last lover

My last lover
Dances through the dying forest like a butterfly
living its first and last day
He dances through the dying leaves on the forest floor
The rotting branches
dance in the wind

A silence
at a distance
The tea leaves blow off the counter
The walls of the house have collapsed
wind singing through them
The curtains, the only thing left.
Blowing in tatters in the wind

In a pure grey sky,
the birds have stopped singing
The ice flows through the open floors
The blue moon melts overhead


As my last lover dances away
Disappearing into the fog
Like the ghost fox that follows him

fog

The red birds flock on branches, five or ten, and are scattered here and there.
A few in the bamboo, a few in the barren oak trees.

While the cat, as still as an ice cat sits with her paws melting the snow in little prints on the concrete steps and looking out to the woods.

There in the grey sky a hint of a spring to come.
The leaves of faint beige, of pale yellow, peek from the snow, melted into a bitter crust, under an off white grey sky.

Fog rolling up the hill, fills the sky, and meets the snow, and encloses the cat & me in soft white damp.

storm

From my kitchen, I can see the faint glimmers of the rising sun through the bare tree branches of the forest behind my house. To my right is my snow covered driveway, strewn with a few broken branches. The bamboo is frozen in a pile of snow. Red cardinals fly in and out chased by small chickadees. No ghostly fox has appeared.

The calm after the storm rent by snow blowers, clanging snow plows, and the scraping of shovels. The road is a slush strewn mess of dirt, ice, snow, which has been churned up by the trucks and cars. No one is sledding or playing today; everyone is rushing off to the store and work. Everyone is preparing for a holiday, forgetting the signature left by Mother Nature.

Only I am home watching the sun hit the icicles on my deck, the water dripping slowly out the drainpipe, flooding my driveway in a careless pattern.

parade of brides

She watches the parade of brides down the street
Where did they arrive from ….
This series of brides; tall and short
in white wedding dresses
that sweep the street clean
Their trains drifting down the street catching
on lampposts
on parking meters
One caught in the fender of
A faded red '68 mustang
rips loose
and the fabric flutters
the train, loose,
Dances around the legs of children
And husky dogs
That also prance down the street

the Whirlwind

In the whirlwind

Ghostly foxes running through the pine forest
stepping over the leaves
One two feet jumping through the piles of leaves


Ghostly foxes
Jumping through golden rusty leaves
The foxes dance
Tails floating behind
Feet leaping
through
piles of yellowed willow leaves

A ghostly fox standing under the bamboo stand
Leaning gently on the icy silt
The icy snow

When the bamboo breaks under the snow
The fox taps lightly down the hill white flakes dancing from its coat

Breathing

Like the sound of petals rustling
Or a bird flying through bamboo
We might vanish through the clouds
and never be seen again

Such things I see through your eyes
that lock in mine
Inside me
No words needed
In this silence,
This silence of our bittersweet passion

Hearts beating together
Feeling your breath against my fingers
In my ears
Against my neck
Breathing in that breath
And breathing it back to you

It echoes in my heart
Every day
Every minute
Your breath
So still as that bird in the frozen bamboo

The scent of raspberries is Forbidden

The scent of raspberries
is Forbidden

But for me, the smell of the apartment hallway
evokes
the faint gas from a hundred cooking stoves
all burning turkeys and potatoes

I don't smile at the janitor wearing a red knit cap
carrying a leaking black garbage bag down the hall.
past the blue door leading to the stairs

because the sound of fear
the sound rushing through my ears
waiting for the elevator
deafens me

The sound of fear at each shudder of the wind hitting the window
in the room the size of a closet
blinds me
Then I see
His eyes at night black are this early morning, a simple molasses brown

On having two dreams

I dreamed last night of being a lark
and then I was to be Pope.

asja

she dreams of snails and grey cats
she dreams of mice and generals

the little lieutenant who flew through the door
her wings made of yellow scrambled butterflies
a nose of powdered yellow fluff

the little captain who rushes out to
sit for hours in the grass
dreams of blue mice
and the dancing wings of grasshoppers
bouncing through the crabgrass into the open door
down the hall

bad poetry

Here I sit writing bad poetry
While reading Shelley’s Ode To The West Wind
I write of the end of
a love gone
like a deck of playing cards, that was tossed up in the air.
Shattered in the air.
The eye of the queen of spades lands by my foot
The jack of hearts lands in his eye.

