Justice

I guess it’s true that I didn’t meet you in the winter.

It was the cool of spring-summer evenings; the air tinged with a hint of resentment; the walk of a girl trying to get noticed; the honk of a stranger in the parking lot; the sight of you, in a long, black, wool coat, on the street where I pass you outside of a piano shop before circling back for our First Date: Sight Unseen

The thought of, “that’s probably him.”

Alaska

You have nothing to say but to smile that strange Jack-o-Lantern smile, flash those dwarfed Alaskan teeth, warp that gray skin.
I smell like your sweat, the prehistoric dirt deep in the earth, the graves you robbed with an ax and a blade and a brush, at home among basements filled with the dead, a mortician of the orphans removed from the living by millennia, with no families and no histories and no names.

Living woman sprinkled with grave-dust

Rumpus

Now there are black birds above my bed
in multiples
your curves are sharp and angular and
it was just like the first time
you pushing hard against me in
a room that was not mine
with sharp beaks and talons
it was just like the first time except that
I said yes and
their wings beat against my face
once again I held my breath in
with scaly-feet and carrion breath
kept my soul from floating
away
some peer down because
they are watching the electricity snap
you have thick thighs and a round rump and
tyrannosaurus arms
you ask if
you can just
finish

2: Paleontological abuse mind-set

A map of Texas
is void of communication.

A skull on the floor
is an obligation.

Various creatures, framed or plaster or sketched or without skin or without bodies
is secretive.

Whimsy
is a commodity.

A pile of your boots
is a condition for receiving love.

An axe
is "doing to" someone.

Another axe
is additive.

A book on ancient birds
has no limits.

A pencil sharpener for soft-leaded drawing pencils
is power over someone.

define:metamorphic

Something unfamiliar, then:
a rush of pain
a shout
stench that covers my hands and my hair
and bleeding that I cannot quell.

why
I think, laying after
why did i do this
when he does not care about me
when this will mean nothing to him

But that is exactly why
and
realizing this, I smile
and turn away

***

A tile, at first glance
on second, something far more
insidious.
then,
blades between my fingers and
part of what drew me to you
in the first place

***

At some point, I must
not be
that rock
anymore

(Or Walk 19 mins.)

It is
It is
It is

I always find myself back here, and I do not know the way home.

Define:igneous

You have not stopped searching.

Here,
though.

it is      a different story





I want to sit within the twists of your cerebrum
and sing lullabies to your heart in its own rhythm

but only for a little while



. . .
you have not stopped searching, and i




have yet to begin

Define:sedimentary

At some point, I must be
the rock
onto which
you lower yourself
but
At some point, I must
not be
that rock
anymore

Cradle Song

My lullaby is the emptiness
the way that there is no one between the floor and the ceiling
the dart throw of solitude

a raspy voice that whispers
"you are alone"
to the quiet

the hand that is not around my waist
the lips that do not kiss me awake in the mornings

a locked door
two
three
locked doors

a twin bed with dirty sheets

eyes that say
it is the evening
you best be going
now

Silverjaw Minnow

Each time, it gets harder

In the evening half-light
filtered through trees and across distance and
red-green,

I wonder how you see me
sometimes I think that it is tall and beautiful and unattainable
and at other times I think that it is silly and childish and clumsy

I spent the day in the water, walking far out toward Long Island, past the waders and swimmers in bikinis with long hair, out to where the boats were and the seaweed was tall and the sand was silky and the water was cold

and I dug deep in the sand, to where there were fish eggs and shells and translucent rocks, and there was a child beside me but we did not speak, because we were both building, piling the sand and mosaicing it with the rocks we had found, digging moats for the minnows and crabs and repairing the toddler-damage to our fortified walls.

I wonder how you see me, because sometimes I am the girl riding the plastic sea-turtle around and around in circles and laughing from deep inside,

but sometimes I am the woman, sitting back, deep in the back of my skull, planning and thinking and analyzing, the very old woman with steady hands and a wrinkled breast that is a pillow for all who are weary, having lived out its reprosexual purposes and been upcycled...

and sometimes I dance in bars.
Sometimes it is in short skirts.

So on nights like this, when the light makes the trees black against its brightness and the sun considers setting,
Those women watch it.
Those women watch it, and they wonder
if you could love one of us at all
and which of us it is

Walk of

Driving by, I see our ghosts
You, me,
a third, also me,
and you and I are the only ones who wish for that moment
back.

The night before
driving the morning after,
weaving the one-way streets
to not say
good-morning

to the man with two dogs.

130

You hold
my face
against yours
I say, "Is this love?"
You say, "no."
Thank God.
I imagined love would be more
magnetic
than dying.
Not really dying,
just
losing a life.
Held against you,
You do not say
Do not cry
because
there is not a chance
that I would
and not
because you
comfort me.