Moon Be
I read this book
about rape and now
rape is all I can think of lilting
joy there’s so much buried
in the phrase that’s
terrible so what now can I
say so much
static in the air hair
like a walked-through arachnid web
hatches my face but I’m
not lost I’m
nowhere near
the woods caught in the net
of just sitting here see the hairs still
rise spines
from my shoulders
barbs from my shoulders blades
and now something invisible
and now through the window
one hundred birds dive-bomb
the park where someone has
scattered whole
slices of bread to be
pecked away completely I once wrote
I believe in the pink
metallic sheen concealed
in the wingtips
of pigeons which meant something
like I believe in looking
closely years ago my mother told me
she loved beautiful things she
never apologized for
saying that a co-worker
once told me as I was tipped
wiping a spill he liked
a woman who could clean while
bent over
hold me
close and I’ll get
so fucking
bored I want whisper
to each new man who
nears me and what’s
wrong with that every night
the moon dangles itself
all shrunken up there
in the dark it is subject
to my projections
Cruel Be
it’s almost too late
I keep thinking but
for what I’m not sure
having woken repeatedly
in the night with
the pitiful coughing child
propped in her bed
against that ratcheting
from within the body
of course cures itself
by violence
last week the snow
fitted once again
its blue gown
over the grass and like
cruel sisters in a story
of love we ran out
with our hands
snowballs flying like beads
to tear it off
Be (Almost an Elegy)
hooked fishes of the factory world D.H. said but it is still
beautiful Tomas replied to go slowly on skis our daughter shakes
her yogurt sprays pale the world a mother dies a small man dies but quiet
you’ll hear the steady pick ax of a voice tinging still
more gems from the language through the rare
and heavenly steam of my afternoon bath a cockroach appeared
on my knee did it swim wrecked to the island of myself or dive
from the ceiling a botched suicide for my skin too soft met too light his body
and so the year began feelers alert we bought at the department store
whole bags of new socks and underwear and on the way back
to his parents’ place the flurry of shops and houses and trees parted easily
for our small rented car we drove on my husband and I my husband who I love
