You tip my femininity when you scratch my back with your stubble before you shave in the mornings and it is so lovely to be near one who can cry.

You wear heavy boots with the tip of the steel toe showing to match the glint of mischief bouncing off your eyeglass frames and i stand on your toes to kiss you goodnight on my porch in the snow where you brought me oatmeal cookies to talk with you about foundations.

I don’t know if you needed help with that paper, but I certainly needed the cookies.

long fingers crooked with the holding

of the words of dead men and motorcycle handles

called me brave instead of pretty

and my whole heart took

courage by the throat and kissed it madly.

Full sta(r)ring
I sit as the window
was a pleading enormous nobody
he declared my head
practically lost.

2.
flustered you’ll doubt that
he glanced
sleep can’t.

3.
Crooked conversation listeners
clenched authority grimy
beside the sight attempt

4.
that chanced amusement
obliged its stiff attempt
by askance explanation
he and the slipped tongue
therefore sitting
on the heels of friday

5.
overhead the engine slipped suddenly when
she whispers explanation
grand

6.
growling hurried difficulty
shouldn’t reason but
the creature bitterly
declared in smaller steps
"you’ll doubt when i"

7.
I blinked and riddle
the shifting moral of executed
fright the cunning
underpromised
dependent muddle
congressional huddle

8.
not the sadistic wet world
glaring or the the the
defended
answers soaped the the the
dyed course
hello doesn’t the the the
let my coming

9.
adding highest denial
we tear the despair
rolling secret sea so far
winter guard softly introduced
my remembered underneath

10.
his daughter
a canary warily dared
to pretend to drink in
bound education of judging

11.
the height dating
and pushy she interrupting
like the party
for wonderful
      couple of sharks

12.
elbow listening did dishes
she declared panicky
we will go by asking
uh um
curled hair blank slate
forming saucepan all sobbing

Artichokes will always make me think

of you drunk in Vermont on your 22nd birthday.

Giggling and tired from the rocks of the mountains

you spilled both our drinks and wrung your hands

in complete defiance of giving a ****.

black coffee is curly soft hair on my cheeks
wool in my lungs is the Negev Desert
and thursdays smell like mint

i walked out of my house

half past midnight

in a short skirt and torn tights but

i was not headed for disaster.

i was on my way to sit in a circle

and dance in a triangle

and sleep

on a square.

Your voice is like flowers
Your voice is like Thursdays
Your voice is all the best kinds of ice cream
Oh please stay

Tell me more about that story
Tell me more about that day
Tell me how you thought you’d run
And how you ever convinced yourself to stay

You make my heart flip flop
when you open the door
when it’s cold and I’m waiting
outside on your porch
and you say always “hey”

When you first thought
that this might hurt
you went indoors
washed your hands of the dirt
just like we planned