In the water.
Back out.
Control scraping itself on the rocky banks.
Itches attack,
discomfort with myself and with you.
You a drafty accordion with dirt in the grooves.
The water never ambushes me because I smell it near.
My feet tingle when it runs through the reservoir beneath me.
Umbrellas call one another collect
through clouds of curious rain drops
on so much ambition and ecstasy it hurts.
My ideas are drunk in the corner.
I lack spirit.
I have spirits.
Paris write me telling me to come
when love is nothing.
I will be held in my city,
and I will wait
between the lovers wrapped in their coats like gifts.
Absolved of my needs
I am free to make wishes in the lab
behind my house.
I will give one to a neighbor,
one to a frenemy,
one billion to the child in his cradle
listening to his box being built
You, baby, need a wish from each of us
to buy the days needed to learn to spell your name.
I will make you premium wishes
in the truest shades of purple,
with gossamer threads of longing
unraveled from rainbows.
I will seal each wish with the cool light that shines off
the stones in the brook.
Each wish can purchase a minute or a moment.
I will package them in pods of 9.
Sister Mercy be kind.
The room at the end of the hall with the sealed window
Wild light through a red Pepsi glass
On the sealed window ledge
In the blue room.
An Absence
Names filled with letters and liquor.
A twist tie twists and I hear Zest taking the
garbage out.
I want a county style day,
where those roads I love
take me from people I don’t.
The places are eager for touch.
My thigh draws his hand closer
our skin fusing under the heat of the windshield.
After the detergent is bought,
and the bookstore has pinned us against the wall
and takes our money, we go down the roads again
to laze and lounge
in the house of pasta we built.
But now the roads are curled away from me.
His hand has greater work than joy for now,
in places that growl low in the night.
Color is called back
only on loan from light
this whole time.
How will I know my house
without its yellow coat,
my friend without her green soul?
The houses and souls are still there,
Sure. Just the pigment is gone.
But now we must converse
with ourselves, ask our feet
Who are you and what do you want?
Because what we are left with is conversation,
Though most have trashed their memory of speech.
My breasts awoke in my chest.
My skin felt the need for speed.
I could hear my coffin creaking open
at the far end of my life
I entered the economy of power,
desperation,
built my heavy house
September tells me a story
of children made only of fog
or of the perfect arrangement of fallen leaves
right before the breeze blows.
Some children wanted to sing
and others to shine.
But children shimmer
and then are gone –
sear sucker left on the ground rumpled.
They grow up,
move into cities of wine,
houses of immaculate deception.
Miniature Moon 