in the kitchen this morning

once I found a woman run over by a cab
there was no one to thank for letting her live,
blood seeping into her eyes so I could barely look at her
when I reassured her "you will be fine"
I have told other lies, but this felt somehow right,
the streetlamps collecting flies like a child collects dolls
playing with them off in her room or, in this case,
the ....Chelsea.... sky on a night meant for things other than celebration,
on a night I was halfway to a lover's house when I found her,
crumpled in the street, her arms at an awkward angle
cradling what was left of her head.. ..

in the kitchen this morning, all I can think is how beautiful
it is to be alive the boy I brought home asleep in my bed,
four eggs cooking on the stove, the window with its light turns
my skin a dull gold when I look down which I do to remind myself
what it means to be a woman who has just made love

another time I came across a woman who had just been hit
by a Salvation Army truck. I was about to cross the street
when it happened – it rolled over her twice
and she got up brushed, brushed herself off, said she wasn't the type
to sue anyone. I held her hand for a minute – it was flat like a tire
I think she had a few broken bones but no one could tell
her what it was like to feel pain,
what it is like to walk through the neighborhood
with your back bent like an old woman or a "C".. ..

in the kitchen this morning, I think about all the broken girls,
how I am one of them, how I am too old to be sleeping with men
I don't love, men I come across in bars
men holding guitars as if they were women,
their mouths so heavy with want they cannot open them wide enough
to sing

2:04 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Birthmark

One

A birthmark develops on my chest in the shape of a heart
I take this as a sign
My father used to measure the growth of my breasts
"They are like the moon, opening and closing" he would say
and I would run to the window or mirror, anywhere I could see myself
try and disguise the bumps that swelled there like ladybugs

 Some nights at dinner he would feel my legs for shape
"You are becoming a woman," he would say if there was evidence enough
Again, I would run to where I could see the outline of my body
I didn't think you could love a daughter who had become a woman
and so I yelled at my skin, the way the fat deposits were moving beneath it like maggots

 Two

Years later, I have become that woman you pointed to on the map
of where her body met your hand like a lion's head when you pet it

 I wonder, will you write me again, will you share your mouth with me
Or other parts of your body
Maybe a time will come when you will run your finger over the new heart
on my chest, when you will measure growth in me like how my cells multiply
beneath your fingers like a group of flies

Nothing is beautiful this June night with its uncertainty, even the black refusing
to swallow my loneliness

7:37 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Meditation

A part of me is back in that house, that room, my mouth like the opening of a sock, my hand making shadow puppets on the wall. There are difficult places to maneuver here in the present, doorways you are too large to fit through. My sister writes about my drug dealer doctor, how we would tell him what I used to do for money. My past somehow belongs to her because she is a poet, because everyone needs something to write about besides the moon. When she reads it in public, in front of our friends, I want to go up to her, put my hand over her mouth. Instead, I sit with my new boyfriend who I will break up with in a few days, my mouth a straight line like a staple, my hands stilled in my lap, the parts of me that could as easily fly up and strike as hold her.

9:12 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Desire

My father is in a hospital in France trying to lose weight
My mother is in suburban Maryland with her hands around a bottle of valium
My dot is a red moon at the vet today and I think about drinking again
The way I could pour a glass of scotch or vodka and everything would move
a little farther away
Like a man at a party who does not like
what you are wearing
Or a woman on the subway whose life feels
like a stain on the inside of a book
I wanted to drink to you, to the times we would spend standing
on the stairs at my parents' house
your head tilted back so you could kiss me
my head tilted back so i could kiss you
back to a time when everything was pure, when i could look at a flower
without crying

My sister calls and invites me to a meeting of Codependents Anonymous
I know there are things to do besides drink
like tend to the cactus that cuts into my
hand when I feed it
Or walk the dog around the block
But nothing feels as promising int he way you can empty
your head, turn it upside down
like a purse

