Self-Portrait

the I is what it does, the sum, or
some complex rhythm, but we’re
unheld, so no matter, except
for the I, that’s enough.

*

I thought I felt the seed take. I
agreed to shuffle, to let
winds or calmer hands arrange.
I think the seed took, but then
I forgot. And look here. Suddenly
numbers to search and rue. The numbers
nod to time and proof. Each hurt
handed over, put away.

*

we’re standing, not touching. we’re
talking sideways, we’ve never met, but
we love the idea of the you, so I love
you and we’re looking at the picture,
or the neighborhood or the ice in the dams
and we look fresh point to point,
consulting, making a picture ours. we
make a show, look from this point to that, while
we hold a little candle at the corner, our
silent agenda, our joy. we’re not touching.

Keep

to be called
forth the seed in my bed
quotes back – the temporary
blindness stutters gifts me
through chattering boxes
the calendar hanging down
her wells
the East view lush
and bridled

Portraits

*
white paper birds
cawing and silent
a pattern of
dance claw
retreat. smooth
as stone. bright
as river. your advance
a welcome pain, a border
a stand of glass trees.


*
mapped in awkward
tight then flowing
door frames, noises
weight makes and drift
of light.
noise of vans gunning it
down the alleyway, pebbles
kicking up in the sun.


*
thick hair in tangles around
a three-year-old's waist &
frailty. a name from flesh,
name from clay.


*
creases in your navy blue work
pants. the ink stain in your
left shirt pocket. black and
spreading in a slow moon
tide.


*
one thin gold bit. I
remember
your breasts
swinging as you dried
yourself from a shower.
wet along
your back,
in your hair.


*
a grasshopper, legs folded
in tight angles, ankle over
hipbone. a room stacked and
staked with ideas and paper,
pressed into dust.


*
rice & beans in
a bowl -- sitting on
handlebars angles
cutting brick walls
a few feet from your
head in sleep. your
cold hands
and mine. strings
between mittens.


*
an almost
feline
investigation
of the noise
from
hinges.
this and then
that flung
upward in a
jagged
journey.


*
coinshine fills reflections.
your tendency, mine in a
dusty slope. I grew blue
morning glories that year,
built a frail wall of maple
and twine. every morning
field stubble cut at my feet.
knotted purple wild flowers
scratched at your stone.


*
is pity
expected here. a
rough break -
stood swaying on the
bridge by the dam. you work
in a hospital,
watch people
come and go. push
yourself past your face,
a house of cards
picking up a tremble
from the wind.


*
slow and wide, thick across
the tongue, ribbons tangled
and falling. hot beer
bottles through air, hitting
water and shattering. you,
slow and wide. roll
and empty.


*
catching
then
letting go.

again across the river,
behind a thin cloth.
your mouth on my
forehead,
frost cut and shine
against our voices.

We’re a scene.

A scenery. The idea swallows
the object. You were bagging up my guilt.
Every possible scenario unworthy. We’re not
tumbling anymore; we’re not fresh, or a fresh
pace. We work in shifts, and I’ve lost cleverness,
pattern; I’m just origin. Every time I thought an answer,
I thought, “Here we go again”. Only let’s frame
the deep alone. The loss of gloss, of
syncopation. We’re wild here, no rhythm. I won’t acquire you.
I have no needs. “No needs” runs to leave me.

Julys

-2005-
We chose this gap to tricky moon—

feet breaking
to claimed woods
out back

lantern all
set, lightness
in lungs—the three-year-old

sits, a stalk,
to go with saying—independence.

—a slight clover, clamped hard,
whittled in the kitchen,
lights out.

-2003-
Outside the library,
sticking into tired-blue
Midwest sky.

There was a song for you—joy, little
patch of poison grass, boys for Jesus,
you got your hands all wet
shouting jokes and howdy ma’am.

walked in circles, never
in the green—held
the baby, sticky, to
chest.


-2004-
Westward, late crickets, refusal to sleep; hold on
grounding chains, hold me brown
rock. Specifically,
crossed the damned
amber hills.

Cleared to see
lit-up boxes,
horizon.

wrapped in paper. and layer and layer.

Not to inflict oneself
is dreadful. I know joy
is flat from the outside.

Perhaps it's silly to want
a spectrum as full as a train.

At the station where I followed
you down, I heard the man
calling out to confess our sins. How
to hear him, to know he's sound.

new year, a month late

I was told the ocean was a thin film.
Underneath was rock. I was told just
to create. We decided living wasn’t
the forward gaze. You smelled like this
when I knew you first – you smelled like my face
in our hair. The room filled up; I wanted
to be looking but judgment
sleeps lightly. At the point when we’re only conductor,
the energy collected by sight is enough to sustain

Bedfellow

Your collectors betray me
in threads.

Each project a hand-
sewn dead pigeon, plucked

from eaves. The inherited
ink and all those necessary

distances and sips – are you
pitching, indecision,

at each faint resuscitation ahead.

***

The pool, not as dark as I’d expected, as
you’d described.

The leaves of paper flake off to reveal,
I’m sure, flight –

Here as we sidle up to bed.

What separation

What clues, ashy and nimble.
Each noun deserves an adjective, no?

The pair makes its way to memory.
Joy, of course, overrated. Even past
joy, we suffer. Not at loss; just to
see it and its walls, know them as thin.
Hold steady to them, a cocoon, a game.
No exceptions. Our thin joy not enough,
but the memory – voices, a chord, threads
of each city we made and left. I revoke, you
revoke. Our hands there in the spectrum-
whole, conductor, flow.

The Voices Weren't Telling They Were Asking

If you’ll have me, what’s left? This
umbrella-ed half-light.

Even my face won’t leave your face, even
as face wounds, there's
the beacon—we only have a half-fair
copy, what we’ll have.

‘No’ Shows Us / Any Black Box

Peels away to reveal—convergence or dissolution? Or it hangs the sound, incorrectly, on the page. We agree. Saying something makes it, or the other way around. The children flank us, and if only freed direction would. You’ll agree on disarmament, but not the sound track or steps. You won't be a witness.

What could you want beyond a ditty, a lozenge, a spiral in your eye?

Walking, bitterness
flushes
free to find
weight
not heft
not substance
but a discrete
downward pull
bracketing the
here
what’s left
after
force
has gone
its way.

Mirror:

River: The North Tonawanda horses and reupholstered tails out over the Grand and its mid day lights; slivers of body arranged with audio and still discernable hair and my girl in the ill-fitting hat saying “each room keeps being real” with an edge of disgust or pity and the rhinestones and moulds with price tags and spin; kid with “I have a dream” sticker peeling on her shirt; chunks of ice in the river. Relentless Midwest riverside lights.

***

River: Two women in a canoe, paddle clacking fiberglass, clacking water, a strange tongue, neat green & rowed garden. The word is stale, has been read in a book, found in the mail or picked off a grimy beach. He doesn’t taste it, just spits it out for the ladies on the bus. Fat man is trying to sell me something, has his fingers digging in my pockets, thighs.

Autobiography

Winnow it
to a single stream?
Lists of want
more complete.
Things to turn to, things to be
--but we’re a form of list that
won’t want.

Oddly Enough

Oddly enough, time for one thing,
then another. It's okay
to wish it away. Logic leads us
there again and again. The Maple helicopters,
sometimes, seem to be always rising.
There's the image of the diapered baby,
not knowing better
or worse, joyful, tugging futilely
at the water pump. That was then,
but here we are--no chemical
creates logic. But I was going to say,
here, now, I was going to say...