The Hobbyists
They plant gardens in flattened patches
–where you used to lay like a handmade quilt–
and send you sweating sacks of overripe fruit
They attend the funerals of strangers
and weep openly against dark wool shoulders
of other lovers, all of them lost or losing
They learn inertia in seven languages
and play their voices back on tape
until interpretation wears to static
They build intricate tangles
just so they can practice at unknotting
They seek like missiles toward the heat
of your present happiness
snub nosed and bullet straight
They can’t leave well enough alone
They have so much to talk about
Finally, they have so much they want to say
Two Daughters
When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them. They would carry on as if changing the locks was a game all parents played with their oldest child, to trick them into resiliency. They let my little sister have my bedroom one day while I was at school, to make room for the new baby that was on the way. “This house is only big enough for two daughters,” my father told me with a shrug. At night I would sneak in and hide under my old bed, and when my parents would come to tuck my sister in for the night, I’d mouth along the words as they read her my favorite bedtime story. My father tells everyone he has two daughters, their names are Pride and Joy. Occasionally I’ll bump into him in the supermarket, both of us perusing the citrus aisle, and though he can’t remember me, his eyes will linger on my face just long enough to make us both uncomfortable.
Saint Elizabeth’s
My body is an ever-changing clock—
spastic springs and gears never settling,
never keeping proper time.
Bodies carry bodies in pockets, on chains
like skin-scented heirlooms. When my grandmother
died, she left me her first kiss, the ticking sound
of summer asphalt and peach fuzzed legs.
I see my mother’s handwriting on the chart beside
my bed: Sarita has always been a dramatic child.
Her face gathers humidity like tears trapped behind glass.
Dr. Winnicki advises me to rest, but never to fall asleep,
while he looks for cures in different time zones.
His clock is all bent and rusty snow, melting into
creeks where salmon spawn alcoholic fishermen.
Clocks line up on barstools in Wuuhstah,
“Ayuh yoos, haws abouwda beeah?”
Nicotine-stained vowels, romancing beers like wives.
Before becoming wives, girls sway to the music,
twirl their skirts like love. Their pink and red fingernails
tap out the seconds between handsome wristbands.
Tell me what you’re really thinking…I don’t want to know.
Nurse Alma sees too many words in my future, where she says
nuts chase the squirrels, and clocks are ever-changing bodies.
Spanish Sonnet
I do not love you–except because I love you,
I’ve never loved another before you.
A verb–to love–subject with no object:
I loved my love not knowing how to love.
Love is modified by what isn’t known
and dangles, suspended in the lack like
silence distributing its weight over
miles between driver and passenger seats.
You don’t know how to love, object tells subject.
How many times can a heart bear the words
before relinquishing its grammar?
Lov-ing, Lov-ed, improperly assigned
muddles significance like question marks–
tentatively asking, “Do you love me?”
(first line borrowed from one of Neruda’s love sonnets)
Proof
Making love an act
of call and response
we played at proving
each other wrong
with tenderness and revenge
our song of redemption
I was to you as
you were to me
both of us needing
to know just how far
we could scrape toward
not quite enough
each climax bringing us
closer to the ordinary
In our attempts at disproving
the restlessness of dreamers,
we proved each other right.
Born
It’s the most natural thing
but like everything we set out to do
it’s governed by changing clocks
and moody tides
balanced on the whim of a child
regret is born of reckless hope
and intention is no guarantee
it shrivels against the unforeseen outcome
loving is easier than being loved
and ignorance far happier than pain
passed down like an heirloom
showing the baby how to know her mother
It’s the most natural thing
but we are not equipped to provide—
not enough, not yet
what is inborn
must first be birthed
i have a dog
he paces back and forth over my feet
he wants up on the couch but
he won’t jump until he’s invited
i have to coax him
sometimes i hate him
his capacity to love me more than i can love him
but at night i let him under the covers
where he presses his little warm body against mine
and he doesn’t protest when i toss and turn
The Letter
I took pen to paper
Wrote down what I had to say
My hopes, my fears, my thoughts and dreams
My heart and soul neatly punctuated and grammatically correct
I thought you might be interested so I sent it your way
No return address, no second guess
The words hold more meaning after they’ve traveled the miles
From one end of the country to the other
Not the fibers and wires of the telephone line
With the pauses and sighs that don’t express but confuse
Each period, a definitive statement
A new paragraph, a new sentiment
But now I can’t remember how I signed
With Love
Much Love
All My Love?
Those one or two words tacked on the front make the biggest difference
You should receive it pretty soon
You don’t know when it’s coming but there it will be
Unless a problem has transpired
Through rain and sleet and snow
The letter lost its way or even worse
The envelope tore and gaped
And all the points I tried to make came tumbling out
Faded and anonymous somewhere in the middle of us
If I could have I would have sealed myself inside that envelope
I did my best, even still
You won’t see me smile or catch my tone when you unfold the paper
The words aren’t an embrace or even a stare
No questions will be answered
No gratification received
But keep in touch
And paint me a picture of what I’m missing
Across the miles, I’ll do my best to help you remember me
34 Anderson Street
I lived in a brownstone three flights up
on a cobblestone street in Boston,
eye-level with rooftops and telephone wires.
you could hear people living in the next
building over (one time I even heard
them making love).
my roommate was a cute girl smaller
than me with terrible hygiene.
she was oblivious in many ways but
especially in love.
she would stumble into the living room
every morning in a camisole and panties,
smoking a cigarette and looking for coffee,
and we’d sit together in silence
smoking and sipping before I’d head off to work
our only shared ritual
and even that was bad for our health.
I left once for a week and came back to find
her in the same position on the sofa,
not wearing pants and
ashing into a dish overflowing with butts,
a week’s worth of trash attracting
fruit flies in the kitchen.
by the time I moved out she
was already gone. she had
taken the radio I bought for
the shower and left a wooden
table that only had three
legs which she picked up on
the street the day we moved in.
the fact that she left that table upset me
more than if she had taken half of my belongings.
