HERE’S WHERE I FOLD THE DAYS INTO THEMSELVES

Walking past the Williamsburg ping-pod         I see a guy
playing against the machine          so hungry for ping pong
he needed neither company      nor conversation      I look away
embarrassed      walk on         alone        past the artisanal greengrocers
the diner         with the 25 dollar French toast        not including coffee
taxes       service charge or tip.         I re-read your messages often
partly to keep you close         partly to internalise the ways in which
you love me             taking my time       like mopping
up egg yolk with buttered toast          and though I don’t see many
people on the street most days       I hear them       hear cars   
the hoover in the corridor         the scuttle of life between
floorboards .        Last week in Louisiana           I drew up alongside
a freight train        on one green container:          ‘Jamie in Arizona        
will you be my old lady?’         I wondered if they were both still             
waiting for their train to call.       In the beginning       I was so
precious                they kept the skin that fell from my body                  
first and last moments             of enmeshment            between
mother and child           enshrined by pink ribbon         faint and young         
locks of hair                         a plastic clip           on inches of cord
held in the top drawer            these days we save much less        
though when aimless              I focus on gathering the grains     
slipping through my days:         picnic tables       under the freeway
pine ponderosa         tattered plastic          on razor wire      
the Changing Tomorrow academy                  the word ‘luncheonette’     
dream-flavoured coke             a single car            driving out
into the thick night        not sure      who disappears first       the car      
or me

IN OFFERANCE (A FEVER DREAM)

I insert
the glass thermometer
under my furred tongue

it clinks teeth
toasting to my good health
as I resist the urge
            to bite down

Mercury is in retrograde again
and I’m home alone
for days on end, not a single word
spoken aloud
from my sick mouth

            the mercury informs me
            that I am peaking at 38.2°C

somewhere
lovers are telling each other
they’re the perfect temperature
but all they’re feeling

is the warmth
as it leaves.

To know the true heat
            the real burning centre

I would kneel beneath you
in a devotional posture

hands clasped

awaiting a liquid
warmed by the glove
of your body

made in thirst
and in wanting–

here I am, in offerance
asking to be bathed
to be soiled and so

to be quenched

o brush my fevered skin
with your humble 37°C,
and cool me off

I am ill.

I rinse the thermometer
under the cool tap

watch the red
slink downwards

like that biro you flip
to see the dress
float off of a lady

SLEEPING AT YOUR PLACE  

When it gets late, you sleep on the sofa and I sleep in your bed

it’s like how
             waves break

             I feel the space that
             closeness asks                    

                                                           as a breeze that winds 
                                                                             between us

                      ruffles your hair     and   

                                                                                                                   blows my shirt 
                                                                                                            taken in     
                                                                                                                   as breath

            One day I might see you       
            in the midst of a      
                                                     dream

                                                                                         and your face                

                                                                                         will be like a mirror     
                                                                                         that I am not standing in front of,

                                                                                                        and in the morning, you make tea 
                                                                                                        and we eat breakfast together

LIGHT WORK

given time,
your touch

makes
light work

of dark
years

they fall
away

and
if only

for a
moment

I am
washed

and I am
untouched

by fear

CRUISING

Mostly, I think of you with
other men, slinking toward
warm denim in the night.
I’m at home in my pyjamas
wondering what one has to
swallow to arrive and then
how one person might give
another anything. But what
I would offer to be faceless
and other, slammed against
trees and concrete and dirt,
the sap and the milk and the
musk of my body thickening,
as if a life of physical
infringements never was.
Imagine being fucked
for fun?

WOODY ALLEN

the X they marked as the place  where your  usefulness lies was
misleading.  you’ve   been  combing  out  the  lice  and  the  lint,
otherwise   known   as    the   dirt  of   what   they  showed  you,
otherwise known as their rot. sunken like graphite  from pencil
pushed   to   thigh,   the  shape  of   your  body’s  yielding  but  a
pinprick  behind  skin.  you  used  to  show  it around, but these
days  seldom  do. and just  as  you  live  with  it, so  you forget it
was ever otherwise. fury sprouts like a bitter kernel, a  smoking
ember,  the  final  hope. if  you  know  how  to  listen  it will tell
you: killing Woody Allen would be inner child work.

MARGINALIA

I am reading your Anne Carson books now
as if lapping water cupped from your palm
it’s a question of appetite, really
and I gasp it straight to the throat.
In your absence there are fervent annotations
a parallel reading, a fire scribble, a hard intent
I trace an imperceptible dog ear, a pause once,
snaring now. Sloped lines veer wildly
half cross a sentence
I read a mark shaken by a country bus
on the backroad, a pencil gripped
lying down. If the notes start only part way
were you waking up to the words then
startled, aflame?

Just like your old nets cast out
for clues and kinship
(poems Sylvia and Emily
receive especially ardent attention)
I lean towards another you that I will
never know and neither did another me
though we sweep our crumbs from the table daily
– I lick my fingers to turn the page