There Are Firsts

There Are Firsts

if I drank scotch in real life and not just to try and acquire the taste

I would likely require so many ice cubes the bartender would schlep

them into a glass

with a scoop

Iterating the point

That heartburn is nothing but indecision

that there is no acquisition

that there is no assimilation

that there is only now and then

And that why you are the way you breathe

only reiterates

the way your stance shifts

against nothing

That which is not

a

thing

Calliope; adolescence; a Reuben or a Raphael--

all filtered like film

I rifle through antique shops for old photos and I settle mostly on

men, who have women in the background

Or who are women mimicking the brawny and encumbered fellow

on the other end of the line, a shallow tawny glow

of light intruding against the shadow of

a day

ending in lyric

Against a refrain,

it told you nothing

That which

is not

a

thing.

01.06.2012

dominoes?

yahtzee

It could be anything I type

I could be having conversations you’d never approve

of; inside I found you with your headphones on and

the light came between each pane of glass with a warmth.

I could type anything instead

I could say something about your cock

or I could pretend some other reality

I could litigate my own intentions

against the binding and salving of a wound,

forced tight, complexion bare like foggy night

the light between each cloud indiscernible

like a plane of three points, like the sound of clicks and clacks

like a count of Indians, or piggies, or anything

all the way home

any nursery rhyme to make up for your own lack of being

there, the way you abandoned everything

even self,

to go, away, to find

nothing. To find out that the things

you always knew were true really were: Love is a thing

you make, and of what you make is your own

shortcoming, and how much you hold

the outside in will tell your fortune every time; needing no

tea leaves or chicken bones or palms or horse ribs.

Converse, opposite side: You make something real.

You make it last

you make it even when you wonder why you’ve made it,

are these your sheets? would you buy that cotton count?

is that even your picture, on the wall?

But you know you type,

and this is your type; you know

black skirts and tops that slope at the shoulders;

you know yourself the way

you know to yell YAHTZEE when you see five

of a kind.

06.13.2011

Reruns

I came home and sewed my funeral dress

on; basketballs thudding in the street,

bringing me next

to you, an oasis, underneath

nothing and adjacent to the breeze.

You must have been a sitcom, you could have played

some scene I’d forgotten.

Encountered late night, on a cable channel,

face grainy but restored,

a slight tilt to your head,

voice unmistakable,

hollowed and buried deep

below the wrought-iron tree grate at my core.

In this there is nothing I know

and I am nothing but this vessel

There is never a moment when the things I think and remember

coincide

like today

like pictures on a wall of little girls I never knew

thrust through all reverie, pausing

next to the sarcophagus

I never saw

next to your coffin, the one

that bruised my hip,

The edge, hidden by bunting.

You could have been a passage in a book,

one I kept on my shelf, spined,

one I visited, sometimes,

again and again,

the same pages telling me the same story

the plot missed in repetition, grayed and retold.

If we could pair up,

if we could make diagrams,

dissect the empty night full of hoops and sneakers and dresses

I wish I never wore

There still won’t be

an ending

There still will be

a faded lullaby

the color of the cloth they wrapped you in

the color of the dirt scattered across your grave

the color of my sister’s hands

an episode

I never saw.

04.04.2011

Wouldn’t it be nice

if you were Hansel and I were Gretel

and we could follow a trail

Only without all the brother sister stuff

If you could lead me to me

and I could lead you to you

and there would be a great rejoicing and the

light, it would come; streaming through a pillar of soft

sound, crowded and cramped into a room

like too many people looking for a sunrise on a beach

you and I would struggle to keep

cool, and there would be a kind of plea-bargaining

a negotiation

Heads would roll and hearts would soar, there

would somehow be a gathered perception

an inclination of what should happen next

If I were your wife

we would settle without question

and linger in the notion of yours and his and hers and mine

But there is not a witch pressing a finger against a cage

and you have enough to eat

and I have enough to ponder

without wondering what spells

you might cast

without wondering

what stops and starts

might derail

the surety of your heart against mine.

11.21.2010