On the left, I write an epic and on the curve of the right; a haiku. On her belly I build a city whose streets teem with peacocks, their thousand eyes watch over her. Between her legs I make a bed, I build a subway; I build a pyre that lights the city I have built on her belly.

On her back I project old silent movies; the flickering light makes her tremble. Her right arm is a snake that climbs up my spine; awakes me from sleep. Her left arm is a tree that reaches into the earth to placate the dead. Each foot is a bird that hovers over my head, as I hold her wrist down to the white fields of the bed.

She is between my legs, she takes me into her mouth; I lie back like a ship in a building storm. I become the crescendo of operas, a breath hovering. My body is a long sigh of silence, like the migrating monarch butterflies paralyzed by uncommon winds that rain down on the streets of Tehran. The sun warms us and we take hesitant flight.

There, a man with a pinhole camera takes our photograph that he wires to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We are two electric eels entwined like the filament of a lamp, lighting all of Paris.

Love arrives at my door
with a knock and a revolver.

“How much do you love me?”
she asks. I stutter—

and she soaks me in her sweat.
I feel rejuvenated,

and Love pushes me down,
buries me beneath leaves

and flowers.

“I love you this much…” I say,
and die peacefully—

while the ****** stumps
of my once-wings twitch

slightly.

We go off in a boat,
Love is captain, I am crew.

She now has a shiny hook
for a hand. She gestures me over:

“How do you love me?”

With perfect concentration,
I unscrew her hook,

tie the string of night to it,
and swing it up—

catching the open-mouthed moon.
With a quick tug,

I bring it down for her.

We lay on the water together,
watching the boat drift off—

smaller and smaller—
and Love and I

float for a lifetime or two,

watching satellites wink
as they fly by.
I ask her, “Love,

how much do you love me?”

“So much. That’s all I say,”
she answers.
“Sooooooo much!”

“But how? How do you love me?”

She smiles,
reaches for the light switch
on the other side of the sun—

CLICK.

She curls up next to me
in the darkest of dark,
in the blackest of black.

She spoons me close,
her good hand on my heart.

“This much,” she whispers,
“and this is how.”

I would have you hold me again,
but I am frightened.

The water fills the shower ankle deep
When I was small I swore it was possible

to go down the drain. Nothing she said
could convince me otherwise.  She was wrong.

I  need to move away from here.
My dog has become anxious

There are gunshots every night.
I swear she dreams of chasing the bus you left on.

She whimpers so loud, Sirius has started to complain.
I close my eyes and try to count 10 but can never make it

past six – I am worried  that when I close my eyes the North
Star looks for a way out.

I would hold you again, but I am uneasy.

Like that muggy august night when I saw
a coyote sulking and wet under a streetlight

on Sepulveda.  It was strange, no one was out.
So strange, you couldn’t believe it

but I shake all the time.

“Sometimes love is stronger than a man’s convictions.”*  
– Isaac Bashevis Singer


1.

There are wars, and rumors of wars—  
machineries, machinations  
of singular dark days,  

and clouds that hang  
like props above our city.  

We shut the windows,  
refuse to watch their play.  

Hungrily, we take refuge  
between each other’s legs.  

How comforting it is  
to love without armies,  
without tanks,  

without generals of reasoned love.

---

2.

There are wars, and rumors of wars—  
machineries, machinations  
of singular dark days.  

From the narrow street, they see us  
wrestling with an angel—  

the tug of limbs, the tangle of hair.  
You whisper low,  
your seditious talk of love—  

as my callused hands get caught  
in your low moaning—  

while I hold you down  
to the bed,  
my captive.  

The occupation has begun—  

your occupied body,  
my country of ardent prayers.

---

2.

There are wars—  
machineries, machinations  
of singular dark days.  

The soldiers are leaving for the front.  
Not us.  

We stay behind,  
to wage our war  
of tenderness.  

They leave this morning.  

Applaud their sad theater—  
the warships, the planes.  

Soon,  
letters will arrive  
without them.  

A few men will return—  
gaunt, less than before—  
with more silence,  
less dancing.  

And when they do,  
our war will have ended  
under a flag  
of white bed sheets.  

Only a little blood.  

Victorious,  
we’ll write love letters  
on each other’s bodies.

“Does anyone still want to go with me into a panorama?”
Max Brod

The sun floats down river
resting from a long day.
as Barvard draws love

birds in the sand.
She tries to explain
how his deformity angers her.

Unable, she leaves him
on the other side of the shore.
Banvard becomes a traveling salesman,

a campfire fiddler,
a drunk, a painter of shores.
Yearning for her -

He turns her into the Mississippi shore.
Riding the long river, floating
on a brush, he paints her portrait.

Huge bolts of love
The canvas sags from longing
Immense wood contraption

(gears-pulleys crank machinery)
Three miles of canvas.
An uninterrupted portrait.

The papers publish the spectacle
“The hunch back painter and his panorama!”
He builds a wooden stage

Winds up river then down.
The lines are long, (.50 cents.)
they wait for hours….

He sits in the middle
of hungry brush stroke
Up river

down. Up river down
eyes straining
to find her.

To be published by JUKED.COM

The correspondence she writes is in the shape of a dog−
fills them with anecdotes of dressers

and the first two years of her life spent in a drawer.
We meet in Zurich over a nightmare –
(sleep under an argument)–

Travel to Berlin where a priest walks between us.
She promises to write.

Her letters are like a leap year. She writes riddles
about the price of post and serious Marian treaties –

only cursorily mentioning the living.
I read her letters like an eating

disorder. I try to decipher the hermetic meaning
of the word Shvod in all the margins.
Her last line reads,

“I must beat the walls it is March…”

A green streetcar is standing alone in the rain,
The man on the corner is staring at the green street-
Car . He is trying to remember

His daughters fifth birthday.

The green streetcar is alone in the rain.
The man is alone on the street in the rain.
He is staring at the streetcar, trying to remember

His daughter’s best friend’s name.

The man can hear the rain falling on
The empty green streetcar.

Rain is running down the back of his
neck and it is making him cold.

She is so much older now.