Broken Friendship Bracelet
1.
Hug versus handshake. Pea shoots,
snap judgment, a story told
by the dirt tracked into the hallway.
Each breath is a revenge.
Chip your tooth on old candy, cars
a mile off on the freeway. A low
drum in your ear. But whole
means different things to different people.
2.
But whole means different things to different people.
Where I didn’t have a path and so the path
was ice, who I am now like. Each breath
a mirror. Each echo was your voice.
Calendar: January
Wish that you could lose it softer. A cloud
that thins. When the god comes down, you see
each tiny pebble, the trail of an ant, the scent
tasted by a snake on each inhalation. A bloom.
Then the light fades. You overhear the conversations
you’ve just had. Back to coffee, subway
token, raisins fished out of the grimy plastic bag.
It happens once a season—the air slowly changes color,
you leak into another skin. Who was she?
But losing hard bites into your hands. Hungry for
the taste of dirt, your doorway’s changed, watch out
for the sky’s unfamiliar color. It was tornado season for two years.
The Reptile House
You were always flinching, ugly with surprise. Victim
of your own bad lighting. Skin-deep,
skinless and inflexible, springing with sensation
at the lightest touch. Predictable.
My clockwork girl, my second beating pulse. For weeks
I felt your blood moving like my own, lay behind you
on the bed and stroked your chest above the heart,
took your warm breasts into my palms. Slowly
you calmed. In sleep your face is like a bird’s
rich wings unfolding. I kissed your chin;
you shrugged me off, but gently. To touch you
is to go right through you. So, soon that’s what happened:
my hands met the empty sheets. Your puzzled face.
Caught in your own escape, you tensed, you cried.
I hated your thin lips, tight cheeks. And we had this fight,
finally. Hip-deep in the snakes’ shed skins.
Calendar: March
New ways of keeping up the neighbors—
trumpet at midnight, a glass coin in my throat.
I got caught closing your diary. Traveling,
we are so good at motion, a being on springs. So many
things to do in the dark. The turn-away, a safer word. Get left
for a whole lifetime of blind corners, learn to say no. A pyre
of burning leaves. Your memory in smoke.
Calendar: May
Fine, are you happy you survived? The clock
resumes its tick. The window rolls open,
wind reshapes your face, your hands make a shape
that means I am alone, means, fine, I’m happy.
Telling her to change the channel.
When I get up from my seat on the train,
my damp shirt, unsticking from my back,
feels for an instant like a stranger’s palm,
pressing and lifting. Push-button, flip-book.
So many hands. But maybe travel is impossible.
Calendar: June
1.
In the hot room surrounded by fans, touching
my dirty fingertips, sweating inside my shirt.
The house is a slow oven. I go shopping in my own past—
those well-worn handles, broken jars, alone with you.
Can you let me know, the sound that travels back.
And then I was in the hallway with the big empty cart,
its hollow boom that echoed with each roll. A perfect mess.
Why wouldn’t you just say hunger? Why wouldn’t you?
2.
I take the long way there. It’s been a year and I’ve got
time in a pocket, fingerprint bruises,
deep breaths that make clouds. The running stops.
The rush of days don’t care about your heart.
Where were we, with the sky ripening
at sunset, with the branches forming cages overhead?
Where were your words? Now, I am: soundless, happy,
another pin on the trestle, spoke on the wheel.
In the Well
An initial stretch, which is almost painful,
and you break like the surface of water.
Helpless and loud, even in small ways. Forced
to pay attention? Fingertips, the scent
of hibiscus. A puzzle I slowly unlocked,
tried to work out of myself like a splinter.
A muzzle on me. Then I was so warm
I had to ask for help stripping my sweater,
cloudy and high, turned inside-out.
I asked for another point of pain, or a kiss.
Rope-climbing
To lift myself toward heaven.
The fear of falling and then
I fell. What held me
also scraped me raw.
Chalk dust, slick heat.
