There are ways and then there are ways--
yours put foreign powers on DefCon 5
out of pure jealousy.

Night shift at the factory is enough to melt skulls,
reverse the flow of hearts, turn bones to industrial byproduct
out of sheer boredom.
I loved you wearing jeans and safety goggles,
better than gown and pearls any day.

We took a picnic lunch to the city park,
and set our eyes to floating on the gray waters of the
flammable, compromised river that cuts through it.
"This is fun," we lied,
and fed bread to a one-eyed pigeon
who kept missing with his first peck.

The customs agents had stopped me the time before;
they searched my emphysemic, cookie-cutter *******
right down to the wheel wells.
Holding up my rubber boots, one of them asked,
"Do you work at the plant?"
Well, what do you think, *******? What do you think?
So you got even with them for me the next time--
you, fluent in Russian, Romanian and doubletalk
pretended not to understand the agent's fractured schoolroom parlance,
and mumbled until he let you through just to be rid of you.

How crazy that you should be Catholic--
I've never seen a craftier shoplifter.
Each time the grid went down, I kissed you for your pilfered candles,
your flashlight, your ****** little radio that kept us informed
as I buried my face in your sweetness like an irradiant.

There are ways and then there are ways,
and yours are the finest ever to grace my ******* box apartment
that I had to be on a waiting list for years, to get.
Everything is always in short supply--
once, you backed me through a rope of yellow hazard tape
and right into a defective forklift
with a kiss, on work time.
My shoe soles picked up God knows what from the filthy floor,
but my heart was happy
as the assembly lines rattled behind us.

There is plenty everywhere that can poison a person,
or sow cancer seeds that will explode later on.
We gave that year of our lives to the production of jugs of kitchen cleanser,
since banned.
Everyone who worked there had red hands and brittle nails,
despite the gloves, despite the icons some of us prayed to.
Oh well.
I was happy,
and even though you left just as it all seemed so good,
that year was pure, flawless, redeeming even,
like love can be sometimes,
and as your ways definitely were, and still are,
in some other woman's bed
in another town,
where you mumble into her ear in Romanian
and she holds you closer
for all the good such motions ever do.

I walk down to the Pegnitz river.
I walk along the banks of green and white flowers —
a quiet place of respite,
smelling both sweet and fowl.
Both the crow and the swan venture on its water’s roof,
never daring to enter the house that man has built.

She lay below and looked up to see,
the black eyes of an eager crow
glaring through the glass.

To cry underwater is not impossible, to learn is fatal.

A baby’s cry can never be silenced in the mind of a mother.

A girl with no direction,
pulled through life by a man’s cruel hands,
In the name of the father!
A mother must pay.
But it is only she who knows that water
cannot wash her sins away.

She stares back at the world - taken from her.

Will anyone visit?
Utter sweet prayers?
Send the mocking crow away?

I throw a lump in the crow’s direction.
It scraws into the sky.
The wise swan takes the bread.

Instead of death,
I sent her a swan instead.

the last time I had spoken to ghosts
was when I unbuttoned the world
and took a seam ripper to all its edges
sitting in your old chair
holding the fabric of remembrance
chewing on the mouldy taste of grief
slowly freeing the overlocked words
I had buried deep into the stitches

the thing is,
when I get dressed in the morning
There's always a button missing
There's always a sadness
stuck in the hem

I waited alone in the sterile room
for the surgery, too stunned to even

consider the word ‘goodbye’. Instead, my legs
shivered against the stirrups, as I prayed

hard for a miracle, for a giant "aha!
Just kidding!" moment from the expanding

universe that would never be large
enough to hold space for you. Pity

I received from the ones closest to me,
words murmured to soothe. Yes, I was

grateful — still, in the cloying silence
that crept in months later, I realized:

I alone was left to somehow trudge through
the thick muck of this loss. They expected me

to swim and rise above, and I did, all the while
hoping the currents would pull me under. How

could anyone else truly know what it's like
when your very own body becomes a thief

who turns         hateful           against you,
prolific cells with cold fury driving your demise

to ****** up the very thing
you wanted more than life itself?

It didn't matter,
for he could smell the sea
and thought it just enough
to season the past,
the remembrance,
slowly curling
in the flames at his feet.

Mysterious girl
the snowdrop child,
buried in spring, etched in stone
in a churchyard corner she sleeps alone,
many greedy winters have gobbled up her name
she was never an enigma
because we loved her just the same