Sonnet

Honed, hived, you’ve slept tight as heat
against me, specific, as unfamiliar
as my house in the dark. Here it's Deet
and candles, a past porch life as sure
as a sliver, a four beer slur.
Your mouth opens like a safe, creaks
with yen. Come here and recover.
I come. What another lover
was, you aren’t. Sheets and sheets
of what you aren’t could cover
a library floor. Darling, treat
this as kudos - another
man would buckle under
my kind of esteem.

Morgan

Blonde and round as a tack
and as fond of you as anyone
I know. Shitty days come and go.
To make amends, the world
maps out, closes its gaps,
so she can stand one foot in Russia
and one in Japan. Yes of course
she's one of the blessed,
the precious few, for whom circumstance
bent over for fate -a Helen
young in years but wearing the pants,
not so much captured as advancing
with coolers of beer for the boys
in the horse.

NO SALE NO POEM

This isn't the first day he's woken
to thoughts of photosynthesis and flowers
blooming like the opening of a warm front.
It's Monday and he's not going to work.
Next to him, his girlfriend Sharon
pulls on black stockings.
On Friday a football player at the school
died of something quick and seemingly harmless
until his mother insisted he go to the hospital and now
today is the funeral. She wants to write about it.

On the bed, she leans over him, half-dressed,
describing what she would rather be doing.
But kids won't teach themselves
and substitutes always left rude notes about
more discipline. Her skirt covers the tattoo on her ass
that spells out in small script NO SALE NO POEM -
a meaningless tattoo she got long before
he met her at a bar (a bar, for god's sake)
and saw the kind domesticated animal
in her face. She was always trying to hide
the fact that she was a teacher and loved it
and had never hurt anyone knowingly in her life.
Sharon's parents, and his, are wealthy
Are you bored? Last night I watched clouds
flying up at an angle across a moon
that looked like a coin in water.
I tried to decide if it was tar or flowers
I was trying to spit out, but it got cold
and I got into bed. I hear there
will come a time when I can finish a story,
write about something other than myself,
but who are these loved ones insisting this is true?

Casablanca

I wish we were back in the dim
light, your roommate there on the couch
and Humphrey Bogart looking grim –
a sour cheers and a slouch –
as if we were the slim
broad who’d left him biting his lip
on the platform, cut to the quick
by no hand on no familiar hip,
no Ilsa or her Swedish sounds.
She’s pure love in a slip
and, no question, we’re into it –
your roommate and you and I and Rick:
Of all the gin joints in all the towns
in all the world we say. Rick frowns.

Phone Call

Like a dryer undoes
a bad stitch, you
unravel what I'd rallied -
a bitch of a lesson
I won't learn.
I need some pointers
and a slap in the ass.

What's sass these days
compared to spite?
The man loitering
at the stop light? I think
it's you, until he turns.
My god, this love feels
like hate! Brass knuckles
on both hands -
like skidding into gravel
instead of grass.

Dec 11th (revised) - after Morgan's six words

Already I can see the tart
in my preschooler. The sprinkler
catches her at the end
of its hemisphere each time
and she shrieks like she wasn't
asking for it - I saw her stall
at the edge of the water line,
one leg kept back mimicking
her brother's at-bat stance.
Or when I put away her toys,
she yells Hey from the floor
where she often sits like a small,
colloquial guru hey those are mine.

I can't flush myself out
of her system with good, clear
wisdom. In her lower lip is
her preference for skirts and powerful colors.
She will, she will figure herself into messes
evolved from the messes of her mother's,
paired like helixes, will crash her bike,
her car, her lover's car, will find
herself alone in a dark room
with a man and know instinctively
the movements she should not make,
will leave a Hindi bangle or earring at every
restaurant, unknowingly, like a fingerprint.

I wrap her in a towel. She is small
enough to carry, her weight natural -
a package of bright water.
She wants to watch the movie
about the talking dog, the one
we rented from the library a hundred times.
We love it. She finds the tape
stuck under the couch, dropping the towel,
leaving two chubby damp marks from her shins.
Yesterday, she whammed her head
against the tabletop, where she'd misgauged
her height. At the hospital, my mother
and I compared scars while the doctor
checked for concussion. I think she'll
live, he said and winked.

Dec 7

We visit the polish church down the street
and here the blue dome is so tall
it is bad for my heart.
Distance like that is too much
of a reminder.

Paris, a small farm in Germany,
none of us know exactly where
our friend is going
and neither does he
except for the name of the airport
and that he'll have to hitchhike.
He's used to it, the car pulling off
while he's still got one foot
on the pavement.

Slowly we'll get used to the absence
like a man adjusting the antenna,
circling the signal,
rewarded with a bit of a song,
making do.

He'll be on a highway or
a backroad, singing loudly
to the radio, a song he heard,
originally, in Chicago.