He sets out from Cape Elizabeth on a little skiff
into the silvery Atlantic at dawn;
несчастливый, he whispers, and the salty wind
throws the word against a cliff.
His curse, he swears, is gone.
He dreams of fighting fish, of yellow fins,

of something more than mottled cod.
In afternoon, a bite: too strong to reel.
I’ll take you by surprise, the young man thinks.
He settles in and prays to God
that his fish will equal many meals,
that Gretzky will prevail at the rink.

I can pull you, fish, but I will let you tire.
He eats a bit of bread and takes a final look
into the deep.
The black of the sea meets the black of the sky;
the moon hangs, an empty fishhook,
and the young man holds the line and sleeps.

He’s awakened by a pull, a smack
of nose and bone against the stern;
she’s pulling further yet from shore.
Blood dripping, palms raw, he holds fast.
She’s still on the line. His feet stand firm.
Tomorrow, fish. I’ll wait one day more.

The next morning sees him rise,
prepared to fight.
You will come home with me today, fish.
In his weathered palms: the line.
Sun and salt and sweat collide
on bronze muscles blessed by Helios.

The fish responds right away:
she circles and he pulls, a deep-sea tango
until she’s there beside the skiff,
blue like tokens worn by brides on wedding days,
chain-mail sapphires with a sheen of gold:
a more beautiful adversary could not exist.

Regret set in. One of us must die today, fish.
She pulls him close; his hand lands on her fin.
Behind him, the harpoon, too far to reach.
One of us must die—I am not sure I care which.
His body is broken, somewhere within,
an injury he cannot treat.

The Great One played with a broken rib in ’93.
I must be worthy of him.
His bones cry and shriek, but he will not rest.
He plunges bleeding hands into the sea
And wrestles body and fin—
She presses against his breathless chest.

He pulls her nearer still,
Weapon at hand,
And as he is about to deliver the fatal wound
Her dark eyes ****
the need to prove his worth as a man.
His fingers drop the heavy harpoon.

We are equals, fish; I cannot take your life.
I cannot sell your flesh.
I cannot catch you just to boast.
He draws his rusty knife
but cannot bring himself to thrash
the rope that binds them both.

He sits down in the boat.

*Fish, take me out to sea.
Fish, it’s you and me.

i’m a communist lover; i redistribute the wealth.
liquid pearl between my thighs,
a treasure chest,
no one deprived.
grasp equal handfuls for yourself.

one cannot yoke and claim me with a ring.
collectivists, share forbidden fruit
of my mother’s labor.
it’s not my habit to exclude:
no prole to ban, no rule of kings.

you have nothing to lose but your chains.

i’m unashamed;
the lot of you can
stake your claim.

I.

Auntie’s fingertips were always stained
with the blood of scarlet petunias
in summer, a pile of
wilted blooms in a Pyrex bowl.
This is how they grow so beautiful, she told me,
so when Uncle’s knuckles grew red with her blood
and since she always stayed at his side
i thought it must be the same for people.

II.

Truckin’—got my chips cashed in…
Uncle’s favorite song crackled over the speakers
as I rode in his cab across the state line,
army men in my lap.
A three-fingered hand chucked a lieutenant out the window
into the golden wheat.
I knew he lost those fingers
in some faraway place called Vietnam.

Later that night,
I sat in the empty back of the truck,
nothing to play with,
imagining my lieutenant marching through wheat,
dodging gunfire,
listening to the bang bang bang
as Uncle and the lady he met in the lot
cleaned out the cab.

III.

I came home from Iraq
after losing ******* to an IED
and drove straight to Auntie’s.

We pruned petunias in silence.
She grew purple and black alongside the red now,
velvet flowers the color of her left eye,
of the blossom on her shoulder.

I heard my drill sergeant.
Blood! Blood! Blood makes the grass grow!
Turn this ******* desert into an oasis!—
and I knew why Vietnam was a jungle.

Uncle got home. “Hey, Uncle,” I said,
“how about we go for a drive like old times?”

