you, my dear, have grown
ever-so-careless with your
pronouns. i've misread you
before on their account,
those faceless parts of
speech to whom we loan
our hand-painted masks.
nameless loves, named
nouns, the proper
people unashamed,
reaching out and verbing
one another across vast
prepositions.
really, i'm as guilty as
anyone. it is so easy
to address our envelopes
to: you and expect the
message to be delivered.
to: him, to: her, to: abstraction;
all equally cause the great literary
mail carrier to shrug and tap
his foot. yet, strangely, our
little notes always arrive,
timely and unopened.
and, to be honest,
i know why we do it.
when you spoke of him
and him and him, i
was able to slip myself
into your life, uninvited
party guest standing
in the corner of your
poems, waving, awkward,
tugging at the strings
of my mask, being him,
if only for a little while.
if only to stand in a room
with you, her, we, us.
identity, how silly. how
easily it comes to us,
the pretending on the
page. and then how
naked we feel after
taking off the borrowed
mask, feeling our i's
like new things,
excited to be our own.
then the looking around
for us.
then the cold, fast
remembering
in only seeing
you and him.
August 8, 2009
August 2, 2009
tandem running
she explained why some ants have wings
and others don't,
involved something about how
the ground is the bottom of the sky
and the coupling in-flight
and the males dying either too soon
or not soon enough
and oh, oh, honey,
won't it be fine?
a come-hither look,
her cogs
slipping of teeth,
turning in bed,
and all of us are such
vainglorious, precocious
children! mean-minded bastards
with tongues in each others'
mouths and the highways
that connect our hives
have lately been lined
with orange barrels
and flashing signs
that insist we, all of us moving,
slow everything down.
there's a measurable amount of destruction
that goes into a building, a road, a child
walks into a bar and is offered round
after round and the adults regurgitate
everything into him, mold the wrinkles
he will later see in the mirror.
rub her head against mine
until i can smell everything she is
and has been, so i can follow her home,
so if she is lost i can find her,
her pheromones lighting up the sky
like a ridge of fire advancing through a forest.
so much working, so much cutting of leaves
and trucking home with strangers and then
it's all legs and legs and feeling
like your skin and your bones
are the same, like your organs
are floating, entangling themselves.
she says that's how they do it, ants,
that's how they lose
themselves in the largeness
of the colony. how they all
live and eat and mate
without prisons or art galleries or names.
but if you think about it, she says,
we're all pretty strong for our size,
our tiny hearts lifting mighty things
without second-guessing,
living towards
the chance to grow something
you weren't born with,
the chance to fly away from everything
you've known.
and others don't,
involved something about how
the ground is the bottom of the sky
and the coupling in-flight
and the males dying either too soon
or not soon enough
and oh, oh, honey,
won't it be fine?
a come-hither look,
her cogs
slipping of teeth,
turning in bed,
and all of us are such
vainglorious, precocious
children! mean-minded bastards
with tongues in each others'
mouths and the highways
that connect our hives
have lately been lined
with orange barrels
and flashing signs
that insist we, all of us moving,
slow everything down.
there's a measurable amount of destruction
that goes into a building, a road, a child
walks into a bar and is offered round
after round and the adults regurgitate
everything into him, mold the wrinkles
he will later see in the mirror.
rub her head against mine
until i can smell everything she is
and has been, so i can follow her home,
so if she is lost i can find her,
her pheromones lighting up the sky
like a ridge of fire advancing through a forest.
so much working, so much cutting of leaves
and trucking home with strangers and then
it's all legs and legs and feeling
like your skin and your bones
are the same, like your organs
are floating, entangling themselves.
she says that's how they do it, ants,
that's how they lose
themselves in the largeness
of the colony. how they all
live and eat and mate
without prisons or art galleries or names.
but if you think about it, she says,
we're all pretty strong for our size,
our tiny hearts lifting mighty things
without second-guessing,
living towards
the chance to grow something
you weren't born with,
the chance to fly away from everything
you've known.
We Are Sparrows And Our Children Are Sparrows
and the blackest
crow has come
to our nest.
The way we swoop
and dart so desperately
at the enormous,
unfeeling wings
of an adversary
whose eyes are black
whose feathers are black
whose talons are black-
red.
A terrible, high-pitched screaming
that no amount of swooping or darting will ease.
The undulating lines of us
pursuing a black tear
as it rips unstoppably
across a cloudless, blue sky.
So much frantic screeching and flying,
so much wild flailing and falling
and throwing ourselves against
something too impossibly large,
and then the stopping,
the final banking,
the turning home;
An unfamiliar, quiet place
of broken twigs and
cold feathers.
crow has come
to our nest.
The way we swoop
and dart so desperately
at the enormous,
unfeeling wings
of an adversary
whose eyes are black
whose feathers are black
whose talons are black-
red.
A terrible, high-pitched screaming
that no amount of swooping or darting will ease.
The undulating lines of us
pursuing a black tear
as it rips unstoppably
across a cloudless, blue sky.
So much frantic screeching and flying,
so much wild flailing and falling
and throwing ourselves against
something too impossibly large,
and then the stopping,
the final banking,
the turning home;
An unfamiliar, quiet place
of broken twigs and
cold feathers.