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

The crickets abandoned the yard
not long after you.
The evenings are too quiet now—

no big, dumb you exploring every 
bush and branch,
snapping and snuffling
through the thicket,
coming home 
with dirt on your nose
and covered in burrs,

goofy faced.

Just grass
and a sleeping garden.

The squirrels fear nothing.

You rewrite me.

I learn the hieroglyph for longing,
the derivative of sigh.
Ours is a softly spoken love

and I'm a breathless scribe.

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

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.

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.

I was a shy girl.
Some boys found my quiet ways
as inviting as
dappled groves in shady woods
(where each one ached to take me).

Bedtime, little moonbeam.
See the stars? They're sleepy, too—
all blinky-eyed and snuggled in
like you need to do;

but the very, very moment
that you drift off into slumber,
the whole world sighs and smiles
at you, its dreaming little wonder,

and the bunnies in their hutches
and the sparrows in their nests,
they sleep, too, my little moon,
all fuzzy, warm and blessed

to have spent another perfect day
with a perfect girl like you.
Now tomorrow waits to meet you,
and I'll be waiting, too.

At least my cherry tree
will blossom soon.

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 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.

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.

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.

.                                 
                              ­            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

Towel clutched loosely
warm, blushing skin, damp with steam
cool condensation
distillation of lust, his
fingers wrapped in her wet hair.

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

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.)

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.

Stay away from the voodoo, love.

Resist

the swamp music
the bells on her ankles
her feathered fan

and when she sways
at the hip—

goddess of sudden changes
patroness of prostitutes
and abandoned lovers—

chanting Mambo, terrible beauty.

Say nothing

when she leans close
(cinnamon, tree bark and, faintly, smoke)
and breathes

If you have no altar,
I am your altar.

Stay away from the voodoo, love—

her drumbeats and cypress trees,
her hocus pocus
honeylocust.

Tangent: touching
along a curve,
a surface,
without intersecting.

We are acquainted.
Contours quietly agree.
What I cannot guess
with my hands
I will consider
with my lips—

count the places 
I kiss you,
forget where I am,
start over.

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.

Your advice is appreciated,
but I think that instead of
the 'three shining coins
and a lonely crossroads' thing,
I'll just write him a poem.

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

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

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).

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.

dame's rocket
lion's mouth
bittersweet

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

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.

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

Still night;
eyes keen,
sheets unfurled—
sails.

The night, sometimes,
swims with sad fish.

The night, sometimes,
is a ritual drowning.

Lonely, I consider waking you
to say

*Look—
the stars are bioluminescent, baby.

Monsieur Polti wrote of
thirty-six dramatic situations
that you and I
as pro- and ant- agonist
may find ourselves in.

I think we could survive
all but two or three.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

i

Love wears red boots.
They click faster on the sidewalk
as I  hurry to catch up.
I just want to ask her something.
She gives me that look that says
I'm sorry, but I can't help you:
smile tight to the teeth, sad eyes.
She looks uncomfortable
and a little bit afraid of me,
so I thank her for her time
and pretend I just remembered
there's somewhere else I need to be.

ii

Love is a crone
sitting at a sticky table,
cigarette in one hand
stained mug in the other, saying
And the whole time, she thought it was me!
to a round of ugly laughter.

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.

Should it matter what we call it?
What sound our mouths make?
That's just typology, interpretation;
my love for words doesn't mean
I find them adequate.
Do we have to call it anything?

Can't I just say
*I will love you tonight, 
like that girl you write poems for,
only better ?

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.

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.

When the word over finally made sense,
I shook you from me
like water,

like sleep.

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.

We draw hearts to say 
     I am in love with you

when love disappoints, we say
     I am heartsick

when we fall deeply, we say
     My heart did a slow somersault

when we know that the heart 
is a drum, a pendulum, a clock.
On good days, it is a sundial

but it is always
just a timekeeper, the 
tick 
tick 
tick
of minutes and seasons,
but never
forevers.

Amid the fig and quince,
the bright pomegranate orchards,
the black mulberry and wild olives,
we were still hungry.
He called it the Tree of Knowledge.
How were we to resist?

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 think of August:
strawberry sundae cups
and squash blossoms.