It is the end of love.

It is the time of parting.

I cling to the car door.
My fingernails digging in the metal.
Etching the finest of impressions.
In the background
I hear laughter,
a choir of broken glass and frozen birds,
when the midnight sun touches my left eye

And so, I spin in my chair from the window to the desk to record
More bad poetry.

spiders

Love comes from out of the corners
a spider who
can no longer make
a web
silver threads
broken
trailing in bits behind her

An abstraction
this spider
her web
a mosaic drawn upon the window pane


Drawn as he says good bye
As she walked down the corridor
8 am
the threads of the carpet so low so worn one flat surface
she goes sliding to the elevator


Every night
she dreams the same dream
spider fingers crawl down her neck
resting on her shoulder


Every night
She draws the same
spider on a paper
waiting for his message

for days

For days now, I have been trying to write the perfect love poem
one that would include the love that was
those sweet kisses from the boy who I met backstage, who I still hold in my heart
those heart stopping kisses from the man whose green rimmed brown eyes freeze my breath
the biting kisses from the cinnamon-eyed man who holds my heart, with a dark passion that is not unlike the power of Quetzalcoatl
and the unknown kisses from the man I have not yet met, whose kisses will last forever, last as long as the dark stars in the autumn sky

lies

“What does a lie do?” she asks, leaning over the edge of the train station bench.

“It rips open your soul, and leaves a smooth edge, which can never be stitched back together,” she replies to herself.

I look over.

Is she speaking to me?

The lies that have come thundering through my life of late have left more than one tear, more than one tear that can never be healed. The edges never quite meet. The scar rips open before it is healed. The lies have ripped my eyes open to the complexity of the human soul. What is a truth is now a lie. What is a lie becomes the rocky foundation for a truth. The lies that were truths become demons in the middle of the night, rocking me awake.

Should I ask her why I am the perfect target for lies?

She seems wise, this woman wearing a pale blue cardigan, and a smooth strand of pearls. I look at her closely. Her eyes, grey green, reflect not the beautiful blue of her sweater but a sadness. I look closely. She looks hundreds of years old suddenly, as she looks up and smiles at me. Her head tipped back, the eyes radiate a flash of awareness, a certainty that the human race has so much further to go. She looks downward at her short fingernails, the cuticles worn and torn. They look familiar. Her hands stroke her pearl necklace, slowly worrying each pearl.

I look down at my hands.

My hands are hers. My eyes are hers. I am thousands of years old. And I still don’t understand these lies.

dragonfly and leaves

After that first kiss, which took my breath,
turned into
a tangle of leaves:

the darkest autumn leaves under the shower of yellow and red.

Then, the acid yellowing pine needles
slowly etched
a nervous network into my heart.

The dark brittle dead leaves
shattered under foot
falling to pieces
under your touch

I watch a dragonfly
Self-immolate in the light
outside the door
where you stand
so casually looking at the night.

For J.

The day you kissed me on the street was the day you took my breath away. Literally.

The second that you took my face in your hand and turned my mouth to yours, my heart stopped for a minute.

But I began having trouble breathing before that moment. It started when you put your hand on the small of my back to guide me around the rushing tide.

I swallowed hard.

Then that first kiss left me completely breathless. When you asked how it was, I could only say nothing because I wanted another kiss so that I could breathe again.

The street around us disappeared. I have no idea who walked past us. I was blacking out from desire. From lack of oxygen. From meeting you.

And so it goes on still. Your eyes are these magic colors of hazel nut brown and green. When you look at me, I forget what I am thinking.