IV.

I killed the engine next to a wheat field.

“Blood on your hands,” Uncle said.

“I’ve been pruning the petunias with Auntie,” I told him.
“You gotta get rid of the wilted ones
so the plant can grow. Flourish.”

“Naw, I mean, from Iraq,” he said. “Blood. You killed
any men?”

“Not yet,” I said.

V.

Auntie and my boy and I sing along to Bryan Adams
in the cab—
Out on the road today,
I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac;
a voice inside my head says don’t look back,
you can never look back…

He’s got a lap full of Army men.

Across from a field of wheat,
a little patch of grass
blazes emerald in the midday sun.

I came out the womb with skates on, cut the ice before my teeth
My religion worships Gretzky, I was baptized in the crease
I got sharp eyes for action, grew up three rows from the glass
So why can’t I want to kick some—and also get some ***?

These bros, since I was little, thought because I was a girl
That the ***** standing next to me knew more about this world
They’d even ask my boyfriend all the questions ‘bout the team
Though he didn’t know a thing and kept directing them to me

They always thought that I had just got dragged there by my man
When it was just the opposite; they didn’t understand
That I kept stats for fun before I ever got a date
That I helped recruit a forward to the team back in ‘08

That the coordinates to both my rinks are tattooed on my neck
That a 1-3-1’s the power play that’s worst to play against
That I haven’t missed a game in Cloud for 27 years
That I rattle off statistics like I’m in Sam Rosen’s ear

And this is what I said to prove I was a “real” fan;
‘Cause I guess the logic is if I’m attracted to a man
And he plays the sport, I only come in hopes of getting laid
Apparently it can’t be both; a body and a brain.

So bros call me a puckbunny: the hockey word for ****.
And they spit it like an insult, but lately, I say “so what?”
“Big D” can stand for “****” and “defense;” I don’t want just one.
You close the five-hole in the game; you spread it when it’s done.

So my libido is on fire for a goalie I admire
And that save percentage higher than the tent inside his sheets
And if we finally win a title, I could be his motorcycle
Hold me like the Cup and ride me hard until I overheat

And the banners were the reason in the 2013 season
That I spent the winter frequently rewarding goals scored
I committed to the mission; might’ve just been superstition,
But I got what I was wishing for so fine, call me a *****

And I maybe want to **** him but I hate it’s your assumption
That I’m all about the lovin’ when I’m all about the game
And I’m dropping all this knowledge ‘bout the prospects still in college
And for all your **** I promise you don’t even know their names

And ******* right I know more than the bro around the block
And ******* right you’d catch me ******* Tyler Seguin’s ****
And ******* right when Kreider drives the net it turns me on
And ******* right that goal red light district can’t be wrong

And ******* right I’ve got a third line notch up in my belt
And ******* right I’ve finally just embraced this sense of self
And ******* right I live and breathe and bleed the game of puck
And ******* right sometimes I guess I’m just a big old ****.

you read faulkner and it turns my stomach.

but i like when i find you devouring my books--

i liked the time i found you curled up with my copy of the poisonwood bible
and you stuttered apologies for the marked and highlighted pages,
for the notes in the margins,
as you explained you had become engrossed in the story
and forgot it wasn’t your own copy after all.

i like when you talk about barthes and foucault
and try on literary theory like glasses:
horn-rimmed new criticism,
nice round reader-response theory.

i like when you touch me
as if i were the delicate curve of sylvia plath’s bell jar,
as if you know that i am at once suffocating under pressure and
suffocating myself,
as if you know that all i need sometimes
is the singing of your fingers on the glass
to give me harmony
and air.

i like when you pick up the poetry collection i bought at the bookstore down the street
and translate marina tsvetaeva's verse back to its original tongue.

and you never say it in english, but я люблю тебя
has crossed your lips, dangerously,
before you started teaching me russian,
before you found out I knew enough of the language
to translate
that.

