while the solicitous waiter

led you away, wouldn’t you prop

your shaking elbows on the bar

and order your first drink in months,

telling yourself you were lucky

to be alive? And if you wouldn’t

say anything but Mercy or Oh my

or Land sakes, well then

I don’t want to know you anyway

and I don’t give a fuck what you think

of my poem. The world is divided

into those whose opinions matter

and those who will never have

a clue, and if you knew

which one you were I could talk

to you, and tell you that sometimes

there’s only one word that means

what you need it to mean, the way

there’s only one person

when you first fall in love,

or one infant’s cry that calls forth

the burning milk, one name

that you pray to when prayer

is what’s left to you. I’m saying

in the beginning was the word

and it was good, it meant one human

entering another and it’s still

what I love, the word made

flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one

whose lovely body I want close,

and as we fuck I know it’s holy,

a psalm, a hymn, a hammer

ringing down on an anvil,

forging a whole new world.

Augury

AUGURY

That girl in the stilettos and tight dress

is my girl, parading back and forth

before my closet

in the precarious shoes she bought for the prom.

She thinks she has to practice being sexy. She can’t

imagine the future

I can see so clearly: over the calm sea

of the mirror, a thousand warriors set out,

ready to kill

or die for the sake of her beauty.

I can see how the tiny sails will disappear

into the distance,

looking like they’re going under, swallowed

by some jealous god or other. She stares intently

at the mirror

but still she can’t see the ships foundering,

the hearts being dashed on the rocks. Now

she smoothes glittery

shadow over her eyelids, dark lipstick

on her mouth. When she blows a kiss

a wind drags

the waves up to a great height, before

they topple over and crush any man

who’s still alive.

Proverbial

PROVERBIAL

The birds are up early; it’s rush hour on the lawn,

and cars fly over the bridges and into the city

in spite of the burnings. I know the true worth

of the sayings my grandmother served up with the lasagna.

My grandmother saw the trees, as did my mother. Father

was alone in the forest. Meanwhile, we children

were raised by wolves; two wrongs

don’t make a right are the directions to my house.

But even the blind chicken finds

the kernel of corn, even the unhatched eggs

wobble in their basket and promise

to one day explode into swans,

however modest or far away.

Ceiling

CEILING