But when I think of you, it is the night we had the chairs outside on the grass, and you talked to me with your beautiful lilting voice. The world disappeared around us but for the cool air. I would have sat there until dawn.

Alas, you had to leave. And in the leave taking, again my breath disappears for a moment. A moment longer each time you take leave.

wave goodbye

The good bye is like the sea
That endlessly tosses the shells crashing onto the rocks:
A splinter here, a splinter there.

I wave good bye,
This single flat wave
From the palm of my hand, ice blue.

Once the man, who walks this beach, could pour this sea water into a glass
hand it to me
And I would believe it was the most rare of wines.

Now the water
I see is gritty with dust and dirt.
Now I see the water is bitter with salt.

Now I throw the glass to the rocks
Shattering the dream into a million shards,
Which vanish upward into the green-gray sea foam.

no poet

No poet
who saw the poor widow
down the street
Ever offered her candy

Or roses
from his balcony

this poor widow,
You see,
was not really a widow

She wore long black stockings
Her method was severe

He smelled of milk
milk from his daughter's breakfast
milk that had spilled
from her blue cereal bowl
she thought of him as through this haze of milk

Her method was severe to
hide the beating of her heart
which stopped frequently
when she saw him
walking past with his daughter


She cobbled together a life
from Bette Davis films
flowers from the grocery store
a bag of candy
a collection of dolls
for his daughter

but no poet ever offered
her his heart

hyacinth

He had a taste for cornflakes
Evidenced by the
thin ribbon of milk
Spilling drop by drop to the floor

the sight when the door slowly silently opens
that morning

and then the sound of cornflakes under his heels
leaving a trail

and the smell of hyacinth in the air
the light flashing in his amber eyes

Thinking

Take my breath
Erase the moment
when the cold blue light of morning
floods the room
This early Hooper morning
Two figures on a bed
my hands of steely blue
The light turns your brown eyes a cool blue

I tripped the first time
The second time I fell willingly
like Alice down the narrow tunnel

Fearing the forgetting
Thinking of nothing

selection from my dissertation

Photographer

Hidden interiors of houses and buildings exposed in the glimpses as you pass. The door opens, the lighted interior spills out. The human inhabitant moves from couch to lamp with the monstrous shadow of his bowler hat flaring on the wall.

His hand pulls the (bone white) curtain shut. Ambient light of streetlamp and moon highlight the building’s skin, erasing the pits, dents, and chips. Through fences and shrubbery, one glimpses a yard.

The back yard, a secret, is obscured by the well-maintained turf and hedges of the front yard. Pass through an alley and peek over the fence to see the soul of the yard: the sagging empty clothesline, scattered toys, a forgotten car tire.


The photographer moves through the street with fingers carefully balancing the camera, strap wrapped once, twice, three times around his fist.

A stripe of celluloid caught under the heel. It drags clicking behind him. It unrolls, It unravels, Trailing behind him for many yards. It engraves in the concrete, in the asphalt, through the turf and dirt of alleys and yards, the line of his wandering vagabond journey through the city.

The photographer moves through the street.

He passes a small boy following a red balloon. And a small girl, whose pigtails flare out at 90 degree angles.

His shadow is caught, dancing around the buildings to the left. The movement caught in the stilled camera.

The next day, he quickly climbs out of his bed and runs to the drawing board. He traces the lines of a building across a site map. The site map is covered with the layers of debris and history. Each line is a weight of the years and the accumulation of people. He draws the line of the first wall, a wavering line that will be made from brick and mortar.

The door, the window, the frames onto the passing street and the passing leaves of autumn.

He has built himself a darkroom in the corner of his studio, a building which rises like a corkscrew from the corner lot. The lot that was once an drycleaner, a tailor, and a butcher shop. The wafting orders of the past drift through the vents at unusual times, like when he stops for a cup of tea, memories of his grandmother.

In the darkroom, the negative is damaged. A water spot from the years past. The negative immersed in the fluid of red light. He places it gently o the frame in the enlarger, correcting the focus and the exposure, balanced on the paper.

The light floods the image.

