Please, when you come, bring me news of the world –
not foreign wars or epic storms or the Queen's upcoming
Jubilee, but things that only you can tell – like this morning
smelled like mulch and mud; the slate was wet, and you thought of me.

Be reckless with your words to me;
incite, provoke, use words as lips
and teeth and hands and silk restraints.
Press them deep into my skin –
leave marks, leave late, and come again.

A gentle tempest stormed my lawn; it stood
me still and then was gone. Anchored,
awestruck in my place by beauty and euphoric
grace, I thought of Spinoza's God, infinity's
precise design, the perfect math of Everything –
our love, a quotient of Divine.

Between us, tangled wilds, and through that, a deep ravine – each standing on a
mossy bank with river in between; I say “It's early morning and
the world is wet and green – I'd like nothing any better than
for you to bathe with me. I'll meet you in the middle, like I've met
you in my dreams, and either you'll get ***** or I'll finally come clean.”

I only wanted to learn love; the unknown was unbearable.
Like a child plucking flimsy wings
from pretty little dying things,
I'm innocent, and terrible.

In the minutes before sleep last night,
through stellar static, astral snow,
a poem, half dreamt, was born
and died; I drifted off and let it go.

Just one line survived the night;
that line will have to be enough.
I wrote it down before it faded:
sometimes we were good at love.

My precious sweet potato pie, my darling little damselfly,
your life is still a lullaby, and I love you more than life so I
kiss chubby fingers pinched in play, make root beer floats,
chase bees away, but even I might break your heart someday.

Perhaps not love – at least akin,
this shatterbelt of sheets and limbs.
Our hearts break for the smallest things,

but if we're just two burning bees
in a forest full of cardboard trees,
I wish for drought, dry leaves, a breeze.

To your can't, I say won't,
and that's fine, love. That's fine.
To your try, I say don't,
and that's fine, love. That's fine.
To each failed attempt,
I say wasted ambition.
To your look of confusion,
I say you wouldn't listen.
To your heartfelt regret,
I say no need, it's fine.
I felt loved for a while
and that's mine, love. That's mine.

I think of August:
strawberry sundae cups
and squash blossoms.

You were in your forties then, lived upstairs with your
old man, gave the neighborhood someone to feel better
than. I was maybe nine or ten, and Franny, oh! I could
have cried when he blacked your pretty gypsy eye and
Franny, oh! my restored hope when I saw Joe, his lip laid
open; Franny, you could throw a punch. So here's to right
hooks, Franny. Here's to gin before lunch. Here's to street
smarts and cunning hearts. I didn't end up like you. I got
out of the neighborhood. I'm my own woman; that's our
slogan, but you know, Franny, sometimes even that 
makes me feel like I'm swinging my fists in a third floor flat.

Translations frequently differ;
sometimes it means
you feel good tonight.

tactic: write very
small so you have
to lean closer.

Felt good to be warm. Felt good to find
somewhere quiet. Felt good to be ankle
deep in the river, to be knee deep in the
river. Felt good to get your hair wet. Felt
good to let the mud on your legs dry in the
sun. Felt good to dig your hands through to
cool earth. Felt good to close your eyes. Felt
good when he touched you just as a breeze
went hushhh through the trees. Smelled like
rain, and God, that felt good. It felt good.

I have this hot pink heart with lace taped to the edges,
and these deep, deep truths that I suspect might be lies;
I have this system for secrets and, though softly imperfect,
I do have a pair of magnificent thighs.
I have this floodplain soul that's a place for the thirsty
and *****, but sometimes it's still not enough.
I cradle my faults like things that need saving, and
sometimes I burn with shame just like with love.
I have this leaf in my hair that I picked up while walking;
it was pretty, that early, still covered in frost.
It's not much, what I have, but it's more than I came with.
I'm counting my blessings since you counted your loss.

Until now, my best work yet: a boat, a love, the Leonids.
Quite beautiful as heartbreaks go, a near miss on a midnight
lake, with wishes dropping left and right. I laughed at that,
said take me back, and until then, I thought I meant
to shore. Nice story; camera fixed on Indian Point, boat exits
left 'neath fireworks, sponsored by the Galaxy, brought to you
by Tunnelvision. Cue piano, pretentious fin, but then
you – a star: hotter than those meteors, colder than those
miles of lake. I wrote you in, rough draft, known as
the man who loved this woman best, but take your bow;
you've been recast: the man who loved this woman last.

Forgiveness as a chosen way's
like bringing home a cagey stray;
it may bite, despite good will,
but tend your wounds, and feed it still.

When I was eight, I threw a rock at my cat.
I wanted something to love me, and he
didn't. Unfamiliar with rage and unskilled
at throwing rocks, I missed and hit the fence.
I was and am ashamed of this.
I wasn't that kind of kid.

Once, a boy sent me photos from Scotland,
daybreak over  the snowy moors where he
hunted grouse with his father. He was skinny,
and sweet. I stopped writing him because I
had a thousand words for love, and he
couldn't spell any of them.

And once, I took your love for granted. It was vanity;
I felt like the lost works of a prolific master.
I wanted someone to delight in discovering me,
to wonder where I had been. It was easy to
blame you; all those years and you didn't
know what you had.

If you believe in all possible universes,
I aimed for the fence and hit the cat.
I married a sweet, skinny boy who will never
love a poem. I never had anything to prove
and I don't need you to forgive me.

