There’s a helpless woman in his sleep
a recluse woman preoccupied with simple thoughts
and needless accessories
A woman who enters his room when he dozes off
she stares at his heart
exactly there, his heart,
then takes a flower out of the vase
before he wakes to count the...
The Imagined
If the imagined woman makes the real woman
seem bare-boned, hardly existent, lacking in
gracefullness and intellect and pulchritude,
and if you come to realize the imagined woman
can only satisfy your imagination, whereas
the real woman with all her limitations
can often make you...
"Eighteen Days Without You"
Anne Sexton
December 11th
Then I think of you in bed,
your tongue half chocolate, half ocean,
of the houses that you swing into,
of the steel wool hair on your head,
of your persistent hands and then
how we gnaw at the barrier because we are two.
How you come and...
A Filament Burns in Blue Degrees
This cold light.
Crumbs. Drops of jelly
on the floor. My hair
damp. Curled and tangled.
I want to half-know:
a refrigerator, slightly open.
On a shady shelf. Things lifted
from me. Come to me like the sneak
of chocolate I am. Crack the ice,
swing the bins open into a light
with no promise. I’m your
fresh storage. And caloric.
Come after midnight, your hand
on the door, and me, lit, humming.
On garam masala afternoons I catch your rhythm in the kitchen and we burn into something tender. An eddy of joy. A shiver.
Blur of hips, we swing the circles of a reckless world.
Taut again. Loose, loose.
At night, we tumble into something better that crinkles like wire-strung happiness. Rain sliding on a corrugated roof.
Forever. Temporary. We stay either way.
Lucas Tromblee
In the year 1997,
back when the world had vague corners,
a brown sparrow flew over
a field of the same shade;
each dead grass streaked
by Andrew Wyeth’s brush.
In the center,
I swung on a tire-swing
in small circles
under an oak
and a rotten orange dusk.
I liked how God seemed to whistle over the road
after a lumber-truck drove by.
I liked how the firs swayed on the field’s edge
as if they’d come out of the ground,
and never did.
This woman fits in my hands. She is fair and blond, and I would
carry her in my hands like a basket of magnolias.
This woman fits in my eyes. My gaze enfolds her, my gaze that sees
nothing as it enfolds her.
This woman fits in my desires. She is naked before the yearning
flame of my life, and...
There’s a woman in me who drinks poison
like water, thinks it’s what she needs
to stay alive. I wish she’d learn to savor
water’s plain taste, enjoy quench and calm.
But give her hurricane and drowned
peony blooms and she smiles, raises
her face to the rain and says, Hit...
Sometimes, a man carries bluebells
like water pails knocking at my door.
And I don’t know how to let love in.
Sudden, to some, how a woman’s face
can light up, not to me. Burners, all of us,
my spine’s a black wick, rumours crackle
the charcoal of my family tree....
Lightning hits the roof,
shoves the knife, darkness,
deep in the walls.
They bleed light all over us
and your face, the fan, folds up,
so I won’t see how afraid
to be with me you are.
We don’t mix, even in bed,
where we keep ending up.
There’s no need to hide it:...
fluttering-slips
The Time Being
You know him. He is the small man
hanging around the periphery.
He has straight white teeth
and a smile for you
whenever you call him over.
His skin is the color
of your skin
in August because he is standing
always outside your window,
looking for work,
wanting a position like yours.
You have put in a good word;
he is dependable and always
dresses appropriately
for the weather.
You do not hurt his chances
by letting it be known
that you are in love with him,
these days, as sometimes you are.
When he is with you,
you hold his hand,
which is barely bigger than yours.
With your other hand,
you touch his face;
this is the shape of a moment