And then, you find yourself at the vet again, your small dog a heap
in your arms. You cannot get there fast enough and yet you are slowed
down with alcohol, moving through the streets like a reluctant
rainbow. You are responsible for the happiness of your dog, your cactus
your mother and father. You are the one who made them,
or who they made, the small God seated at the table
across from them when they visit
You are the one who will tell them
what it means to see a sunset
out the wondow of your third story apartment
to know that the sky is coming apart
specifically for you

6:42 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

spring

even the trees weep for their young
and, in an open field, a bird falls midair
i am in my living room remembering how you would call and call
how a part of me wanted to dissuade you, another part longed for the end
of loneliness
i am a child most days, relearning what it means to read
a letter from you having arrived in the mail
the postman, who was bitten by the dog, delivered it
"you look beautiful, wearing your nightgown in daylight" he tells me
and i hear your voice when we first laid down in my bed
your seven year celibate hands undoing
my hair
and then the canon you sent i didn't want but played anyhow
over and over
here i am, telling you, on a tuesday in may in an election year
the flowers just beginning again to swell into something we can look at
i am in the process of falling in love

8:29 PM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Scene

It is snowing and I am thinking about the hospital, the way the nurses

felt my hair for lice or devices I might use to kill myself

I want to go to where you are on the sofa and tell you I love you

but I am only now growing used to your name in my mouth

If I tell you I have forgiven myself for not calling you

after your father died, do not listen

There is a space in me reserved for birds and other beautiful things

The gene that allows empathy, it is there too

On some days, I am slow like rain that has not quite decided to fall

Tonight, in your living room, I wanted to reach over and touch you

Right in front of God, your friend, and anyone

I wanted to lead you to the bedroom, turn out the lights

and pretend we were in the hospital, that land between refuge and its opposite

where even the bruised girls have a chance be innocent

10:36 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

After Dinner

We are eating jackfruit and listening to songs about talking to your inner child.
I am not in love with you, so I read you a note I wrote to a poet about my sister’s dead husband.
You say your heart hurts after hearing about them and the dog moves towards you a little.
Soon, you will fall asleep on the red sofa and I will dream of the man I let go five years ago.
Tomorrow, we will ride the subway to Coney Island for candied apples and my sister will be in her apartment cleaning the floors.
There are ways to deal with grief, and then there is the pushing away of anyone who loves you.
Spring is just beginning, the flowers with their buds that look like hands.
I call my mother on the telephone to tell her I love her even though the distance between us is shaped like a lake something terrible lives in.
There are places I can go to escape all this, but I do not know their names.

8:32 PM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Like Snow

6:27 PM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

another winter poem

January Again

It was cold in her, the place where she had seen
children grow and shut them down
with pills. The winter David told her he loved her,
she locked herself inside her apartment
with a bottle of gin. When she told her psychiatrist
she felt unloved, he touched her in places
she had only seen in books.

She was a diagram most days, lining her parts
up against the kitchen
counter and, at night, her bed
or dog.

I want to tell you something good happens,
like she gets a call from a long lost
parent, but the truth is she was raised on negligence
and bad sex. When you get close
enough to hear her breathing, listen to the ragged
sound her lungs give off
like water escaping
an iron. Look atop her dresser to where
the shell she found in Montauk
resides. Check the wall for fingerprints
of men she has loved.

1:56 PM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

poem about winter

January

The sound of sex in the next room, this woman had come to visit
my new roommate. I had been two girls, but I didn't know how it looked
from afar. We watched a movie about a deaf girl before I got home,
Neal and Karen and me lying on Neal's bed. I kept waiting for a miracle,
for the deaf girl to hear, but God must have been busy. Maybe he was in line at the A&P
or buying condoms at Eckerd's. Or maybe he had a new roommate who was having
sex on a blue bed pulled from the trash on a Wednesday in June in some city
with birds warring over bits of bread. I've seen things less quiet get along,
but the sky here is filled with suicidal stars and anything beautiful
must be on its way to falling.

6:04 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment