harness

As a buckle to the doorstep
And the city’s forceful draw
She knits the house and landscape
To pull the wheel of all
Then works to stare down morning
With level eye and lip
And convince all to work as fuel
Instead of driver’s whip

The Getaway

And so there is all this space
The space of a table set between us
And I have perched myself listening
And you have leaned yourself in
And we enjoy the table like the ridge of a fence
Or the middle cushion of a large sofa
Mutually relieved to see the face across
Inhaling an air made fresh through remembrance
Like a man back on his native soil
After a difficult and lonely trip
One on which he hadn’t the heart
To hope for return

And so to think of a get away
To think of the way home from this
Gets muddy
Because this feels like the arrival back
The trip up the front steps
And my question about your doctor
Or your sigh about my job
Seems a molecule removed
From the finger round your belt loop
And the breath upon my blouse
And the road out is obscured
By a tangle of growing green

The Fever

I had wanted to tell you, Doctor
That when you reached over me
Lost in your employment
The thread from your blue shirt
One evicted thread
Had hung above my lips like a fishing line
And in the terror of illness
In the swim of my body’s madness
I accepted it, as a prescription
I let the thread hang on my tongue
Greedy for it
Assuming some cure

But I know now, Doctor
Now that I can sit up in the bed
And take my food without help
That it was merely
A sign of your man’s carelessness
A thoughtless thing dropped
Over a lolling creature with the darting eyes
Of an animal

But I must tell you
While I am confessing this
While I sit here, well, but depleted
My hair all wet
My nightgown gathered to me
I must say that in my fever
I had such clear dreams
The ones that seem like memory
Or prediction

The story now is lost
But in my dream
You had filled my mouth
With something that worked
Like concrete
You had done it on purpose
So that I could not speak to you
To watch my expressions
To direct my gaze to you
To force my little hands
To flutter signals for everything
I could ever need to say

And even now
As I tell you this
As you hold your blue cuff
As you stare silently
At the sharp crease in your pant leg
With that startled, condemned expression
The memory of this implausible handicap
This indefinable and airy crime
Has made me ill doctor
‘Til now
It has made me mute

tomorrow morning

In the morning you’ll write a poem
Not now
Do it tomorrow
When your mind is fresh
When you can sit, day lit
With all the optimism of coffee
And write something about ambition
Or the bend in the road

In the morning
You will know your limbs
All over again
And come to realize the head of hair
And recall the glory of a bank account
Whatever its contents
And sound
Like a national anthem
Or like the stir of a triangle
Your pinky lifted
Purr thinking of the sunlight ahead
Your home away from home

And then
When you press your soles down
one to the hard carpet
the other to the wooden floor
You will recall the shape of the world
And that while it is under you

It is not you

And then
You will feel the electricity of that collision
The blast of it, its big bang
And a poem at that point
Like the dark sliver you cut
Into the white air
Will be the inevitable
And collateral cousin
To the launch of day

cocked

He saw himself a student
And thus set free to be
As yet unschooled in everything
A cocked capacity

“I know I’d know the numbers
If I cared to see the sum
But better just to walk towards school
Than ever have it done

"There’s the bench I pine on, Mondays
At lunch I thrill at gates
On Fridays I just grab my chest
Slumped under nameless freight"

And so he stands at windows
He marks each weekday’s pass
Tucked snug into a dignity
Expectant ignorance

Should I tell the splendid novice
Conclusion not his key
To evaporate approaching is
Arrival, finally

The Arrow

Because I saw the brute because I saw him
Because I said, “you are a brute”
Because the policeman stared at me
Like I held the gun
The red blank impassable cube
My face
Because I had felt somehow
Like an arrow shot into sunlight
Shaking with velocity
A single clearing hot sweep
Into pale skies
Because of this
When I had finally put my body
Into a bed
And pulled the blue sheets to my neck
And forced myself to close the light
And bid myself, earnestly, to dream sweetly
I thought of my life
Like a final draft
And remembered myself
As my favorite character
The one who said
What I had hoped she would say
The one who knew me
In my most private conversations
And the one I would long for
After the book was done

barefoot by the window

My Dear, remove your wallet and change
press the hair out of your eyes
could you
stand in the light
don’t try to find
what rolled under the dresser
find me, here
bare footed and ticking even
unbothered and slender
a needle washed to the top of a haystack
put your fingers across my fingers
i like to think of sewing when you do this
and stand still while I remind you
of the first time we kissed.
Bend your face down to mine
turn to the window
you showed me the skyline
my lash passed a shiver
over your rushmored bones
don’t worry, the pain of waiting
will last just a moment
your skin is like canvas
something unused and
waiting for color
my small mouth flushes red
against the desert of your
hard temple
pressed, drawn, then deposed
the kiss slides from mine
to yours
the bridge of this breathing
the success of this meeting
here again
in our first kiss

bent to splendor

A hurricane is promised me
So on the skies I’ve trained
And grabbed my throat in ecstasy
And recoil of the rain
And on my tongue I’ve tilted breaths
Of terror and relief
And forced to move my fingers
Like the welcome to a chief
My muscles stiff to splendor
But obedient in the end
I duly bare my body
Like the saints do to their sins
I’ll never know what holds the sky
Nor never understand
Why keeps its temper from our skin
That waits on its command