From the Understudy
If you would look at me I would show you something.
The size of it. The size of it, ask any man and it is this big.
I don't really know what interests you, but by watching
the tick of your wrist by your side I could drum up
a thousand doves assured over Palestine, beaks tweaking
it is yours, undoubtedly. What mine. Dovecote. White
woolen snow a shameful cage on the ground. Grass
bent in grief owned by this sharecropper. Knock knock
who's there? The door is a trestle and the water's low.
My love's a gothic push straight out of the University
of Chicago. I should have asked your name. I should
have said your name out loud and answered yes?
The Potential of Rapture
I locked up all
of the beautiful things
that might move me.
The bell around a dark ankle
turning and turning.
A stranger smiles.
Her face is no curling-up
in bed.
If I knew the world was going
to end, I'd just run out into
the street and fuck the first
chick I saw, says a
teenage virgin.
Where you go when you are scared
that we might have the verdant
and the humid. Friendly air.
People meaning their handwaves.
An answer is the way you can jump
from a ledge equal to your height
without getting hurt.
Your home.
Every pane of glass
someone laid on their precious
breath. There.
Or there.
Boy I am
leaving too many rooms
for the crowded street. Lay
down your sweet head
for now
to know as we do know
to know. To know
one damn thing.
To the Understudy
It is true I am afraid of the stranger in men.
On the Internet some woman kneeling
provocatively.
O one of many crickets
I crumpled into toilet paper, deafening.
Where are the lacy
Christening gowns. The babies
leaning headstrong.
Took a walk in my neighborhood
past the church. Touched the
freshly painted siding, my side
that said sit down girlfriend.
Sidle up and let's watch
the traffic like faces for
confirmation.
The night sky that does not
twinkle, the headlights
one
after another
not friendly eyes
averting.
I know I will probably die
with no one
around. I'm not sick or
anything
like that—
there they go. There they go again.
