A stress fracture from too much running.

Her body returned to how it was the day we met,

broken but beautiful. And all that final night,

sprawled in the heat of the city’s

blackout, her crutches leaned against

the wall like rifles, she seethed with

what I hadn’t done. Until I proposed

the obvious. I put her on my back and

carried her down the stairs, eleven

flights to Houston. The firelights

blinking on the generator

heat. The cement stairs chipped and gray.

The pause at each landing. The growing

noise from the neighborhood kids,

for whom this was a great night, a joyous

night, the feeling of her weight

on my back, knowing she hated me,

knowing that when we got to the bottom,

and pushed out the air lock of those

silly pools and swirls of gold, out into

the heavy night, and she could crutch on

her own across the street, she wouldn’t

look back. And she didn’t.

Tautology

Tautology

She sends me a

photograph from

a small Denver

cemetery, shot

by camera phone.

I wonder if that’s her long

shadow behind

the headstone

bearing our names;

I wonder, too,

if the crunched

leaves scattered there

made her briefly

nostalgic, or

thoughtful, before

she snapped and

swiped the forward

button, remarking

Look, John,

we’re dead.

Oslo

Oslo

I’ve been here

before, hotels

in bluish light,

squares of ice.

Outside the city

opera house

taxi tires

crunch on pavements

of salt, first

departures. I begin

a letter describing the day,

knowing you’ll

never read it. Later,

among the commuters,

I’m on the street,

and, for an instant,

I feel

you’re here.

Ice, lights,

the wind’s knowing sere.

It’s been two years.

Ides

Ides

And so

begins the rain,

stereo needle

lowered to

waiting disc,

volume raised

until a song

is heard.

Saudade

Saudade

means nostalgia, I’m told, but also

nostalgia for what never was. Isn’t it

the same thing? At a café

in Rio flies wreathe my glass.

How you would have loved this: the waiter

sweating his knit shirt dark. Children

loping, in tiny suits or long shorts, dragging

toys and towels to the beach. We talk,

or I talk, and imagine your answer, the heat clouding our view.

Here, again, grief fashioned in its cruelest translation:

my imagined you is all I have left of you.

THREE

THREE

English Hours, Three Pieces of Advice

English Hours, Three Pieces of Advice

For Peter Carey

Join a gym; find a pub;

don’t forget to

walk, this last

part the easiest

to follow

especially after

you told

of the old

horse-track oval

leaving a

spectral halo

around Stanley

Gardens.

Home late, I

find myself

circling the cream-

white houses,

limestone crescents,

the somber churches

and dimmed bistros,

going back, further

back, until I don’t

know whether

I’m arriving.

You, for whom two

places are

one place,

understand this

sense of vertigo