To Madame X at my lunch table


You sit across from me.
Everything new is hard but
your face is soft and quiet your smile
constantly erasing itself.

Crack us open
you'll find the same violet grub.

I too have problems with my eyes
with letting people see them.
I fear being read.
You fear being heard.

I know just how you feel, you
with the wilting lily in your hair.
You're afraid the party's over
or that it's just started, and everybody
but you is in costume.

You want to live on air forget sleep
forget the hollow place in the bed
beside you forget the dark blue
of your blood when you are slicing
onions accidentally.

You want the grime in the street to stop
calling to you the one-legged man
laying on Avenue A
to stop shouting your name.

You look at a bridge and see a series
of "x"s not and not and not and
you don't like soda bread or raisins or wine.
You want to go to India but your feet will get
dirty.

You don't sleep because your
dreams crab at you.
Get that lizard out of here!
your mother screams
the milk spoiling and your
mouth filling with feathers.

Hold my hand. I've been there.
Here's how it goes:

Spit. Take a deep breath.
Let yourself slip under.
Red and lime-green climb
down your eyelashes and leopards
the size of houses sleep. When they bite

you taste candy.

Whopee! I got a whole new format. The background, which you may be able to see, faintly, if the page is loading right, is the opening page of a book about 17th century nun and poet, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. She was an extraordinary writer and renown wit, until the patriarchy shut her down. Bad patriarchs, bad. There's a very good film made about her life, from the 50's or 60's I believe. Cruz is supposed to have scribbled on this very page.

For Laur, After College

You are not mostly in my dreams.

For a while, yes, for years,
I sat on your bed counting the crooked places
in the pine branches outside the window
while you talked in a room
on the other side of your old house
(carpets worn beyond grey,
money taped under the drawers)

Your mother's smile made me wince.
She was washing the aluminum foil--
again and again -- so German --
hanging it outside on a line to dry.

So now
I dream about darker, more fragrant houses
or a beach
with pink waves that knock me, again and again,
into the warm sand. Horses everywhere, rolling and
shivering in the surf.
When I wake, there's someone
there and he washes my dishes,
feeds my cats.

Look out the window.

There's bright flashing, almost Morse.
It's me saying it's safe. I'm over you.

It's time for you to call.

I am nearly speechless (which never happens). Small Spiral Notebook published a rave review of my poetry book. I must celebrate, get a pedicure or something.