Salt wound

11/29/16

I woke up thinking about a phone call
in which you told me you wanted
only me

and used the word "puppy."

Very often bed is hard to leave.
Today rain's left

a dark shine on everything.
I open blinds to this

//

and try to trace back
to your last appearance.

You call me a garden.

You join me over the pot
to watch fish ovaries burst
and bloom.

You give me
mosquitoes on the river,
not wanting to leave me out.

We touch so much it hurts
to touch, so touch
more gently.

I don't find the secret.  I don't find
the clue.

For me, my love,
it was not gradual.

End of October in the garden

10/31/16

the last hard green brandywines tight to the vine
except one, gouged unripe in the dead leaves.

now the seeds are everywhere.

When it feels inevitable

10/12/16

When all the blackberries and raspberries are gone

the leaves splattered red and burned out in places

When overnight the houseplants

have made the windows fog and sweat

When the morning very suddenly does not smell of anything

When the drain is not entirely plugged, but enough

to steep up to the ankles and leave

conditioner in a white film ring

When it is afternoon, silent, the oven’s cold

and you are very lonely- you want only to hold a hand

and walk down the road yellow with leaves

toward home,

or away from it

Extinction

8/19/16

1.
In August, algae
chases us from the lake.
Gnawed zucchini rots
to scorched slime in the field.

In Hartford, the men yell louder,
honk sharper.
One in the South End shouts
¡malanga! when English
doesn't shake me.
Root.

I shake dirt from roots of pigweed
we let shoot too high,
my hands screaming back.


2.
The first ammonite
loved the whisper of polyps
calcifying at dawn.

She had never heard of trees.
She had never heard of asteroids.

Through blooms of marine snow
came new blue creatures—
toothed, footed, slick.

One had interlocking ribs
through which a steady rise
and fall was already visible.

Truro, Empty Stomach

7.29.16

soft-serve leaks down my wrist

then 8am; deer flies in the dunes
ravage that skin

the blueberry fields rustle
empty but for two miniatures i cradle
and pop like pills

high because
the crying was too deep, i dive

and blink to see rain
silver the surface, voice
ringing can i
make

love to you?

Three required haiku

3/30/16

Goodbye to everything
Eighteen in the suburbs all summer
Light pollution

Dear distant body
You wake fast in terror
At all your edges something shivers

Crocus air / open window
He splits the yolk and curses
Laughing yellow in his arms

PSY101

3/14/16

Science—

beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone,
every time I make love for love’s sake alone,

I betray you. 

—Katherine Larson, "Love at Thirty-two Degrees"

1.
Today I read about the amygdala,
the first daffodil
slumped under hail in the yard,
the wet leather of my shoes
skirting sidewalk pools in the dark.

I for introvert, N for intuitive,
T T crucial T . . .

Are you good at math?

In the nearest parallels, yes—
math consumes me—
but here:

I come home with random variable x.
I come home with leftover pho, or rainwater.
I come home with two watermelon radishes
cupped like baseballs,
gifts from someone I don't yet know
how to name in poetry.

I tell him—this pronoun—
the word brassica.

Even radishes? he says,
visible process whirring,

and kisses me; I forget nothing.


2. 

In the quiet room I'm asked about skin.
Blush, sunburn.
Dermatographia.

The first crocus air through the screen:
what it wakes in skin.
Men salivating behind dark glasses:
what they leave on skin.

Are you good at math?

I was raised without it.
Touch— unbidden,
uncounted:
what it does to skin.

Are you good
at science?

     The condition is raised red.
     The condition is you're young
     and your body looks juicier than you know.
     The condition is terror.

Listen,
I can't trust science.

Any science— I was taught
to fear them all.

Crescendo

2/21/16

On the first warm day we find a boy
cross-legged under the tallest pine in the park
and invite him to basketball.

We clear
leaves juice boxes
a strip of blue Trojan aluminum

from the court to play, soft wind
flipping my hem and hair, your collar,
real as touch.

I was kissed the first time
in this weather- unbelievable
warmth- and every future

unfolded in my mouth.
Not spring, but kisses now are laced.
We play.  We know what's coming.

Siren

2/15/16

I roll and watch him
as sirens strike a chorus
and flail red lights from the fire
station down the street.

How is he still asleep I'm thinking

as my whole chest
shrills and flexes.

In this vein I drag
up, as if through burdock,
strings and tendrils of what
never healed.

Maybe to kiss again,
or maybe to make the horrible
exquisite flight

one red cardinal made over and over
against the window of my living room
the first year I chose
to love
anyone.  Please

let it not be that battering.
Let the emergency that isn't mine

stay so, and my body
believe it.

Siren

2/15/16

I roll and watch him
as sirens strike chorus
and flail red lights from the fire
station down the street.

How is he still asleep I'm thinking

as my whole chest
shrills and flexes.

In this vein I drag
up, as if through burdock,
strings and tendrils of what
never healed.

Maybe to kiss again,
or maybe to make the horrible
exquisite flight

one red cardinal made over and over
against the window of my living room
the first year I chose
to love
anyone.  Please

let it not be that battering.
Let the emergency that isn't mine

stay so, and my body
believe it.

First language

2/1/16

Cut, I spill
the spit of voices
I was holding.
When you flung
me, your spade,
skyward.  Where no tool
should waver.
When.
The wet of your attention met
fire and shrank back.
You entered,
I spoke in tongues.
Now tongues come
searching for my mouth.
Ojalá.  Green shoots that appear
on a strange warm day.