to confess your moral dilemma

TO BLOW or NOT TO BLOW.

Ask me, what light through

yonder window breaks?

It will be your fucking face.

I’m sorry;

I’m probably going too far.

You are only flirting.

Let me retract my nails.

Let go of your ponytail

to ask you

as a woman

do not do this.

I trust my lover far more

than you trust your pheromones

but you are temptation after a fight.

You are one more drink at the bar.

You are the uncomfortable silence in the car ride home.

You are a crowbar between us in bed,

my doubt when he hands are open

but his eyes are closed.

You are cold feet tripping down the aisle.

You are standing on the alter licking his earlobe.

You are lipstick stains,

hidden receipts,

flowers that don’t know my name.

You are the love poem he wrote for me.

Please,

relationships are hard enough.

People are so fucked up these days.

Dating is like finding the least rusted bear trap

around the ankles of someone

you just might be able to look at

for the rest of your life.

Intimacy is the art of licking wounds.

It’s taken me years to let anyone kiss me

when my lips were chapped.

When the John loves the Prostitute

The way she moves,

as if everything in this town

could pay for a steak.

When she walks,

the streetlights turn upside down;

their pockets shook for change.

She is always pacing,

no matter how much I pay her.

As she undresses, her body uncorks

like a champagne bottle.

This time, I brought her

chocolate-covered cherries.

She does not stay.

Recycling

While digging through piles

of tired clothing at the Goodwill

on University Avenue, somewhere

between the broken cassette tapes

and pit-stained blouses, I lost

the last thing he gave me.

It was a birthday gift

from Berlin: a wallet made

from recycled milk cartons.

I frantically searched the aisles

I had just so patiently excavated.

My eyes craved to see it’s white corners

hidden under a winter hat or foolishly

laying at the foot of the shoe rack.

I looked for an hour, cried in the car

as if we had celebrated my birthday together,

as if he hadn’t left a long time ago,

before any of this clothing was worn.

The Death of Farrah Fawcett

(I pretend you never lost your hair.

Your skin remained the color of peaches.

The sunrise of your mouth never cracked,

your thighs unsoiled; your breasts still swell

and crash like the tide won’t let go

of your stomach. I don’t want to picture you

bleached and lifeless as sand. But, if I must

imagine you in death,)

You are a white dress

pinned to a clothesline—

dancing uncontrollably,

so bright it hurts

our eyes.

Cycle of Abuse

When your father threw

the dining room chair,

it felt as if the wallpaper flinched.

Maybe it was instinctual.