in afternoons i drive through tolls and
smash chicken with a tenderizer, spoon
fed and clean. this isn’t
thailand tropics, not on a scuba dive.
writing’s old, rusty, sick, but ‘oh i
wake and reach out.’
now i live in boston, my sheets smell of
flowers, night bodies, your breath. even when
my frame folds into your side- and you push-
it’s not away, it’s ok. i can fog glasses with my
fingers. i can say hello, goodbye.
once, i combed hair off bath tile(not my own),
searched a loft for reasons to leave
there had to be something, someone
else (you). and now, i’ve stopped—
we watch puppies, magnolias, moon rising
in the park. i fall asleep to a podcast. i smile
in the dark.

On the road I give to long naps and drift
in sleep-time on asphalts of Tennessee.
You are not driving when yellow sun lifts
eyelids open for the Grand Ole Opry.
I spend an hour walking to a campsite
in Arkansas, where I ***** my finger
on a thorn-bush. Painful like our night
words in paper cuts, cradling our shivers.
When I reach Texas a cowboy hat at
the rodeo would look good on you and
now I want to call you, tell you that.
Body hot, sweaty, and I’m sick of land
when we reach Arizona. I can’t find
where you race rapids down rushing river,
carving canyons in the mud plates of my spine.
Desert sky can try, but can’t deliver.
This open road of freedom, letting go.
One day I chose to leave, then left. And so.

The cedar chips were being spread
in Oregon City when you went to Grandpa’s.
The coffee shop is open, gravel on the drive,
sheets speckled with lobsters carry you
in sleeptime while in Boston mine is feverish
without your mouth, reaching out.
I dream of abortion at a waxing studio,
diving into bowls of cereal, checking
every room--
I look in closets.

You’re not one for dreams-- you salt notebooks
with navy marks, dripping pen onto pillows,
the world a sweet heuristic I cannot know.
You make me live quiet. I stop
screaming and pulling bird feathers. I gather
tea cups, pull chest hair, carve a warm nest
from soap suds and candy.

My poetry was drawn from angst,
from drunken dream light, eggs frying
on hot pavement, a galloping horse. Now,

I want  
a pen carving
patterns of earth into our skin.
I want kisses and puppies, shrimp cocktail,
birthdays and bathrobes, a walk
in the snow.

If I were pure Aphrodite
sowing seeds in mountains,
on rivers, alongside Athena’s bath.
If only I could move underneath
Hephaestus rather than within
him. But when he hammers, I hammer,
When he cries, it rains. Maybe we
don’t belong together, not because
there are big wide spaces but
because I'm meant to comb the earth
with dew-filled seeds. I just want to wait
and watch this rose of sharon grow,
hold it in my hand and count the
petals, then count again as though
the number 5 can change and move.
I want it to be mine, no-- I want to want
it to be mine, for when love carves
into horse shoes, I only stay a season.
We plant our seeds, we watch, we leave,
She carries on. I mourn.