BREAK

When I told you about the rat you thought I’d gone crazy.

Darling there are traps, you said; anyway, they don’t want

anything in here, you take a broom, you shoo it outside.

It’s mice you have to worry about. I showed you my hands,

the palms scrubbed raw. What’s wrong with you? you said,

the crawling sensation still in my skin, I couldn’t get rid of

it, couldn’t touch food, hadn’t eaten all day, it died right

there. You stroked and stroked the sting, making it worse,

it was hurting, you couldn’t stop. I was stuttering into your

shoulder. You got inside me still holding my hands, kissing

through the snot, little murderess, little death-dealer, you

couldn’t help it, none of us ever could.

GROVE

I sat on your lap you laid your head against my back saying

into my spine I understand, I don’t know why I pretended I

didn’t. I understand everything you do. And you believed it.

That you understood. Why the trees were twisted, why some

grew in air or hobbled alone across the white page, leafless,

dripping. You’d accused me of insisting on desolation and I

said, no, no, this is what it means to be a tree, a tree is alone,

it lives long past everything else that could know it. I don’t

mean to make the tree small; it is we who are small. That’s

what I meant. I never drew myself next to you. It was you

alone, the tree alone. Me beyond the branch, a gleaming.

CUPID

It is the immortal

a hot white wave

a monster

stirring the water.

It takes no delight in what it does.

It just

does.

NARCISSUS

When it was warmer we rolled our pants to our knees and

stepped through the stream. Good old ice water, an ache

deep in the flesh, I followed you over the moss. We talked

calmly about the end of my lease on the cottage, walking

against the current, me in the V left by your legs, my eyes on

the rocks, on you, on the rocks. What, here, could love me?

Not you, climbing the ladder of fallen logs with easy steps,

leaving me at the bottom, foot caught between stones. You

were too high up to take my hand, though you reached for

me anyway: Come on. To get free I skinned myself from

ankle to toe and there was blood in the water, a sullen swirl,

staining your face in the stream.

LINEAGE

Here’s my face, you say/ my breast/ the wet/ secret/ he never

really left/ a mark./ That’s how good/ he was/ and you are

proud/ of how you took it/ the star/ the tragic/ lead/ you are

a giver./ Of head/ of silences./ It’s not really/ separable./

His pleasure/ eventually/ your pleasure/ the solar plexus/