temporarily unavailable

May gave us tall grass.
Clumsy hands pressed my clean hair
into the cool mud.

The wrong thing
seduces the heart
into a quiet corner
and the right thing
kills it.

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.)

My words, defiant, deny me;
they speak in low voices
on dark porches, lose me
in strange cities;

they forget the warmth
of my mouth.

Eyeing me suspiciously,
smug with voweled virtue,
they dismiss my attempts
at reconciliation, saying only

We don't even know who you are *anymore.

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.

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.

You say
finish it

like  I have fallen upon you
a moonlit mercenary
eyes bright in the dangerous night

to find you sleeping,
unguarded;

like you opened your eyes
to an almost kiss

as I lowered myself for the ****;

like I would sink,
blade deep—
close enough, 
finally;

like I wouldn't love you still.

stupid poetry.
stupid hope.

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.

we grew up poor together
and didn't really like each other,
but when you have nothing, it's nice
to have company,

so we did what poor kids do; we stuck together,

taking breaks from being poor in the afternoon woods,
where nobody was dressed nicer than us
and the creek didn't care
that our shoes didn't fit.

Anna, I love you because
nobody knew how sad we were.

There was no battle cry
or first shot fired.
The clip clip of doom's hooves
was far away

and I never felt its hot breath on my neck—
               I never felt its hot breath on my neck

You weren't my enemy.
I loved you
but he thump thump of love's drum
was far away

and I had killed you with an arrow sweetly fletched—
               *I had killed you with an arrow sweetly fletched.

a distant dog barking
at three a.m.
because the night is big
and the chain is short

and sometimes
from another dark backyard
another murky alley, lit by bare bulb
from the end of another chain, tied to a different tree,

a commiserating howl.

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.

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.

We were warworn; you were weary with
my wild, wayward theories
and as I worried, so it worsened.
That's the way.

You were waygone from your wanderings;
I was waiting for you, always.
You were wolfish, but
I wanted you to stay.

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

Because my love cannot be the orchestra,
I have hidden it in the glissandos;
do not listen for it when the music swells,
but in the resonance of in betweens.


Because my love cannot be the whole summer,
I have strapped it to the legs of bees;
do not look for it in flowered fields,
but in the pollen stuck to window screens.

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.

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.

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.

I entered through your garden gate;

a summer hush
no sign of us

just the grove of 
words
you grew
for her.

I returned home
a silhouette,
to tend my hothouse
of regret.

This is how we love:
First with fire, then without.
Who was tending the embers?

I thought
I know—

I'll write a poem about another love,
one of those boys from
one of those poems
that I wrote
before you,

and in doing so
I will ease this ache,
I will appease
the part of me
that just wants
to be wanted,

you know?

But, no—
I couldn't conjure their kisses,
nor did I want to.
They were just 
boys from 
those poems
that I wrote
before you.

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.

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

I'm not beautiful—

no scandalous, empyrean beauty;
not the beauty
of long legs and sleepless nights,
not transcendental, not diaphanous; 
no ambrosia, no absinthe;
no earthly Aphrodite
to crush your heart 
with slender hands.
No,

not the kind of beauty
that makes disciple 
out of man;

but

our secrets, they rhyme darkly
and your heart is beating sharply,
and tonight I'll make you love me
while I can.

Fresh cherries, just washed— 
beads of ruby strewn across
white bowl's shiny gloss—

dainty stems crisscrossed.

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.

Tonight, I'll bake bread
because I need 
good smells 
and warm hands 
and a sense of purpose.

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

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.

I want you to miss me so much

that when we kiss
I find our last kiss
still melting slowly
on your tongue.

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

(it always comes.)

From wind and stone, sand.
From faith and prophets, temple.
From beast and hunter, blood.
From my heart and your heart, monsoon.

If an easy rain
would make the rocks slippery,
he would hold my hand.

Evening swells and spills
across his back and farther.
I collect handfuls.

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.

The cold crouches.
Perched, ankles numb,
I quake with joy—
thorny with cold, slow
but hopeful.

On white horizon,
fire licks sky.
It comes
like comets, like horsemen.
I knew it would.

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

Don't trust charming thieves, love;
don't trust girls like me.
Girls like me, we leave, love;

we steal your heart and leave.

Girls like me, we know, love,
when it's time to go.
We're prettier as ghosts, love;

we flicker out, then go.

I caught my mother crying once,
at the kitchen table, face in one hand
dishtowel in the other,
real crying, out loud crying;

I wanted to be anywhere else,
and would have run
had she not heard me,
had she not pressed the dishtowel to her eyes
and said

“I'm just so tired of walking on eggshells.”
like an eight year old would understand,
but I did,
kind of.

What I wouldn't give
to know the comet tails of thought
obscured by your  ellipses …

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.

My errant fingers
create two new words;

gentlenab
I find strangely ******,

wrotten
I find strangely appropriate.

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.

June evening, mid-sigh,
she holds a finger to her
lips, then to the sky;
pools of sundown flood the fields.
She trusts the breeze to find him.