Inside
the pouch of what will be
another day, we cling love makes
her parody of us Most orifices we close
in sleep, as we do the window the envelope
in the pocket of the desk On the other side
of closure, cluttered music notched with silence
Some doors we’d locked are opening
Volition surrounds us now, hot
in the hinges Before day, I think
my needs, all their moist appendages
are painted with an obvious quaintness, like a barn
on a hill on the side of a milk carton
Why must I be latched to another
as a burr in order to open?
What if I were as much the field
as the seed as much the act of planting
as the rain that follows?
Little Earthquakes
On Silver Drive, even the street signs are thirsty.
BUMP they demand. DON’T STOP.
What I see in my sideview is an oncoming summer
bead of sweat streak down my neck, cement
supple, undercarriage thrum of highway.
I may never get objects in mirror as close as I need.
In the classroom, the chalkboard wants
to watch us. Your desk flushes
with the touch of papers, shuffled.
When I go camping, marshmallows melt,
smoke stuck in my hair. In the morning,
cornflakes in their box beg to see you,
to sugar milk your bowl. The hunger
keeps insisting on the need for itself,
its uses too numerous to list.
My hunger has nothing and everything to do
with survival—its renewal, a kind of safety.
The circle of pleasure, pure and useless.
Everything purrs with tiny seismic want:
combustion engines, hubcaps, the two
tin shakers rattling ice, earrings through
the nibble of your lobes. Unfingered
pomade in a sealed jar, yearning against its lid.
When I Began to Smell Time
I could no longer sleep.
I knew what your hands had done
to get to me. I felt the blur
of their deeds as you held me.
I thought I wanted to know
what would happen. But then
the maps began to talk all night
in languages I didn’t understand.
I felt their edges curl
like phantom limbs. I knew
it meant that you were leaving,
that you’d been leaving all along.
I smelled then only absence,
tasted the flag of you, waving
goodbye against the night.
