines’ll smell the grappa on your lips.”

my head spun in the moonrise,
the Dutch husband having poured glass
after glass after glass after
at first we were consp—hic
conspiring to cover the taste of the mushroom soup
hic—
don’t stand up just yet

eighteen year old legs for ages and a sweet
American peregrina sundress stupor
dizzy for the first time and feeling the
Tuscan drought on my lingua and in my mani

when I tell the story I remember there being
two dogs asleep under the table
but when they tell the story they
insist there was
only one

*e noi non siamo di qui

in the hot hot hotbox where the
interlude first dug in its feathered heels
(the *******), now, it being
gone with the wind, the wellsprings
reflexively engage because the wind
is hot and here I'm not unused to you yet
and I sure don't miss you but here
I nearly want to