A Thousand Words for Love

You're fading like a beat on the radio

as one song transitions to another:

soul to indie rock,

electronica to the blues.



And what is love but an exercise,

a hunkering down and flexing, pointing;

a contraction and moment of release.



Turns out the next song is one I don't know:

plaintive lyrics and a complex background

of layers: hills, valleys, and aching oohs.



Theres this myth that Eskimos have a hundred words for snow.

Its an exaggeration,

but like all hyperbole it contains truth

blown up big enough to see.



And I think we should have a thousand words for love:

One for the way I loved him,

one for the way I love you,

one for the way you love her still, despite the spite.



One for the look in your eyes

when you took this hat off your own head and put it on mine,

said, Take it.



One for the way I nodded,

then walked away.

This is the spring

This is the spring of slow walks,
the spring of gradually growing up.
There were springs that careened in on unicycles,
drunk before the party started;
the spring of kite-flying on the rooftop:
triangles of color splashed against the skyline,
which was splashed against the sky.

This is the spring of the cubicle
and a man who treats me well.
This is the spring of conflicting desires,
but I guess they've all been that.

This spring will turn out like the others:
done, settled into summer's density,
tinted in memory by the corner I'm living on this year,
with its busy sidewalk,
its small, steep incline,
its temporary green.

Phantom limb

We're running out of outlets.
No current; no connection.

Everyplace is crowded; I'm losing
you in a sea of faces,

in the jostle
and hum. I did after all

close my eyes,
put you on a raft in my mind

while I stood waist high
in water,

and give you a gentle push.
Just enough

to take you millimeters away,
then let the current do the rest.

I feel you out there still;
a severed limb that itches,

an unfinished thought,
an ellipsis,

a name attached to no object,
something terrible and abstract
that occurs

to me randomly in deep
sleep or moments of joy,

and it's then I realize
I didn't stand still;

we're floating parallel,
diverging slowly, so

slowly, so wet
and distended:
a death that could be

mistaken for birth.

Fever

Christmas is so surprising,
so suddenly upon us,
unrehearsable and permanent
like a first kiss;
the moment you finally catch his eye
and hold it,
conveying you don't know what;
the day you arrive where you've been heading
and emerge from your car into dusk
and it's colder than you thought it would be.

A balloon full of some gas heavier than air
weighs on the city tonight,
grinding me into my bed,
making my dreams halt and sputter,
the back of my throat feel thick,
my fingers ball into fists,
sweat pouring down my shoulders;
I wake just enough to feel the damp
then fade back into the saltwater
of my personal bayou,
my swamp,
half-formed alligators morphing into you
then you, then you
all around me.

The holidays have happened
or are happening,
either way they can't be looked forward to.
Soon it will just be winter:
bleak but withstandable.
We will build hundreds of tiny fires;
we will watch for the northern lights;
my fever will crack and break;
I will look down just in time
to watch the ground open and swallow me,
then up to see my own hand reaching down
to pull me back up.

Stranded in D.C.

In Borders Bookstore at 18th and L,
a man started talking to me inexplicably
about power, networking, and weapons of mass destruction.
About endgames and think tanks
and heads that will roll.
He sneered a lot and was emphatic,
also suspicious, looking slyly out of the corners of his eyes
at our fellow bookstore-coffee-drinkers
as if they were staked out to hear his insights on Hussein's master plan
and the importance of nurturing relationships
with people in power.
He talked and talked
and I got to wondering if this powerful man was lonely,
if this would be his most sincere interaction of the day,
if he considered himself benevolent for talking to me:
a girl clearly powerless and maybe a bit naive.

I left and got on a train
where I stood facing a man,
stern and upright in a gray skimmer,
who was holding a book on pragmatism
and appraising me pragmatically
as I appraised him poetically,
unapologetically.

After that I bought a bottle of Australian wine
and walked back to my hotel,
thinking about race, power, and pragmatism,
poetry and networking,
public transportation and different words for hats.

Thursday night jazz

I showed up just in time to hear the lingering end
of a jazz song
then watch the musicians drift barwards,
where they clump in their berets and nice watches
and smile at the pretty girls,
of which I am not one tonight.
I'm in black and glasses,
my hair long and straight,
looking out through eyes like cinders:
lonely.

I have a glass of wine,
good for swirling between ideas.

You terrify me,
make me fragile:
a daisy snapped in half,
a punctured balloon.
Which is ironic considering
how I flayed you,
took almost everything and can't keep
from coming back for the rest.

I'm operating on blind faith these days,
tapping the walls
and listening for echoes.

The jazz band is back.
The guitarist is gyrating all over
his inspired notes and the bassist
is holding uncannily still,
startlingly still.
The drummer looks out the window
like he's waiting for a woman:
expectant but affecting distraction.
I'm stroking the stem of my wine glass
and thinking about how our love
devolved into terror.

I like the compostion of rooms:
how people will choose to array themselves,
the spaces they leave,
the small, precise spots they take up.
I like women's hair.

Almost done with my wine;
how will the night unwind?
It'll devolve into something stark
and Norwegian: a drive,
an undressing, a puritanical sleep.
Give me 2 more minutes of this dimness:
my wine glass refracting candle light
and the drummer finally paying attention.
Give me 1 more minute.
Ok,
just give me this song.

zero gravity

I think I finally figured out why
we can't leave
each other alone.

You're the moon to my sun
and without me
you orbit in darkness.

And without you
how do I know
who I am?