Undertow

Manifest each of my
liquid-finger dreams
with subtlety and controlled breath.
Time can rise and fall from our awareness
like a lithe woman on a raft
of sun-sticky plastic.
Let the liquid run down our seams
and pool in the deepest places,
cooled in phases, the moon’s pull waning
and draining me until I’m down for saltwater delirium.
Take and slake me.
Steal away
and deplete me.
Repeat me, repeat me.

Based on a true story

Many of my most meaningful relationships
have been typed rather than said,
hunted and pecked over typewriter keys by strangers
who looked into themselves and somehow saw me,
clicked in from cubicles during slow moments,
thumbed across the oily, feely, rubbed-away pads of cell phones,

as almost-mine as
your cooking smells,
familial and understood
but not shared,

a door way in this place where we both
pay for space and
are most ourselves.

When we write,
we’re who we want to be
considered to perfection
edited to manipulation
parallel to profundity.
We’re valid as our daily affirmations.

Franciscan, Arcadia Green

I didn’t bring a bed with me,
I didn’t bring my shoes
when I drove
those thousands of miles,
but I brought boxes
of china.

The demitasse saucers
were layered with heavy cream
paper and packed neatly

beside the compote bowls,
hand painted in green and gold
to match the wrinkled linen,
shapeless as women.

Accompanying notes in a modest hand —
heavy and delicate like the breakfront
generations of us have quietly polished —
tell why there’s an extra luncheon plate
and how the collection started as a wedding gift
and became a duty.

I am for you

I once sat on a deck on
one of those muggy evenings
where you can see the air before you get outside,
where you can hear the air before you open
the sliding glass doors in the kitchen
and take a single step toward the woods.

Some bleary aunt of some friend was there too,
and I was just thinking about how
there was no need to talk
because the yard was so loud on its own
when she said,
“You’re quite the changeling, aren’t you?”

My god, for years I’ve tried to be.

If I were quiet for a minute
and shook my head,
you’d all hear filament hitting glass.
Replace me.
I’ve burned up.

Break break

For now I’ll set my fingertips together
and tap them twice quick
like a double click
against my sternum,
every three-quarters of a second,
hard enough

that waves of reverberation press
through my shoulders
and lungs if I
breathe to the tempo.

I want to be the whiteness of light,
purified and built
by confusion.

Gypsy

Get into the car
like a girl who looks at the sun
’til it’s all there is
’til condensation coats
her eyes and the putty
pulled under them.
That skin’s been stamped
by the faces
of everyone

she ever spoke to,
as though their
bone structure was squished into her,
then folded over like taffy
and incorporated.

Get into the car and
move as she moves.

Incision

I’ve numbed myself against it
by extra triple-knotting
each rope ladder rung.
I climb easily into my fort,
built of emptied cocktail glasses,
longtime male friends and
interests so sundry

I need an eight-page résumé.
It’s heated by that feeling you get
when someone touches your wrist

or when you fire someone for cause.
It’s strong as anything you’ve ever decided to believe in.

Cock and bull

This is too too good.
Let’s throw in kink
and soft-skull pink.
There are few things
I’m less worried about than
sharp coffee table corners.

Take it take it
away.
Start that victrola.
Baby, you can’t control her.

The fellas

Platitudes and underwire —
that’s how I define myself tonight
to the two who have shown interest.
Platitudes for he who cares
but who has never touched me
significantly.
Pretty sure the other one doesn’t care.

Morning

Take a shingle cut
straight from the roof
of my mouth
and nail it
up there
over us.
At what point overnight did you start saying today?

This isn’t shatterproof glass.
I’m punching a little hole through it
quick
then breathing there,
forehead on glass.
Let’s press
the spider cracks.