*
Between this screen and the spider
licking its web, moist, caressed
kept whiter than usual -for no reason
these cellar walls were painted white
-each brushstroke as in the evenings
a sadness just hangs from the window
and you try something somewhere
-your fingers damp, empty, smell
from light and the silence and the window
-the spider blacker than all at once
what the sun must weigh
if you could for once hold on
and your arms quivering, almost snap.
-all at once your breath
caught in the pipes and wiring
and nothing can save it -it will be years
before the screens come down
and slowly, bitterly you will say
the window is open.
*
My hand struggling inside this tiny fish
makes a place --you won't believe it!
I can hear my hand along my arm
gutting that still warm evening
--even now, as we talk, each heartbeat
cries upstream for its mother
leaps heart over heart, heard its name.
You're nervous. I can tell.
You always come to the shed like this
throwing its screendoor over the table
over the belly --I'm making room
for the world, for the tears that cover my
body
--I can't breathe --quick! take my arm
this time deep enough for two
and waves leaving the sea forever.
did you think would change
or the cry you never hear again.
It does no good to move my lips.
Red frightens the water
and deep in my throat this lulling
is just more moonlight taking shape
floating under your eyes
--you can still hear one moon
calming the other --don't open your eyes.
My kisses too will clot and be afraid
cling to your lips, to this warm milk
the sky all night breathing in, unable
to drown or alone at the light you heard
only once, not loud, trying again.
*
These holes limping closer to my arms
and louder :cones
teeming, the sky spreading out
--everywhere at once, the seam
takes hold while the seeds
lay exhausted, fed by a light
as if the sun somehow remembers
that first touch, from nowhere
still heating my blood
and its own --I will dig
go lame, each hole following
and single file
swelling till it explodes --the emptiness
around the dead, step by step
my feet already dark, helplessly pressed
into a trackless, still coiling bone
coming too close again
around my cry and the others.
*
These plates, cups --a dim bulb
tracks their plausible man :no constellation
--even Gemini, their lips
once huge but I can still make out
--this chair, spoon, another spoon
--star to star as if some cave
its odd-shaped beast midair
spread out to dry this wall
this door imagined open.
I can trace --this room
this prairie flowing across and the wall
unable to hold on, its plaster
falling from one formation into another
--you won't remember what this dust
looked like, the night air
not yet dry, one plate
darker than the other --when the chair
was closer and lips.
*
This ledge and my leather jacket
strung on poles to dry
--always a cross-wind --Hey!
People eat off there!
--my shoulders filling out :a chute
leaning into the sky --Take it easy!
and throws me a map that's empty
though I fold the napkin in half
and half and over the latest cities
--it must be winter
--these stools as if the counter
is still under snow
and my wrists in that flat spin
wrapping, the cup bouncing
--by the time the police arrive
he's showing me the pictures
the counter more curved than ever
the coffee flowing to a free stop.