The strips of paper.

Pathologist of butterflies

He induces the surgeon to carefully separate the layer so fat from the belly.

While the pathologist sits to the side creating a salad of orange segments and mint leaves, freshly snipped from the garden near the dumpster.
He mourns the lost antennas and eye lashes
Of the monarch butterflies
Who trace their path from north to Mexican shore

The pathologist scribbles a few words
Then discards them

When he meets the photographer they join hands
Momentarily distracted by the flock of birds
Rising from the white oak tree

of china, cats, and cookies

The scenes with him were these chilling nerve wracking moments of waiting. Followed by a complete twist of expectation.

For example, one day she came home to see a tin of cookies sitting precariously on the magazines she had gathered over the months. The cookie tin was red. The lid was silver. They didn’t quite match.

She put down her new purse, a yellow purse made from PVC and picked up the tin. The lid was tight and she tugged at it but one corner would not move. She could open it just enough to see that the first layer of cookies were those sugar cookies with a bit of strawberry jam on the top. They were slightly melted, sticking to a layer of tissue paper lining the tin. When she yanked harder on the lid, the whole tin went flying, flipping past her legs, and lying on the floor. The lid rolled away. Somehow the tin remained upright and only a few cookies fell on the floor. She picked them, shook off the dust and laid them carefully on the table. She sat on the floor, and rearranged the cookies. Inside were the jam cookies, a layer of plain sugar cookies, and few long rolls, like biscotti but with white sugar over them.

Sitting on the floor, she slowly ate the fallen cookies. Then standing up, she stepped backward and stepped on her purse. She heard a loud crack. She had managed to break the latch.

Then, he walked in.

"Time to talk of china and cats," he said,


"China?" she asked.

He nodded, putting his camera bag on the cookie tin, crushing the remaining cookies.

She watched the mail slide to the floor.

He nodded. “ The cat broke the last dish."

So, off to the store.

Birthday Poem

And there she climbs up the roof
a cup of tea in hand
watches the spiders carve a small world in webbing from the silk of its spit.
on the gouged silky wooden window frames

the red light of dawn
catches in her eyes
she blinks away the light
until all is dark
but the glimmer of the silk wrapping her fingers tight

this morning

White light
Burnishing across our faces
As in Hopper' s hotel rooms
My hands on your chest
stark white
to your cinnamon mocha
The few minutes
we have
burns through us
I whisper
You turn
to say goodbye

Of Buildings between Angels and Monsters

Of Buildings between Angels and Monsters
In the year of the Iron Rabbit
On April 114
She witnesses the chance encounter on her sewing table
of an Umbrella
and a Butterfly

folded Angel wings
forgotten lying on the floor like petals
thrown from the fire

she dreams in Bones
splintered eaten roasted and melted dished up for the lost Children
strolling along the boulevard

bleached by the Sun
skinned and splintered into jagged edges
jagged edges bent backward into her fingers
her elbows broken
a shard under the sewing table

treatise

If a woman wrote a treatise
it might be woven from
dryer lint
then cured and pickled for
the Lenten holiday
or swept away during Passover
or perhaps ground up like old soup bones
for sweetness in the mincemeat pies

What to wear to the revolution

What to wear to the revolution:

slender tiny shoes made of red felt

a thick leather belt ( useful for tourniquets)

an old sweater bought in las vegas

spare pair of sunglasses tucked into your sleeve

full skirt made from burlap with three pockets



but never your wolf’s teeth
Use those as a rake
for the burying of dreams

Thinking of Anne Sexton

thinking of Anne Sexton

The rusted bone

Its edges frayed

left in the ashtray

after the party

where she watched

him flirt

And then later overfilled her glass

with gin

In the morning

the fine lines by her eyes

were longer

she saw as she lifted the mascara to her eyelash

Quetzalcoatl

his dark eyes
Cause a fire of magenta sparks

his hands
Generate a wave of magnetic force

Such that the plumed serpent appears

God of the wind

Then it was I dreamed that I was entwined with
The feathered serpent

God of the dawn

Rattling the heavens
Renting the air with his screams

And when the tip of his feathered wings appear
Dancing over the red earth
produces an earth streaming with blood

But then the gentle rains fall
under the amber flash of his eyes.

