One Candle

Three classmates. One would-have-been
mentor. Someone's mother, someone's husband.
The protagonist of the novel you've been reading
for months. All this, since Monday.

Tell her, tell her everything. Tell her now,
before the next gray
and inevitable week begins.
Saturday will be here
before you know it.





photograph by Fabio Gassarino

Why I Don't Send You Dirges (On Reading McDonald's "Anniversary")

How strange, these days, that love--
improbable, impossible, unforgivable--
not grief, is the birthing tide
I've come to ride to quiet morning shores.
Each night erases the last.




photograph by flickr user el neko
original poem here

33: Coming Clean

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;

I copied but did not send it.
I thought a phone call, maybe, but knew
The whirlpool words in my own mouth
Would give it all away.

There is no pressure I have not imagined:
Your teeth on my throat,
Your hair in my hand,
Your eyes on my salted lips. All these

Tide to and from my sleeping shores like trains.
And, too, the gravity
Of my own crumbling, wet face, the heft
Of your apology.

(Once you wrote me a confession, a treatise on starry unknowns.
Wrote it out in one long night,
Found it too true and threw
The whole thing away.
I know this because you told me.)





Original poem by W. H. Auden
Photograph by flickr user tomo.1981
Inspiration by you

6pm Reading, St. Anthony Hall

I.
There is no curtain for the heart
In a room full of poets. Each face maps
Its suffering, its lust with lines
As subtle as mountain ranges.

II.
The sign language translator exaggerates
For his single subject. He rolls his eyes,
Fans his fingers, captures the nerves
As well as the words.

III.
The day draws to a close. Light
Is blue, green, white. Shadows dissolve
And reform with every dusted moment. The speaker
Dabs at his eyes, clutches his throat.

IV.
His voice says roller skates, chaperon
But nobody’s father.
Whether he is overcome or near to,
The hot currents of emotion
Will not leave him dry.

V.
He is washed again and again against
The rocks of sorrow, and the hollow shell
Of his voice calls back.



photograph by Manish Desai

The First Act

Just before handing over the paperback
you reconsidered, gathered it to your chest
and tore out the title page.
Broad curtains of rain swept the gutter.
The words for your destruction were lost
to the theatre of the night,
the applause of wet windowpanes.
I wonder what shade it was you saw in my eyes then,
when you wadded up the inscription
and shoved it way down in the trash.




photograph by Lina Scheynius

The Fourth of July

for everyone who writes

Today, to me, you are Fitzgerald,
and I know I've just got Gatsby on the brain but you,
you, my love, and your swirling clouds of the Hamptons--
there is none who can match you.

That glowing shape in my chest inflates
with your unwitting touch, you
could not know just how bare my shores lie
when your high tides have gone.

So much is wrong, here, everywhere,
at the bottom of the coffee cup, at the top
of the apartment building--but the aloe
of your voice will cool the burns of even the sun
today.



photograph by Todd Atteberry

New Poetry

I judge each of you first
not by your cover
but your spine; that
sliver of design decides
your future with me. Names matter,
sad to say, and Marie, Eleanor,
Janine will more likely get
a ride home than Ed, James,
Pete.

I touch you all indiscriminately, hot fingers
on cool new plastic jackets. It
is your slenderness I love best,
dime-thin bodies
with such lovely eyes.



photograph by flickr user mslibrarian

Unrequited Poetry, Episode 2

Ghost
for Susan Orlean

I saw it, you know,
On a shelf in the quiet movie-man’s home—
Did you? I
Touched it, let my fingers fall
Into the magnetic pull
Of its heartbreaking white ribbons.

I looked for you
Where you said you would be,
In the gold light at the bees’ dance,
But all behind them
Was blurred and pollinated,
And you did not emerge.

I have crept toward
The shape of you: subconscious selections
In afternoons, hair dye,
Potted plants, all
Give me away, my embarrassing thirst
For that cool slenderness,
Success.

I touched the ghost
In the quiet movie-man’s house, and knew
In that instant
It wasn’t real. And
Did you, in all
Your fruitlessness, freeze
To see a glass house full of them,
Blue in the electric light?

I wonder if you stayed
To the end, if you touched them
Not breathing (like I did), if you
Read my letter, if you saw
My ghost.

Valentines, After

(read "Valentines" first.)

I finished the whole thing
in one sitting, leaning forward
against the comforter, one knee
to my dreaming husband. There were

barns, little barns, and picture after picture
of the same spotted dog. I was not
enchanted. I did not see the art
of an empty heart-
shaped box.

And then it was done, a few
pages of acknowledgments and things,
and the back cover. The red foil
heart on the front had lost
its shine in the night.
The book was smaller, suddenly,
and my hands felt gritty with sand
and bandages
that were neither here
nor in Valentine,
Nebraska.

I wept.




photograph by DeviantArt user Sinse.