Poetry

Because I am lonely, I am always shying away from the mirror.

They’re shrieking down Little Round Top, receiving the good girls’ glares.

At night the wildfire swelled the blurred interior like a lung of light.

You’re too far from where I sit to admire your finery up close.

We roasted mastodons. Designed skewers, ovens, steampits.

Less magic, less defense, more speed, more stealth.

There’s anger in the sound of a V-8 engine that puts me at ease.

You’d probably prefer to sneak back into me very still, swollen.

I slipped one sparrow black and shivering into my mouth.

I blush whenever that room in Ensenada comes to mind.

I’d have guessed the winter this way, every bitter plum already singing.

The smell of death, once it gets inside your nose, is unmistakable.

By the kitchen sink, my aunt held a fish as if holding the Holy Body.

Lure, yes, you would know how to catch and clean such a thing.

The dugout boats kissing the shoreline have ferried us into open markets. Girl, you call me in time, where this too can be forgotten. The hands that made them asking for more things in dim light.

Welcome to my bed. I have these two beers, do you want them?

The pupils are toothpicks. The lake is a sky with a circle beneath.

He loves me. That’s half enough: he’s the only man around.

Everything hung in perfect balance. Light and dark, heaven and hell.

I'll pick a black card of luck for you: star, pinkmoon, mirror, ostrich eye.

I’m going to save up against the flood and stagger to carry nothing.

It is here I learn the speech of men. The speechless guilt of every swig.

Time is a hearse and horse, a carrot and stick, a window and widow.

Imagine the world you want to live in; make the world in this image.

i was a wild thing down by the river, quiet like wild things are.

Exhausted, androgynous, delirious, I delight in my many parts.

In hushed awe they talk of things to come, a golden time of flowering.

I dug a hole in you; I jumped (here is the church, here is the steeple).

Elsewhere, perhaps here too, regimes stagger, a congress ends.

I told you how I’ve always been attracted to little violences.