Relationships

Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt

On the rough diamond,
the hand-cut field below the dog lot and barn,
we rehearsed the strict technique
of bunting. I watched from the infield,
the mound, the backstop
as your left hand climbed the bat, your legs
and shoulders squared toward the pitcher.
You could drop it like a seed
down either base line. I admired your style,
but not enough to take my eyes off the bank
that served as our center-field fence.

Hour

Sleepless
in the cold dark,
I look
through the closed dim
door be-
fore me, which be-
comes an
abyss into
which my
memories have
fallen
past laughter or
horror,
passion or hard
work — my
memories of
our past
laughter, horror,
passion,
hard work. An ache
of be-
ing. An ache of
being,
over love. An
ache of
being over
love. Like
projections on
the screen
of the heavy
window
curtains, flashing

Rage for Order

I guess you could call it
a sort of sympathetic magic.
How else to explain
this obsessive reorganizing
of my home, my books, my papers,
my poems, this housekeeping
of my hard drive and floppies,
all the deleting and casting away
of redundancy and obsolescence,
dead files and moved-on addresses
and the scrubbing, the constant
scrubbing and dusting and the howl
of the protesting vacuum
that struggles to inhale
at least the 70% of house-dust
that is dead human skin
some of which might be hers.

Sugar Dada

Go home. It's never what you think it is,
The kiss, the diamond, the slamdance pulse in the wrist.
Nothing is true, my dear, not even this

Rumor of passion you'll doubtless insist
On perceiving in my glance. Please just
Go. Home is never what you think it is.

Meaning lies in meaning's absence. The mist
Is always almost just about to lift.
Nothing is truer. Dear, not even this

Candle can explain its searing twist
Of flame mounted on cool amethyst.
Go on home — not where you think it is,

"Love of My Flesh, Living Death"

Once I wasn’ t always so plain.
I was strewn feathers on a cross
of dune, an expanse of ocean
at my feet, garlands of gulls.

Sirens and gulls. They couldn’ t tame you.
You know as well as they: to be
a dove is to bear the falcon
at your breast, your nights, your seas.

My fear is simple, heart-faced
above a flare of etchings, a lineage
in letters, my sudden stare. It’ s you.

A Secret Matter of Grave Importance

Except when once we drew identical lots
nothing’ s ever come between us.
We keep our drifts of space
spare and daily shake our down.

You’ ve glanced beyond your dirty cuffs
and caught me hand-washing my clean shirts.
Stuck with sharp wind, both
bloods are rare and rarely do

we taste the walnut’ s knot of oil.
We wake between our fitted sheets
and shake our fists or pretend real fright
but not in this do we dare touch.

Consequences

I. Of Choice
Despair is big with friends I love,
Hydrogen and burning jews.
I give them all the grief I have
But I tell them, friends, I choose, I choose,

Don’ t make me say against my glands
Or how the world has treated me.
Though gay and modest give offense
And people grieve pretentiously,

More than I hoped to do, I do
And more than I deserve I get;
What little I attend, I know
And it argues order more than not.

The Illiterate

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

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