Told me, this is your body:
bones that knock, blood that travels
in loops and knots. Sore ankles and palms.
Something bloomed out of me,
like pollen escaping a flower.
A cloud of fine grit, settling in
my skin. I moved with the air.
Post Office Box
I don’t like to tell people about this, but I died.
Or: I split myself in half. One locked herself in a room
and starved. Now I carry her around in me,
a light, thin body blown through by breezes.
She still gets letters here sometimes. Upstairs in her attic,
I hear her sobbing as she reads them.
It gives me that disconnected feeling.
Like a TV that can’t receive a signal.
Calendar: July
Tell me I am better than my own thoughts.
I wait, fold paper, until we can leave. In the hall
I recognized your green jacket, I found
the pen left on the shelf. Popping flowers
like loose beads on a cover, cracking new eggs.
I had wanted to make a mark here, build my name.
Wanted to say, sing. But now, pretty distresses.
In a temporary mood. And you, lonely and bold.
Calendar: August
The book disease. A sky that’s closing,
dead leaves on the street. I write a love letter
to your horn section. Hands covered in fine dust.
Maybe we have it, maybe the moon is
close enough. Maybe you’re the
brass plate, golden record.
I want to rattle your pill bottle. I want
to put my hands inside your pockets, bite your hair.
You had to move away and give the hot mouth its space.
You had to let the rock move in its own time.
We end up, together, a number on the dial.
Baby, be safe. Everybody gets left.
2:30 AM
The salt cellar holds so many mute
and sparkling lives. The spoon’s gentle belly
hides a serrate edge; its cold luster
frames a hollow shape that means a name.
In this dark house only the machines speak.
An eye in the night, I wake truly alone,
but my nerves are lit. Walk into the kitchen with
hot mouth and cold feet. Inside the shelves
lay metal icicles, silent teeth. Closed drawer,
closed fist. Making half-moons on my own hands.
Meeting Strangers
A silent start. What is the mind
of this movement? We were slow
creatures in the dim forest, hand
to palm to floor, some heavy limbs, fingers rising
like tree trunks rolling over moss. A story I tell
by bending over your back. For we are always
relieved to have somewhere to go
and something to fall for. A delayed drop.
A winter sun, rocks bleached like snow.
Two Months
What I want for you: a lake,
a glass of water, necklace
of mosquito bites, mouthful of salt.
What I have: a photograph. My sheets freeze.
You’d slept in them: striped shadows, half-closed blinds,
a half-drawn sheet. You: picturesque. Tonight
we walked the city street to street in twilight.
Sad length to length: wrist to a nail, throat
to a flower. You’d flowered. You’d fallen
like a ripe bloom. We ended at the ocean,
sat on a sand-dune. The sky
an upturned bowl around our heads. We couldn’t
speak; it was too close. The ocean
whispered small reproaches. I’ll ask, Would you walk
me home again? You:
gallant. Three traffic-lights to my apartment.
Or would you turn around in your sleep
and show me your cool face, closed eyes, cold feet,
hitched breath, heartbeat. What would you murmur:
let’s end it. Let go.
Calendar: September
Flip book, false hands, a string
of lights. A temperature
taker, history of obsessions.
A ticking timepiece. My own
blank slate. A thank you,
down the line.
Calendar: October
Don’t look that way. Slow but don’t break,
knock for a loop. Your name was my graffiti.
I was elsewhere at sunset, making change. The rooftops
on our block a mountain range, my heart a cold liquid.
Other people are just shapes you see through heavy fabric.
They grind themselves into dust. But I don’t have to guess—
what I need is artificial light. Finally my own body
is the lover I’d been waiting for, the reason to eat and sleep.
To ring a bell, start talking. I am the engine in my own chest.
Life Story
Whose voice raises these questions? A clear sky
studded with balloons. In the mirror, the light is finer
and my face is almost clear. I guess everyone
has some rich joke. Maybe the children are never happy.
That’s me standing at the bottom of the staircase.
In my dreams, that’s me, I guess. Wanting to matter,
or to jump. To learn one thousand words by heart.
A few marbles at the bottom of a lake.
A night sky clear of stars.
Who ever finds themselves in a fishpool?
Echo
To live in the groove of this loss. Hurt a bright sail
that unfurls over weeks. I unpack the same goddamn box
over and over: blue pottery shard, torn drawing
on old paper, lock of hair, dried apple seeds.
My teeth miss the shape of your name.
Remembering the nights we fought and I felt
God on like a light in the ceiling, a palm on my chest.
No answer, now. Just my own breath, singing.
Prayer
Try not to wake from the dream of driving,
of running, the trance that moves your hand
over a blank page. Asleep your fingers hold the violin’s bow,
they are loose and precise, practicing their only purpose.
To funnel meaning into silence. Dumb,
they stitch together gut and wire. Your body knows itself
when you think of nothing, and, knowing nothing
but itself, your body bends to its task:
air in, air out, hands resting on the steering wheel
while your headlights rake the asphalt road
and interrupt the nighttime worlds of moths and rabbits.
Whom you don’t see. Whose voice was escaping
the radio, and taking you with it? With the bag of chips,
your hand moves to your mouth and then the bag is empty.
Where was your mind? With the temporary calligraphy of smoke
writing intentions on the air as it stretches,
changes, dissipates, wakes to clear air. Delivering,
as it disappears, its message to heaven.
Cycle of Water
A pregnant cloud.
A grown man stepping into a rain barrel.
The light feet of insects, floating on the sky.
A toad’s belly.
A morning-glory vine.
The burned-out shell of an old barnhouse.
Six feet of sunflowers.
A twisting pipe.
The surface tension on a cup of water.
My tall, transparent companion.
A silver spoon. Leading to:
A sobbing sound, in a tiny white-walled room.
The shallow bottom of a river. The murk.
Goldfishes’ glowing bodies.
Again:
A cloud. I told you. A barrel. Insects. Belly. Morning-glory.
A skeleton, toast. A pipe. A curse. The surface
tension. A silver tool. My companion, sobbing.
Shallow and dark. The body’s glow.
Calendar: November
Not everyone can be the teller of a story,
live in their own haze of gilt. We get out of the game.
I feel the bell ring inside me, hands shaping
an absent dance partner—what is a rift? Your you,
your always-falling footfalls. We walk the marriage truce.
And rise, in ordinary sunlight. And sleep, in silence.
Calendar: December
Hard to trade a sure good thing,
but we do it, every year. Warmth falls away,
each time a fresh surprise. Then the first snowfall
is an intricate kiss—a ghost outline which fills
until the entire city is one softened line.
Winter, we’d left you in the dirty middle.
Mud on my boots from last March makes
shabby pockets on the fresh white ground.
This city sidewalk, my white breath in the air,
the warmth of a gloved hand—you made me
what I am, a grateful mess. Told me
to stay surprised, meaning, thank you.
Fish Hook
Open mouth, cold breast. Fish hook, closed fist.
I knew you were special when you broke my arm.
Cup cake, chump change. I always had what I
already wanted. Dreamlike, sleepless, drinking soup.
Heat that radiates from my palms to my wet hair.
Has it happened for you yet, what’s the number.
Has it unlocked, tooth chipped, falling flat.
Have it shaken for your understanding.
I want you right now to boil the toaster, let the air out of
the tires. Your skin that smells like buckwheat honey,
belly smooth as the peel of a clementine. When the music
wakes up it wants us. An eye in the night and my candle is lit.
Can we just keep doing this until the food
runs out. Golden light, noble profile, oil pooling
on the kitchen counter. Fingers cold on the slate
tiles. Can we just keep
doing this until the lights come off.
Open me up. Pull the skin, flake, punt deeper, deep
inside me, belly-warm, a bauble forming,
beginning to bawl, spun like lace, a blooming whorl.
Call it a baby. Hot in the whirlpool. Out in the world.