is gone; no shiny coin
or sacred fawn or star
to set our compass on.

We're old swords, my
lovely— dogged, not
learning from the two
hundred years that our
city's been burning; we're
just ashes to ashes and
in between, yearning.

All night delighting,
then a duel at dawn;
next time let's not
wait so long.

It's what you wanted,
right? A prime cut, cool
in the middle and hot
to the touch— toothsome
and tender, fresh from the
embers, a just-how-you-like-it bite.

That July,
I was a jar
of fireflies;
you held
me in your
hands. I
lit up your eyes.

On hungry days, I hail
the hunt, squint my
eyes and spin my guns.
Your heart runs by.
I count to one.

At least my cherry tree
will blossom soon.

I've had to struggle
for every good thing.
You came easy.

There's always one who knows
best, one who makes her best
guess, always one who just left, one
who wore her best dress; one you'll never
see again, and one you will. Amen.

I tell the girls to pick up
their clothes, to make
their beds, brush their
hair; I tell the girls to
tuck in their entitlement and
pull up their despair – there's no time.
I tell the girls to be kind, to build
up their sisters like each word is
communion and that girl is divine.

Look, I am shook from my
shallows, ten thousand leagues
deep – my heartbeats were war-
ships; you drowned the whole
fleet, but I'll hold on to hope like
sand holds on to heat that for all of
my troubles, you could love me, at least.

Too late when you realized
we were dancing in quicksand –
too late and too deep, and you caught
unaware; you didn't know that my love was an
ambush. You didn't know that my heart was a snare.

We brought breakfast.
You fed us; we let you.
We sighed and we said that
we'd never forget you; we get you.
And then we licked our
spoons and we left you.

and invited the moon into the
room – a stranger, she stole
through the night to our chambers,
a bevy of damsels to carry her candles.
She lit up our eyes; she lit up our skin
like our skin was the sky.

We came with wet
eyes, with teeth bright
as planets; we came like
weather, like daylight, hair
damp and skin flushed.

We came like sunup.

We woke the birds up.

if you asked,
I'd slide your shirt
down your shoulders;
I'd hold you. I'd heal you.
Christie, I feel you. I know you –
your nature, the real you. I'd kneel
here. I'd shield you. Christie, I need you.

the world aches to de-
light me, shakes her
wild hair and flirts; she
also lies and beguiles
and sometimes she hurts.

the world aches to de-
light me – it shakes its
wild hair and struts; it
also lies and philanders
and sometimes it cuts.

They think my nerves are cold
steel; they call me unnn-real, like
I'm a big deal; they think I'm all
fight, that I've gained deeper in-
sight. Like I'm alright. Like I don't
cry. And all I did was not die.

I like when you
invent fire, when
you discover the sun,
when you say hush woman
hush, believe this – we are one.

Next time I wake from sleep
for keeps – from deepest, darkest
slumber – I may come back a little
bird to visit in the summer; my
quetzal pomp, green feathered
grace, singing through my hunger –
when I am gone, I may come back
your pretty bird, a wonder.

Not my stop, but
still the thought of
leaving makes my
heart feel hot – to cross
beneath the buzzing light,
softly into this crisp night.

Red-cheeked,
hair freed,
closed blinds –
supine and un-
done, heart like
a warm gun.

I love how we
sound together –
your crackle of
laughter up the chimes
of my spine, and the
hush hush hush of
my satisfied mind.

now every second is
like the embers of
beggars: tended.

I won't leave much
more than a happy
ghost when I am gone –

some poems, a peace-
ful soul at rest, some
tired, tranquil bones,

quite content to dis-
appear, no tomb
or mossy stone.

My days were sweet,
and bright; I hope
I honored every one.

It was a sturdy ship that I
went down in, and it felt like
rebirth when I drowned and
emerged from the tumbling
surf to wring out my hair and
tie a knot in my skirt. (I learned
to breathe by nearly drowning.)

On thirsty days
I curse the sun,
kick up dirt and
beat my drums
and call the rain

(it always comes.)

The sheets yet to cool and the sun yet
to rise, I've already practiced an easy
goodbye– but seeing you wreathed in
sheets, sleepy, pleased, feels unkind when
you're just a dream I have sometimes.

All the poems I wrote for you
were fond hyperbole; your hands
were not the saving kind and you
tasted nothing like the sea.

We still think
we're ripe figs, saplings
green and sweet 'neath supple
bark, hearts still sticky,
fruit still ****.