A garden of lights:
blooms glitter across velvet
darkness, wild, watching.

Cold windows. Open
eyes. A silk sea. A hollow
silence to fill up.

A tongue of fire, a
pool of white wax, nearly hot
enough to brand skin.


I, dressed in jasmine,
move through sin-lit night into
your sinewy arms.

this is how i rock my lust: with
***** straight and pixie dust, discussing ****
that ***** me up like drugs
like love
like sucker punches
when she comes—that heady taste—
unblushing, sweaty, **** my face
******* I’m craving
her—the scent—the begging when
she’s hoarse and spent,
the coarseness of rough hair on skin
of taste buds lips tongue wearing thin—
i drain my lungs, i’m going hard
eyes pressed on pelvis filled with stars
i dig my nails into her thighs she’s
in my nose i’m drunk on sighs
and cries/those hips!—
she bites her lips
a flush of rose on rigid ******
pinched between my fingertips—
she calls my name—
i can’t resist—

so kiss me kate, with open legs
spread wide for me to fit my head
between those thighs, my tired tongue
i’d drown here just to hear you come.

i clutch a rose between my lips:
between my thighs,
a pungent fist,
thorn-kiss elicits blood and liquid silk,
stem wet with salty mix

my skin might revel in caresses
from blush blooms and emerald leaves, but
soft petals are ephemeral
and thorns leave marks like chiseled stone

i then am owned—
and not Alone

car horns, insistent,
floors away, a soft musical interlude
filling

this room, infused with jasmine,
a candle-wick extinguished, scorched,
soot drifting on

thick air,
cloyed with unspoken tenderness
expressed instead in jewels of sweat,
insistence to eclipse past pleasures,
fingers laced together,
flurries of kisses lasting for as long
as we’re lost in the other’s lips,
lingering touches, too delicate
for casual lovers,

you, washing off my scent
by nightlight, like i am wet with
witchcraft, like my ******* are spells
and if your skin remains stained
you won’t be able to break them,

me, curled in your sheets
like my tongue around you,
waiting for your arm to wrap me up
like a slow-creeping vine
on thin trellis wires.

i could love you
and you could love me
at this table for four
from 1960,

fish swimming behind us
in the old TV.

you could love me
and i could love you
the two best choices
on the menu,

record player spinning
madeleine peyroux;

hot like this coffee
sweet like this pastry
high like this street view

but we’re just passing through

i want all of you, each atom. raised eyebrows, those eyes of melted chocolate, the laid-back laugh and the way you speak, dry, dewy,

our bodies wrapped in Debussy, skin tinged with pink, afterglow, quiet laughter in the cocoon of a sparsely-furnished room--clinging tightly, not so tightly, tracing fingertips, foreheads together, soft lips meeting, your warm hand on my waist

then, a dark glare, evil painted in the arch of your eyebrows and the smirk that creeps across your face, pinning me down, thick tongue running the length of my body, hot, wet--

i want to write for you on the morning after, i want you to lick up my words like dessert, i want you to crave more i want you to crave me



i want i want i want

I--

beware
of the lipstick curve
on the edge of my lips
of the bit of a tooth
'cause it's hinting at this:

that i'm crushing my foes
with the spike of my heel
and i'm queen of my world
and i'm numb to appeal

and i'm driven to quit
i don't care how it hurts
i won't take anymore
i won't take anymore...

II--

my value in this dungeon
is a flawed calculation; my
value is determined by a
jealous whim. my value here
is one minus one; my value here
is not my toil and sweat,
not the hours i give nor the **** i get,
not the castles i've built,
not the care i take,
not the people i help,
not the pittance i make,
not the battles i've won,

i'm done.

III--

dylan thomas said, "do not go gentle."

three years, and i have been but a breeze,
a wind, a gust;
now i am on the cusp of hell
and in my tornadic fury i will rip trees from the earth
i will leave fields flat and rivers dry
and i will topple bricks and shred the sky
and bid you good-bye--

good
night.