When I was younger,
a moment of existential
panic would have my
buttons coming undone
for boys who didn't care why
but sure loved how.

I'm more beautiful now,
less given to panic, and I
undress for you like this:
one story at a time –  a
metaphoric bump and grind.
I shimmy out of all my lies.

If this poem is like our love
(and the sky as
clear)

then it will rise like a rocket
and stop short,
here.

It's been a week; I know you said
sometimes it may be hard to write.
I understand, I really do –
I've been very busy, too,
learning how to sleep at night
and falling out of love with you.

This is a lonely poem,
a half an hour before dawn poem,
a poem like an empty kitchen –
a godforsaken (god, I'm shaking)
feeling like I just want to go home
poem. (and I am home)

I think of something I'd like to tell you
in my bedtime voice, from a shared pillow
into your warm ear, but can't – so

I hide our secrets inside verses and
I author universes where, despite love's
disappointments, you're still here.

I would bring you lunch just to watch you walk
across the field; you reminded me, then,
of a young Fidel Castro. I had just
read his prison letters, and was feeling like
maybe we didn't set enough things on fire.

At night, we played games; I would call you
Comandante and undress you, trying
not to smile when I spoke of the uprising,
but I always did. Some nights, my mouth on
your skin and all of those fires not lit

and all of those things  left standing
made the world seem too big and my torch seem
too small; I could never be brave enough.
On those nights, you kept my heart in my chest
with your grenade-throwing arm, tenderly.

An old barn shrill with crickets' trill
(we snuck away to meet like spies)
tomatoes on the windowsill
(the car was hot against my thighs)
clover growing through the floor
(there was little time to spare)
summer here had grown indoors
(your hands were strong, and everywhere).

these things are best written about later,
when you could be anyone, and I can lie
(as heartsick yet composed narrator)
about small things, like *'I really tried.'

The last time I saw
you was in a parking
lot in January. You
were in town for your
father's funeral; my
oranges had tumbled out
of the cart and into
the snow and it was
really very
pretty.

stupid poetry.
stupid hope.

When you are over me,
I'll pluck my poems from your hair
and shake them from your sheets;
I'll take longer than I should.

without you, i am sans serif –
unfinished still, a half-etched glyph.
you are my pitch; i write for this –

each arc and shoulder loops and dips
towards the softest landing of your lips.

now I'm a shipwreck in a sundress,
an aimless, shameless coquette –
a first kiss, a second guess,
a weak and wobbly pirouette.

O useless sky – you disappoint,
brood mutely as I weep and curse;
you've had eternities to meditate, yet
I think of all the answers first.

i.
In Toronto, we could lean out the kitchen window
and steal pears from the neighbor's tree.

ii.
It was the first time I had seen my sister in years.
We climbed a hill to pick wild plums.

iii.
He said I'll eat one if you do.
We laughed around our crabapple kisses.

One summer evening in the grass
while all the bees were sleeping,
I tucked a flower in your hair
and asked you if you'd keep me.

The lotus calls another time;
right now, just bring your lips to mine—
a congress of the simplest kind,
yet steeped in fever, still divine,
this tangled frame of skin and breath 
urged onward to its little death
on rolling seas of hands and hips;
the synthesis of fingertips—
my shaking legs, a testament
to a winter's afternoon well spent.

A poem falls short; I'd like, instead
to draw a single line from me to you
and watch it curl into a word
so beautiful it's still unsaid –
or press paper to the window pane
so that the day might saturate
a note that brightly warms your hands,
spills birdsong from imagined trees
and buzzes like fat bumblebees,
but I am bound by language, love; I can't.

I wrote a poem you'll never see –
a masterpiece; it took me weeks.
I love you and I wanted you to know.
I achingly described your lips
with tender, breathless craftsmanship;
it was a soulful, sinful epic wracked with lust.
Poetry herself, intrigued,
shook her head in disbelief;
no mortal girl could ever love so much –
and so, enamored by my words,
she decided to ****** you first.
I'm sorry, lover, but she had to go.

I lie in bed, a lazy girl
dreamy smiled and and sleepy eyed,
your latest sonnet on my pillow –
my latest heartbeat, amplified.

I let you walk me home last night
in a freezing March downpour;
I said you shouldn't love me
and for that, you loved me more.

My love was like a playful kitten,
curious and quickly smitten –
maraud the house to see what's in it,
intrigued by all the things forbidden.

Your love was like a lazy hound,
content to dig the same old ground –  
or better yet, to go lay down;
a nuisance, having me around.

I saw a photo
of a plain little farmhouse;
I imagined us
kissing in the bright kitchen
and lilacs in jelly jars.

that's always the first thing I think
                    love
when lofty           begins to
                                              sink.

is not a kiss of measured bliss,
perfect in its timeliness;
it's the one that leaves your heart undone,
a far from perfect hit-and-run
that isn't great until redone.

flicker-interference-frequency* (broadcast nightly)
static-soundbites-satellite (fading slightly)

but nothing of the woman
who chooses words with such precision
to lead your eyes to only pretty frames;
a portrayal of desire, sensuality,
a provocative anomaly—
who lights up every time you say her name.

letting her warm the sheets
of yesterday's beds,
time and time
and time
again.

I only said I love you once,
one early morning while you slept.
I was quiet so as not to wake you;
I said it softly, then I left.

I wasn't sure I meant it then;
if I loved, I did so badly,
to let it wait until the day
that I could only say it sadly.