writing

the poetic moment is not difficult.
it is the thing that catches your eye,
the one that may find you while gardening
or eating or fucking.

it could be the creeping moss on the side of
and abandoned building
or the glint of a cymbal over the
shaded drum

a gnats wings caught on the softly vibrating
strings of a piano

the presence of a dearly loved body
that is slowly creating a slight depression in your bed,
or the equally beautiful absence

the notebook writings of a student clearly
trying too
hard.

find it.

snatch it.

make it into ink soaking a page or
pixels on a screen or
whatever people do--

but most of all, look for it.
open your eyes so wide your lashes brush the ceiling and floor.
throw yourself into the thick of experience,
love what scares you

but just look for it.
no matter how tiny,
it will find you--

even if your soul catches it before your head.

how to be alone, pt. 1

first,
stop leaving room on the nightstand for
him to put his things.

do not be afraid to take the softer side of
the bed
in fact, spread yourself like a starfish.
teach your limbs that they can reach out to their
greatest limit--
no other flesh will stop their march to the
edge.

you may set up a pillow near you to
hold your arm around and
perhaps stroke gently,

but you are by no means allowed
to make sexual advances on that
pillow.

and when you wake up in the morning,
take pride in the rank breath churning in your mouth.
breathe heavily and freely.

he will not
complain.

after it

I remember the soft tangle of the careworn
sheets around your ankles
and the movement of my fingertips across
the plane of your back
slow like reading

how your jaw hooks into a subtle underbite when I'm
turningyouon
and you call me
woman

the ease of being with you,
our hands brushing almost unconsciously
hands that announce
we are each others,
he is mine and i am his but also
he is he and i am i and
we are for it all, and together

also the shift in feeling
of not being with you--
the long stretches pressing the phone to my cheek,
so long that it leaves a slight imprint of your voice
on my skin,

the little notes you left in my books

the postcards that either fill completely or
remain blank, except for a single tiny thought or idea--
like the rise of mountains and how it's really
more a sadthing than a triumphantthing, the earth crashing like that,
don'tyouagree?
or to tell you about the row of birds on the telephone wire like beads of
dew strung together on a thin thread,
huddled together

our conversations pulsing beneath
their little feet.

on.

they say that time isn't linear--
we only perceive it as such.

so maybe in some small corner of the cosmos,
nesting in the holes comets make in the sky, perhaps,
I will always be there with you

in that too-hot room with the
too-soft bed and the
too-firm pillows,
with the silent velvet of your lower lip
beneath my thumb
and the occasional brushings and minglings
of our feet as the immigrant children next door
perch nervously on their new used bicycles

it's comforting to know
that the universe knows even my tiniest of moments,
knew them from the very beginning
and keeps them in little glass jars,
row upon row upon row
things I may forget mingling with others
I will never know and others
that I couldn't forget if I beat my brain raw

and even though I'm strapped nervously and
somewhat unwillingly to the
arrow Time,
it's only a trick of the mind,
the idea
that we are moving
at all.

the things that will always make me think of you, for better or worse

there's the way light falls across skin
as it swims through the shades of a slatted window
and the dark, quiet smell
of the most secret parts of you

ceiling fans and silk sheets

the feeling of rain-wet hair,
heavy, curling with the humidity,
and clinging to my neck and forehead

the low resonance
of a deep baritone

(the songs: in my life, the curse, mrs. robinson,
the cave, we won't run, mama you've been on my mind,
annie's song)

anything that anyone's built for themselves
will inevitably draw my mind to the shadowy place
in the deep north woods
that we built for ourselves

that sensation of gentle spinning,
mixed with the slightest nausea--
the feeling of falling in love with you.

it's possible that these ties will fray,
wear thin,
perhaps even break.

but I know without doubt
that somewhere ages and ages and ages hence,
one of these tiny fragments of a memory
will work its way back into my consciousness--

when I catch the scent of something
vaguely like you
I'll sway in place as my eyes roll back
and the cup of coffee will slip from my grasp
and shatter around the toes you always thought
were stubby.