lonely as four cherries on a tree
at night, new moon, wet roads
a moth or a snowflake
whipping past glass
lonely as the red noses of four clowns
thrust up through snow
their shine four whitened panes
drawn from imagined memory
lonely as no other lives
touching to recorded water
all objects stare
their memories aware
lonely as pain
recoiling from itself
imagining the cherries
and roses reaching out
There is an alley
where you can go,
where you can kiss
someone’ s mouth
until you climb
inside them, force
your way in, push
your cells into their cells
and become one
creature — angelic.
It isn’ t the way
you’ d dream it.
There is piss,
dew-damp moss crawling
across the brick.
Some nights it is so dark
you must enter only
by touch.
Walk by in the light
and it will seem
like nothing.
The scripture
is written by wenches:
4eva, L+ J, I. T. A. L. Y.
I felt suddenly convinced that I had feelings for the wallpaper.
I was especially captivated by its blonde hair and bad dreams.
I had the impression the wallpaper needed longer to properly
respond.
By the time I left, my affections had produced this abrasion on my cheek.
People looked on the abrasion as unquestionable proof of my sincerity.
The abrasion was produced by rubbing my face on the paper’ s smooth surface.
It only occurred to me later that it might have found this sensation disagreeable.
the breaththe treesthe bridge
the roadthe rain the sheen
the breaththe linethe skin
the vineyardthe fences the leg
the water the breath the shift
the hairthe wheels the shoulder
She said the cornflake cake made her day,
she said a man cannot be blamed for being
unfaithful: his heart is not in tune with his
extremities and it’ s just the way his body
chemistry is. She said all sorts of things.
We saw a duck pond and a man with a tub
of maggots and a tub of sweet corn, we saw
the walled garden and the old-fashioned library
in the park, stopped for a cup of tea in a cafe
where we had the cornflake cake cut into halves
His superpower was that his testicles manufactured sperm
with exclusively X chromosomes & that was ironic because
not only was he a beast to women but his 40 baby girls grew
up seeking men like the father they barely saw unless they went
to his studio to be painted which wasn’ t OK with their mothers
who were not only jealous but guilty of giving birth to girls
who were products of an X-chromosome-making monster
& would soon suffer at the hands of other monsters with X-
type sperm thereby assuring the continuation of suffering
We are descending again in parallel —
I cannot say together — as in another dream
you rushed through the first door
without me. It was late. Your name
was an elevator door resisting its rail,
its screech my only attempt to reach you.
Was it the hurt that filled the elevator
I entered with gurneys and gowned girls,
incubated hearts pumping for a home?
Floors flicker as they fall.
The girls’ chatter flaps shrill at light,
tangles in my hair and away
The skyscrapers of New York will never know the coolness that comes down on Kifisia
but when I see the two cypress trees above your familiar church
with the paintings of the damned being tortured in fire and brimstone
then I recall the two chimneys behind the cedars I used to like so much when I was abroad.
A great light is the man who knows the woman he loves
A great light is the woman who knows the man she loves
And carries the light into room after room arousing
The sleepers and looking hard into the face of each
And then sends them asleep again with a kiss
Or a whole night of love
and goes on and on until
The man and woman who carry the great lights of the
Knowledge of the one lover enter the room
toward which
Their light is sent and fit the one and the other torch
In a high candelabrum and there is such light
The dog came back,
grinning and smelling of carrion,
and her husband behind it, stride and gestures
too large for the house. His field voice, cracking,
declared a wider kingdom,
and the name of a fallen city,
not theirs this time.
From outside the roar and shrill
of celebration poured in.
He drew near in a rank cloud, breathing hard,
to show her the gash in his thumb.
So she washed in five waters and went to their bed,
but he slept without moving,
still in his cloak and dust.