I called to you 
softly when I 
was young; my
voice bounced off 
the bricks of a 
suburban slum,
sauntered down 
side streets and 
stirred piles of 
leaves, then snagged 
in the branches till 
the wind tore it free 

to collapse at your 
window like a 
weary songbird
that had been 
singing for decades 
and finally, you heard.

You asked about it later,
in the best way you knew how
as I was tracing dreamy cursive
on your neck; I sighed across
your skin just like a cool front
blowing in and said –  It
doesn't even matter. I forget.

At night we were a fresco 
painted by an astronaut, our 
messy bed the chapel of a
voyeuristic God, where glory 
worked with hurried hands
in frenzied fellowship and
hallelujah was a sigh that
quivered on my lips, then we
nodded off like angels of our
own apocalypse; it was made-up
love, when we woke up,
the dreamed up stuff of kids.

You were hard
like sun-warmed
stone, your
eyelashes were
feathers – these
are things I can't
forget; I'll write
you poems forever.

temporarily unavailable

I have written you one
hundred and eighty
one poems about stars
and blackberries fat
as thumbs, and your
hands and sweet
plums, because that's
what I do:
word play, cabaret –
but if these are just myths
I perpetuate because I'm
a perpetual liar, believe me
                                            anyway.

My mother washed potatoes
one by one while my father
went carousing with his
favorite gun; I dragged sticks
through dusty gravel while
I watched it all unravel,
wondering what to make of
such an ugly thing as love.

Your absence has drawn
fractions on my belly. It's
bisected the axis of my
heart; it has split me apart.
I am charts and statistics.
I'm percents. You were sharp.
So was I; when I left, I cut
those halves into fourths.
I left one in your bed, now
I'm three quarters saved
and one quarter spent.

woke every morning and
dressed in the sun, then
dreamt in the breezeway
where the day's laundry
hung. She listened for
him in the summery hum;
sometimes she was honey,
sometimes she was stung.

Unassuming, at best– no
tempting minx, I confess,
but this I would bet (speaking
humbly): give me paper and
ink, half an hour to think– I might
just convince you to love me.

I remember you like accidental
photographs: sun flare, skin,
the tops of trees. Knees. Your shirt-
sleeves in a dove grey breeze. (I arrange
the photos like a slow striptease.)

This is what he promised me:
August, and berries that fell
right into my hands; he
promised me handstands. He
promised me bees, he said
the nights would smell sweet
and wet flower petals would
stick to my toes. He said I'd
just know. He promised me
sparrows, and switchgrass that
crept past the hem of my skirt.
He promised me clean dirt, and
hard work. He promised an
August that I'd always remember,
then stayed 'til November.

A last incinerating kiss, then
the exponential loss of  bliss–
take my heart and divide by
you; leave me with poems and
warm anecdotes that I'll store
away like Marie Curie's notes:
still hot, still toxic, still true.

I didn't know your name back then.
I practiced love with other men.
I burned my lips on words like yes.
I didn't know your name back then.

I practiced love with other men—
a reckless, shipwrecked malcontent;
a willing, waiting queen undressed,

I burned my lips on words like yes.
I warmly, weakly acquiesced
and woke to wonder if I'd dreamt.

I didn't know your name back then.
I studied sin with other men
and broke my heart on words like when.

I can't write about miles of sown fields
or the absence of rain
or silver minnows in a cold creek

without also imagining
how the sky would look from underneath you.

I can't write about sugaring season
or my grandmother's barn on a foggy morning
or the thrum of an August day

without also imagining
kissing each one of your berry-stained fingers.

For the same reasons that I stay hungry
for dinner and tired for bed, I keep my
heart a little lonely for poetry; that way,
I can imagine your weathered hands against
my pale thighs as clinging starfish – my
fingernails, bleached cockleshells washed up
on the barely evening beach of your back.

No Garden, but this stand of
pines, and no serpents just this
side of night, but a sleepy,
startled porcupine; I'll offer you
some apple wine. You'll kiss
me in the fading light; I'll love
you without shame this time.

If time is a convincing illusion, then as I am writing this,
you are reading it; you are remembering me years after
we have spoken last, and I am noticing you for the first time.

I'm a young woman waking up in an apartment in Albany,
New York, realizing that I am finally broken enough to fix,
and an East Boston moppet in ***** pink overalls, riding
Big Wheels through the sprinklers with a boy named John Henry.

You're delivering newspapers on a cold New Hampshire morning.
I am falling asleep wondering if you could possibly love me.
You are saying that you do. You are stardust, and I am long gone.