Last night I wanted you to stay,
so I gave a bit of me away.

This morning, only one regret;
would I always be a brandished breast?
a glimpse of stockinged thigh, outstretched?

Or could I cool it down a few degrees?
Long enough for you to see

that of all the ways I know to please,
my body is but one of these.

My errant fingers
create two new words;

gentlenab
I find strangely ******,

wrotten
I find strangely appropriate.

Because inventing heaven
from pebble and mist
was backbreaking,
heartquaking
work

and
because I
shivered with 
fever, my body lit
by rapture unfathomed,

I sought stillness in the mouth
of the ocean, gave myself
to her shallows and,
with sleepy eyes, 
said

Leave 
me here.
You laid hands to my 
dreaming curves. They became 
dunes, shifting; you filled my sky with birds.

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

You have a flying machine.
I have the afternoon off.
Let's meet where we used to,

huddled under mossy eaves,
fumbling with rented keys;

you can call me Gypsy Rose 
and I can call you Captain.

so I thought I might tell you
that my left currently bears
a disappearing crescent of ouch
and three diamonds

or that my right
tends to drift
to the back of my neck
when I'm trying to remember

or that they both stop and start
over these letters
right now,

not sure what to say.

An erogenous haunting,
I thrill at his wanting

but more,
I thrill at his pause

to let me unravel
his tangle of wishes

and instill my own meter and rhyme.

He bends to my needing,
my sweetness deceiving.

(but then, I think his may be, too)

Hunter or hunted,
his heartbeat has quickened;

for this moment, at least,
he is mine.

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.

Think, small heart.

Don't say
sad eyes know things.

Don't say
hurt things make poems.

I raised you wrong,
told you lies to console you.
Now you speak in five cent fortunes.

Now you don't know anything.

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.)

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

Before I was ghost,
I was real.

Your hands
brought pink to my skin,
coaxed sighs
billowed softly,

heart surge,
pulse and shiver,
rise, fall

and, later, laughter;
chimed rhyme on my ribs.

Now I am resigned to sad places—
dark balconies,
orchards brimming with moon
and lightless bedrooms,

clinging fast to strangers
begging
*make me real
make me real.

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

I'm not good for you.

I'm better at seduction 

than love; love is hard.

Though winter stripped the orchard boughs,
I still think of harvest kisses.
I loved you then and maybe now;
my first bite, my red delicious.

.                                 
                              ­            oh no
                                wait wait
                                     drift stay
                             want pray
                                 dry soul wet wings
                                        clever clever costly 
                                               things rainy morning 
                                                          long leap heart beat
                                                    beat beat stretch reach
                                                 outgrow  g­od god don't go 
                                          branch water hurry melt did 
                                       you feel like I felt quick fix 
                                          heartsick minx eyes blink blink 
                                      blink hush hush hot blush say  little 
                                   mean much but please come sit touch
                                 bright sun brighter moon pretty promise 
                                  dark room heft spark smoke sigh chest                       
                                    ­rise  rise rise lazy looping butterflies
                                       I want the  night your eyes imply
                                               think fast   breathe  slow
                                                   ­         wait wait wait
                                                            ­           go

days brisk with drumbeats,
evenings spilled from riverbanks—
drifts of violet, ripe moons.

I've removed the blankets from my bed
although the nights have gotten colder.
I dare not let them touch my skin;
you've left me, carelessly, to smolder.

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.

The pianist, realizing he will never have me,
plays the last few notes of Chanson Triste.
Go, he says,
*and take that with you.

break
n.  interruption, intermission
n.  an unexpected piece of good luck, happy chance
n.  a sudden dash, sprint
v.  what my heart did, shatter

indifference*
n*.  the feeling that I get from you that it doesn't really matter

Love defies all laws of perspective;
the farther away               it is
the larger it appears.

Nothing else is like that.

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.

Not so long ago
you thought that I made the weather;
you braved me

and when you thought the sun would be nice
I gave you auspicious skies
and a sweet, cool breeze
so that you might feel me,

so that I could whisper in passing
I love you, remember?

Well, I don't make the weather,
but I still love you.
Remember?

You kneel to see my
upward angles,
catch handfuls of my

white
hot
words.

You smolder, plead;

I sigh
and seethe,
but

I don't know
this savage heart
within me, so I

breathe,
breathe,
breathe.

dame's rocket
lion's mouth
bittersweet

You did.
I was parchment;
you wrote with both hands.

I curled at my edges;
the ink is still wet.

My father taught me to swim
by holding my small body
tightly  
and stepping off
the highest ledge
at Horses' Heaven,

indifferent to my pleas 
for release, to play safely
with my sisters
on the ******* below.

I had time to notice gravity
before the cold river 
swallowed us 

and as I fought
to keep him from slipping
through my stinging hands

he let go.

It was a long, dark panic.
I'm still afraid of the deep.

I wonder what learning to love 
might have been like
had I learned to swim 
in a shallow pool,

with a patient teacher.

I cannot deescalate you,
or pin you to a warm bed and
kiss the anger from your lips.

The trap is set, or sprung—
always in the teeth of something;
always wondering if it's best
to struggle or lie perfectly still.

Your words ****; they remind me 
that I've made all love borrowed,
having spent mine as I pleased.

It hauls you, gasping,
from the cool, murmuring depths 
and casts you, ardent and aching, 
for someone else's shore.

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

A battered heart lends
character, like an eye patch
or a cowboy hat.

Wait, please—
don't go.
There's something I
need you to know;

when I fall,
it's headlong
and this poem,
these poems,
are all wrong.

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.

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.

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.

it makes the break soft, uneven. 
even if I could, i wouldn't—
what?
Sink firmly in until I could speak for you?
Say lovely things 
about what it was like?

Even then I would **** it.
Or at least watch it die; 
dispatch a small flock of birds
to make it seem
cherished.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.