Dating a Drunk


    the perpetual present tense and lists
kissing an ashtray
    kissing a gin bottle
inserting a wet thumb into his neck,
its neck, getting stuck at the knuckle

        give up
            the idea of a cure,
the talking cure, the wincing cure,
the cure of rose bushes and long thorns
used for whipping, cold water, then hot

think of the physics, suction, vacuum,
gravity         blood flow
spills necessarily climb up the headboard

small bodies are drawn
to large bodies of water      
        thirsty around midnight you open his
cupboards while he's sleeping, the spigot stuck

the cupboards of his lungs
a wheeze of old lacquer and small slow beetles
something knocking irregularly
                       against the back wall

at 2am you take out his organs,
try to clean them with paper towels
          they curl and sigh in your  palms

the different shapes that glass can take:
shards,      shots,       windows,       globes,       cups,      pints,
bottles,  the different shapes this argument can take

the old accident, the spine knocked along the concrete
motorcycle treads along his scalp  

weaving feelers in the air, saturated  
    shoes on the wrong feet or in the wrong century

lips like a sloppy fist but still you
push      less resistance to your fists

I'm not in this week,
    he says as he looks at himself
in the mirror of your face, leave a message

you can smell him from the next room

the lights multiply and shout     you enter his skin
            through the cracks in his armpits
    the color of bronze paint, dirty dishwater, hotel room carpets

drowned ship
        full of old pocket knives, costume jewelry,  
full of diet coke and whiskey,   sour

Landscape at Night with Bed and Fire

Hair caught on my tongue, I sing into
your ear, my lips so quiet, so close,

they are signing with my breath the language
under kneecaps, under ribs, under fingernails.

The room shudders, a bedful of red snakes;
the room stills, a bedful of drowned plates.

Low murmurs from our palms, as if we
had throats in our wrists, and you drift towards

the ceiling, splayed, smoky, while the curtains
flutter and blacken, break into iridescent

loose sparks, spill out our window onto the dead
in lines out on the lawn, waiting to enter.

Evidence of The Divine


the way a woman's hair feels
when it hangs over the seat
in front of you on the bus

the way the leaves taste
when you lean over the fence
of your neighbor's garden
and steal from the mint bush

the first time you see a girl's
naked calves on the subway
this spring

the way you can
tell your lover's dancing
in the other room when the door's closed,
the way the light shifts in patches: dark then bright

Obscenity: a User’s Manual

    A blue gap-toothed comb.

My patent
    leather heels, dark and vicious as mirrors.

Cabbage roses, faded, stretched.
    The hem unraveling.

        I attach
            the leather cuffs reeking  of
    saddles and silverware to my bed posts.

After dark, the women with hands
        tucked into short fur coats
clack up and down the street.  They
    carry the reflected light of neon
in their hair.  It is your job, he says, to envy them.

    In the store, the women’s faces
        behind the counter.   Very pale,
        attempting to smile.  Often they
are busy in one corner
            holding an instrument
    and explaining its use to a customer.

There might be a key somewhere.  If
    there is, I swallow it.

Stuttering, whispering.  A small start when
    the bell on the shop door tinkles.

        I stuff
    the contraption in the bottom
            of my closet.  It has a stinging
                        smell, like a lemon
    rind held too close to your nose.

A spot on the center
    of the chair cushion.

A tug on my earlobe with his teeth.

A row of recently cleaned slippers
        by the bed.

The way he wants me to
    talk while we’re at it,
    to tell him things that happen on fishing ships
when the men have been
        at sea a long time.

The fishscales,  I say,
        get caught in their beards.

        A cup of old coffee,
    reheated, red letters on the rim.