Take these words:
they’re all I have to give.
If I wait for their unfolding,
I’m lost in the flood of quicksilver,
motive drowning in fulfillment —
too much satiation, too much matter,
and my mouth falls dry —
but words satisfy quietly
a distance from object you can’t hold
or let go of —
so take these words —
we can survive on them for years,
dreaming in their shadows,
dancing on their bones,
sucking them like bright candies
on a long highway ride…
I’ve lost my voice
all my vowels and consonants
are sliding down your throat
and falling into your stomach
I’ve lost it
because you swallowed my breath
when you took it away
and carried all my words with it…
You circulate through the air
like pollen, and the sunlight
that streams through the front door
you always leave open.
You watch the feeder for goldfinches
and mix turmeric into your morning shake…
My moon is full tonight
and the grass is growing blue.
The cool marble of my skin
is breathing
with the breath of your breath
before it touches you.
The halls between my fingers have opened
and are waiting for yours to crawl inside.
The night’s too long
and the space too far
tonight—…
…An umbilicus connects us.
Not a silver thread,
but a twisted life-stem
wrapping around us,
pulsing with our conjoined blood.
We’ve traveled so far
from the city of the ordinary.
I let you carry me
tucked in your pocket,
hidden inside your blueprints,
wrapped around your little finger.
I’m going to be your banyan tree
in the darkest forests
of your cerebral cortex…
I’ve uncorked the perfume
today, of the day we first met.
I needed it. It was all blue:
oxygen and azulene,
neroli and pine trees,
jet fuel and you, always clean
even after strangers touched you…
There is this man
who’s become the man in the moon to me.
He watches over me
while I’m sleeping,
and draws down all the dew.
He’s the stones in my river
that disturb and dapple me,
and he’s the silt shifting
beneath my flow…
This is the stillpoint of solstice:
late June, evening. The milltown river,
with its floating candles flickering
as an orange twilight falls.
In this newly minted summer,
porches commune with their rocking chairs
and sunsets unfurl slowly.
My inventory of the longest day
reveals a stasis of bliss
settling inside my core
like a reservoir
when hope is complete:…
The word sounds like a Christmas cookie:
patterns pressed in the firm dough of me
with a carved rolling pin of impressions
like the Springerle my sisters and I made as children,
baked in the hot oven of intention
too many times, too many batches,
too many burnt offerings, all this waste.
Knowing when something is over
isn’t an ending of love,
which has no beginning or end—
and nothing—not anger, or even indifference
can erase these stories written in Sharpie ink…
I’m sorry for all the things I taught you
when I was still learning to be myself.
I’m sorry for all you learned inside me,
the monologues I baptized your splitting cells with
on long walks home from the train
after working on my feet all day
or on the way to the laundromat,
pushing the cart over packed snow—
at the sink, on my knees, at the stove,
hanging the rags to dry; and finally, in dreams—
once I felt I’d earned the right to sleep.
I’m sorry for the way I said it was,
the things I said we do for love.
I said it like a prayer, while getting him tea
in the hours I didn’t need to be awake in.
This is how we love…
…There is no disgrace
in surrendering
to passion
as long as you remember
to plan it:
with a steady conscience,
cast your libations
to quench the thirsty dead
and honor the thousand invisibles:
you must always remember
the thousand demons that sneak
into the unseen midst
between eyes and electric brain,
knotted knuckle-fists
and through the gaps
between
your thousand wandering kisses
erupting in violets
over skin’s borderless terrain,
blooming from a thousand open pores—…
