You’ve read Virgil, so you know how this works
in the plush seats, watching sad
films and thinking about the weather?
The blue stone, Maier & Berkele,
the fine afternoon on the rock. The sun
the way it is now. You told him not to worry…
At least he remembers it that way.
He leaves himself imagining the prospects:
the world swarming with people below,
the mad look on your face that meant dread.
Hand clutching anything–the planet, wet
paint, the dripping brush you held.
He tells you to Shh, don’t speak,
and the clouds go on moving about you,
like it is a normal day. But even you know
the light would not be so upsetting,
so positive and ordinary, without the rain
falling through pinholes in the sky.
Precipice
her apartment, not too far,
up a few flights, a few streets, not too far,
you go there one day
and that is your true love
the cat seeking you on the roof; the dark side
he has for you
or maybe it’s a slurry or
a thing unknown till now, a sweet onion you celebrate
or an elaborate sound, a brief and bitter rain
and also the bilge pump gone, with no notice
it’s gone brackish,
not even unseen
but no more loving patience,
the hiss which compels her
while her lips waver, to form the word,
is ancient
like roses=ancient
but no roses, or roses, something real
isn’t happening, something astonishing
that should be, that can’t even begin right
because it is Rowan, that is her bilge waters and fire
(and also her tense mouth watering in retreat, its tender pit)
and the whelps imagining the disgusting things you’ll do
because the vagabond
dismays her, grinning beneath you
his teeth are pointy
and oh in the shoulders the suburbs everyone does it
fuzzy
but not inside
(and not without some violence, the owls, you could go)
For the Eighties
there was some meat left that we couldn’t finish.
And the waiter–none of us–had bags
so you wrapped it in tin foil and took it home.
Heart. Albumen.
Made a mess of your pocket, I’ll bet.
Later, I said that I wanted you to love me
like you used to and you said, how?
and I said, remember?
the way we went over the Rubik’s, a craze.
Homestead
Now we’d have lived there–
it finally stopped ticking
and there was another town–
America, the fable part we missed.
There was Appalachia, and it was
beginning to be Midwest–
hill-farms giving way to flatter places
where there would be guess-work.
Should we plant corn? Or maybe
peas? We would need a tractor.
You patted your hammock and said
Sally Field? I said, Sally Field.
That’s how we knew we were still alive.
The true part–
nevermind. Next thing you know
the remake’s being done–
better than the original.
And we didn’t want to look up
to see the actors describing
their challenges to one another.
Sensational? You know.
Weeds overgrown.
14 hour days.
Just get over it.
Insolvency
I did it so much. I loved your mouth;
it was a napkin, I said. And your face was a wide
white tablecloth with a red rectangle in the dead,
white center. Distance was not contriving then,
there was no picnic to go to. Not a leaf
in the perfectly circular table which had accepted me.
(Symbolic of your prettiness.
You were open to me; unrealistically so.)
–but the void threatened us.
It was not definitive or personal, but it hit us
as if we were sitting down to eat. As we really were
bartering for the blood on each other’s lips.