God of the morning dawn

One morning to see your eyes
Before we are consumed by divine fire,
ashes turning into birds
and our hearts, the morning star.

for B.

shock

the sheer blinding light

a flash
as a car passes
there the curve of your shoulder

our shadows on the wall
fall silent

fingers on my mouth

a car passes
there the line of your hip

your fingers hold my head
in a silent kiss

silent screams

your fingers brush my mouth

in stillness of repose
we watch the moths fly through the torn screen

stolen

He stole from my hand

my Soul

Sinner and Saint

he unwrapped my soul

Now

Dripping from his mouth

like sweet chocolate

Spilling from the edges of his mouth

like a bit of dark wine

Bleeding from his fingers

like molten copper

Falling to the ground

Like desiccated leaves

Imagine

Two scenes. One: he is waiting for you alone. He hugs you lightly, and then reaches out to take your hand but instead of holding it, he takes your luggage. Outside, he stops briefly to light a cigarette and you stumble a bit, almost tripping over his heels.

In another scene you arrive alone at the airport. You exchange money. You find a taxi outside. You croak out the hotel address to the driver, who doesn't understand at first. You hand him the address, hoping the hotel is not too terrible. The flight was very long and despite yourself, you hoped he would be there at the airport. You call him each day, carefully at different times, but he never answers. Somehow you manage, walking the narrow streets, and having cake and coffee for lunch. You catch yourself stopping when you see a tall lanky man with a ponytail. It is never him.

A third scene is also possible. He is at the airport, but she's there, too. You find yourself crammed into the backseat with your luggage and his camera equipment. She's introduced as a friend.

In the first scene, he takes you to his father's county house after seeing how crummy your hotel is. His room is small and in the attic. You promptly hit your head when you stand up from the bed. The other people in the house speak only Estonian. You nod and smile, practice a few hellos. You get a few phrases like “she’s pretty but old, " and "Is she rich?" He responds to their questions in such a rapid Estonian that you cannot follow it. When everyone laughs, you assume he has made some joke about you. At night, when you ask what he said, he doesn’t answer. He holds your hand but doesn't touch you until the last night.

That last night, he starts circling your arm with his fingers, dancing lightly on the skin, and then stops, asking you if you would to wait for him another year. He has to recover from his divorce. You say, yes, yes, of course. He stops touching you, turns over and sleeps.

In this version, he also asks you to marry him as he drives you to the airport. He asks as he tosses his cigarette out the window.

But it is none of these. Yes, there he is waiting, but he has no flowers. He's alone, but he's off to an editing project. He drops you off a few blocks from your hotel, leaving you to struggle along with the suitcase. He'll pick you up the next day so you can drive out to the countryside. And on this drive, you'll pretend nothing has changed. You will listen to his music, and watch him light seemingly endless cigarettes. You count twenty or thirty in the three hours you are together. You feel that you have worn the wrong clothes. Not feminine enough compared to the small skirts and high heels worn by the other women here. You brought too many clothes but they are all wrong.

It is a long day and he drops you off at the hotel without asking to see you again. You have to ask. He hedges, muttering something about work. The phone rings, he glances at it and frowns. Work, he says.

But he says the next day you can meet. He’ll take you to his father's country house.


Or perhaps it is the dream which is he spends each night with you, holding you in his arms, making love to you over and over. He spends each night with you in your hotel room. He whispers lovely words about you in the night, thinking you are asleep.

Or it is none of these because you live still in the United States of America.

untitled

ah! the red robin in the bamboo

glimmers like

his dark eyes

catch

the faintest taste of cinnamon on my lips

his lips on my neck brush this taste down to my collarbone

he catches the scent in his teeth

then looks at me

with the very slightest hint of terror

all this i see in the flash when he appears at my door.