Deja Vu

And so we passed while walking

She effortless, bored, fifteen?

A texting prodigy

In plum-apple polish, flying over her instrument

2 talk 2 who knows who (lol)

Me sweaty and doughy and ash-gray

Not on a walk but a battle march

The forty-something-feminine genius

Not knowing a thing

I smile, exhaling something that sounds like

“My sister, my friend, hello”

But I am not her sister, her friend,

Mother, or even distant cousin

I am a foreigner with a foreign tongue

Sicilian or Parisian to her

Congolese, New Delhian, Shawnee

Or perhaps something else entirely;

Perhaps she hears the sound of snake or clicking beetle

Or something she dissected last week in biology class

At any rate, mine is a language

She does not understand

And it frightens her

My downturned eyes offer, mea culpa

For I chose to smile

She did not recognize me (nor want to)

The woman I am

The woman she will be

In thirty years time

What I WIll Never Tell You

You are impossible.

I have turned you every which way,

held you up to the light again and again.

But you are a mirrored prism

that no spark will go through.

I have filled pages with you and stared

cross-eyed and mute

before the code I could not break;

driven with you without you countless miles,

talked you out in dashboard confessions,

shouted your name with the windows down

so you might escape me.

(Just go.)

You are the lion I never saw coming,

the train I did not hear,

the thing I loved but did not want to.

And in my heart,

small and dusty as an old perfume bottle,

you are a lovely paper ship.

To my death I will wonder

how you got there.

exit interview

in terms of my well-being
I have come to the conclusion
that I am both well and being
I am well because I have kept quiet the dark water
though some on the outside could not keep themselves
from falling into the depths
and I gladly welcomed them which is my shame
but they were no prisoners
always finding clever ways to dig out
although some waited then asked for a light
now I am not the type to carry a light
do I look like that type
and of course I am being
being vigilant honorable good
I take the pills offered me
I have never touched that thin nurse with the unkempt hair
and the delicious crook in her spine
yes once I did a dreadful thing a dreadful thing
but that was then and this is now
though now is then somewhere maybe here
I do not know anymore the walls do not tick
and the bars keep no days it is all one day
one long day and you will never let me move on from it

Evening Stroll

I know this hill.

She isn't too far from home, like most hills.

She is a paved corner, a four-way stop

where men in khakis and cobalt sedans

flick cigarettes. Doing her a favor,

I imagine they imagine.

She is plain;

nothing to look at really.

Just an ordinary hill in an ordinary town

where tired mothers in lumbering vans

dump acrid sippy cups,

and raging boys with time on their side

dispose of evidence.

I know this hill.

The time spent trudging my wrecked body to her wrecked body

is familiarly eternal.

And in Our meeting,

the heavy corners of light and dark converge,

while the wind screams,

while I weep,

and she, helpless beneath an ocean of pitch,

is silent.

Wings sprout from my cage.

I fly, and wonder how lovely death will be.

We have a secret. We breathe together.

This hill knows me.

Anthropologies

If the world were typical,

we might be typical.

I might let my earthy fingers slip into your bronzed hand,

kiss you softly like an Eden bird.

You might whisper "how are you today"

in each virginal morning,

and mean it.

I might lie beside you

in the rags I wore when I first arrived -

all I would care to own -

And never feel shame.

But we are anything but typical.

We are a lost civilization

that cannot be read

from walls of caves or cracked bits of pottery.

Our bones are sand,

our history dust;

our future, the Edge of a universe

that we will never see,

no matter how we squint.

Had You Had Time

Maybe you would have worn your good shoes.
At least taken a shower,
put on some clean underwear;
but who thinks of such things on a Saturday morning.

Maybe you would have done one more load of laundry,
washed the dishes,
fed the birds
(though they are birds; God will feed them).

Perhaps stayed for another cup of coffee,
one more piece of rye with that blackberry jam you like,
sat quietly with your weariness
until it collapsed like the moon into morning,

or realized that you didn't need a thing;
there was plenty of milk, enough eggs,
ample bread to last just one more day.
One more day;

you might have remembered
how we are fragile, like deer
that leap fearlessly across black and pitch
believing they are one of us.
And it is always terrible.

You might have whispered "goodbye"
and kissed me, as each cold turn of your face in years past
Suddenly caught fire.
And I might have saved you.