AFTER DECEMBER
when he left now i was made of molecule
small-headed and near globes of water
everything frontal
and lobed
every matchstick dragged over
its chemical stripe
when he left
i thought i was with fever
and then with child
but after nothing for many months ballooned
i knew i was only round with my own
barrel
that floated in oceans which i crossed like a feather
seeing my face in salt
and never hardening
and the heat was real it was in fact
a fiery bush that dropped singed fruit
each hour an appetite aflame
the warmth of which i could not gather
and that was when i knew
he was very much in another state
with another woman now and i was the same
woman
so i was not this woman
with beautiful fingernails
i was drifting eventide
i was eating grapes out of a bowl
__
POSTDROME
it begins with an inkling, little twinges
of fog [ how he starts to let me in ]
but i hear inking and imagine
the bluing of sheets
and when they were badly torn
he feels pangs, a clenching
and frequents the dark
like the dark is an atmosphere
to plummet
how i have travelled through thought
to reach him, squinting and creasing
my brow
asking is it half the skull do you
empty yourself, an offering
[ how he lets me out ] when i knew you
then, a lightness that i couldn't suffer long
i have cracked the door, bent the silence
to a keyhole
was the pain not stunning was its clutch
not neat enough its hand its bloom
__
RELATED TO OR REGARDING AN INTERIOR
he says it & i am flummoxed.
spaceship, body of knowledge,
the world & then some. it gathers
height, picks up in wind. said what?
there's a little bit of rum that sticks
to the glass. on a day that sticks
to the throat, sound as currency.
it is the way he says it & not
the substance of it, like four wheel
drive shifting, beginning to grate
& grind. tiny particles, how it always
begins. if something is swept, how
it fans out & colors. he says it &
a row of books fall from the shelf
in the hallway, they wilt open.
or a fan begins to slowly turn,
clicking its eye. there are moments
i want to be touched so closely
together that a razor would split
both skins. but the fan is the sound
tonight, it lurches over us, &
it is this evening i kneel, begging
for snow to fall though it is only
august. how something has frozen
inside me, how no heat can enter
there, the nothing, that hum.
__
STILL
1
and so balancing on two spires of ice
the spring ends the spring
of my silence continues and shrugs
as a coat thrown onto a mattress over
and over again
so in evening dice are hurled at the wall
and not counted
and returning unable to touch the seam
of the window
but shattering the glass
2
never am i wanting for a kind of
seafoam summer on a pendulum
opening my purse to straws
white strands their long coats
then wearing a towel into another
apartment where his hands are
on me his hands are off me
yes disrobed i am still a room quiet
__
All of these poems were built out of a misunderstanding or misreading of another person. I find it interesting that humans can speak to each other plainly while having muddied intentions. Or can speak to something besides their intentions. Then I am left, generally, with image rather than story. Or the story is muddied.
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