shirt
and was found
hanging in a garage
two states away.
I wonder whose heart
he didn’t dare hold close.
I mean,
other than mine
THE DANCE HALL
I knew no one. A bar at the edge of the wood and music I
hadn’t heard music in a week or seen a human face and
there was yours, a miracle, selling tickets at the door; you
took my hand and stamped it black. Jade eyes into mine
and silver hair, older than any man I’d ever thought was
beautiful, your beauty the first thing that hurt and I moved
into the room solid with plaid shirts and me in my black
dress so this is the country. I drank a cup of punch and ate
almonds from a plastic bowl and you came and dug your
hand next to mine wiped your salty fingers on your hip
and looked down at my shirt unironed and crooked teeth
agleam in the yellow light. I didn’t spend a minute saying
no. You led me through the music, under your arm, pressed
against your side, sweat slicking us wherever we touched. I
spun and you stopped me and said Where are you
staying. I saw the ring on your finger. The bottom dropping out.
We talked on the stage steps, half hidden by a ficus. A cup of
punch on your knee, jeans so tight at the thigh I could see
how big you were. I blushed, touched it anyway. Not a sound
from you. Watching my face, little smile, devastation: the
music grew. Where’s your wife, I said, and you laughed: we
would never be in public together again. I think I’m drunk, I
said, moving my hand away. There’s no booze in that punch,
darling, you said, and got me another glass.
ASCALON
St. George—
helmet aslant, boot on the back.
But where is victory?
The staff never moves,
hovers just above the tongue.
He’ll wait forever for that hard kiss.
I make a list: spear, spurs,
silver, speed.
Good luck, George says.
And the dragon
winks.
FIRST
Slapped between the sheets no ceremony you skinned me
stockings to boots I hadn’t shaved I couldn’t spread my legs
you got in anyway. No condom no question Did you want or
Have you got just your hand against my face, a stroke before
the slap. I was dry when you got inside. I hid from you. I
didn’t come. Your skin in my mouth, bitter, delicious, you too
close to see, what was touching me, your breath all around,
the sound of something chasing us. It caught up.
AMATEUR
I drew my way through the year, having dropped out of
everything. That ad for the cabin written for someone like
me, who didn’t know what Get Away Cheap meant; you can’t
get away. I went to live like a nun, pure, distractionless.
One packed bag. I wanted to draw nature. Tired of drawing
people. Instead I drew you: as a tree, a fox, a stream, a dragon,
a devil. I drew you as I used to draw myself, at first to make
more of you, later to get rid of you, and now I don’t draw you
at all, there are other things, and I never got it right.
ADONIS
We met once
two towns over
for breakfast. A diner. Butter
sunk in the muffins. Two plates
of bacon. There was snow
stuck to the windows, a waitress
in blue pulling at her stocking.
We sat on the same side
in a booth and I held your hand so tight.
How strange to have you
out in the world. Coffee. Syrup.
the way you liked your eggs
gutted on toast.
What, you said, your mouth full,
I kept touching
your face. You brought it closer
to mine, looked in my eyes. There was some
promise there. Some bargain. A roach
on the floor. Just let me look at you.
The check came. We left
in separate cars.
ELEGY
For a while in the wood I was drawing scissors. Before the
dance, before your hands, I didn’t even have a premonition
of you, no black mark against the moon, no bad dream
folded into the sheet, it was just me, and that old table, and
my model, lying in my lap. I’d found them in a drawer of
useless things—snapped rubber bands, birthday candles,
half a package of yellowed paper plates. Silver blades, brass
handle, I tested the tips against the side of my finger—oh,
they could cut, those scissors, but not there, no, you couldn’t
chop a tree with them, or make a path; the wood wanted
harder things, a knife, an ax. When I found a loose thread on
my shirt I didn’t think of the scissors, her legs spread on the
table beside the bed: I just put the hem to my lips and bit.
INTAGLIO
The striped mattress, how thin it was, the wire cot beneath
biting into my bones the blankets
folded double did not help.
I don’t know what makes a person willing.
One evening I ran out of ink
and that same evening you brought me three new jars
and we sat testing them to see
if the different colors had different smells
or if black was really distinguishable
via a faint taste of licorice. We laughed like pigs.
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