Through Mail

A box arrived with the mended teapot and a long letter sealed with wax. She
drew a picture of the clay figure she had included- it was like a hamster or
a gerbil, she said, but also entirely imagined. Already its long tail had split
into sections. I stared into the scratches marking its eyes and could not bear
to name it and make it knowable. Now it sits on my school desk, legs curled
beneath its flank, and waits for the day to come when I will need defending.

Bury

The summer field feels itself lost.
Engulfed in snow it becomes something lonelier.
"We shouted, we shook you," you tell me,
But my self absconded. Slipping through your fingers.
Lidded eyes and limp wrists were left.
After you pierced my flesh and fished me through the cold,
I writhed and blubbered.
After you reeled me in,
You packed me under deadening whiteness. To preserve me, you claimed.
The summer field, all prairiegrass and blackeyed Susans,
Has its many tasks, extending its palette past its boundaries.
The winter field submerges all else.
For those dear hours, I was annihilated.
And my body, a sold thing no longer,
Which you have long loved well-
Gossamer though it was-
Did not love you. Fleeting filament of light.

About a Girl

sometimes things just happen to you
what just happens to you?
you know. things.
like poetry, or love, or remembering the time you walked barefoot over cold stone in India on your way to breakfast?
like when you saw that boy and you weren't in love with him any longer. you didn't want to tell him and admit you ever had felt that way.
I want to watch that movie so terribly. it would make everything make sense, the way the dialogue careens and the hand burns.
if you would text me first
if you would only
I just like the way these keys feel, the way the lids close slowly over my eyes and I don't have to fight it
I like the way I like you, you being the thing I want.
the thing that happened to me is meeting you drunk and wanting something out of that
when you don't remember,
what is there to remember?
is anything experienced, lived, felt?
ambulation, laughing in my sleep for you
the black razor of my phone implores me, you're so close.
always at my fingertips, won't you bring your hips to me?
I like your glasses and your hair.
I just like you I hope it's not a problem.

Three Meditations on a Lamp

I.
At night the sky is dusty with too much snow falling.

The deer come up to the birdfeeder to eat. There is never enough food.

This is not a metaphor for the cold snap of missing you.

II.
Knowing you wait up nights under the same sky, working by a single lamp, straining your eyes--
Knowing you want sex, take airplanes, wonder about god--
it is not enough.

III.
Your tongue in my ear, transmitted over telephone wires, you read me children's books.

I meditate on cranberries, gratitude.

I fall wordlessly, lovingly, into your being, into being you, into nonsense raucous iridescent love.

Addendum

It is entirely possible that you could grow disinterested

stalk past me on my way to class and not utter a word

never raise your eye when I enter a room

and for weeks I would not know I had lost your favor

For Aaron

For Aaron

I would not hesitate to call you my friend.

Today you waved in a most undignified manner as you sped past me on your bicycle.

There is something baffling in you.

Once I went to your dorm to borrow your clothing, and found it amusing and disconcerting that we wear the same size, in women's and men's.

I consider it quite likely that I weigh more than you do.

Sometimes I see you and cannot speak for minutes.

I wouldn't hesitate to call you a friend.

Untitled 97

The poem that was more like the Jackson Pollock painting I made with my eyes shut while I listened to the CD for the boy who will never hear it.

The poem that was more like the wall keeping everything from crashing down on me, keeping my eyes from closing while I slouch deeper into this chair.

The poem that was more like the sound of the television blaring, imposing upon me with its clamor and racket, the poem that wouldn't stop and refused to obey etiquette.

The poem that was more like my bed where I couldn't rest, not yet, because somehow the night is young. The poem that understood me and all my longings.

The poem that was more than a poem, the poem that was my life and then just the sensation, only, of this laptop resting on my body, my fingers stroking this keypad, these keys, and striving to send some message out to the stars. The poem that was this.

The poem of today, yesterday, and the day I go back home. The poem of returning, of journeys and of newness. The poem of summer and wonder. The poem of bread and popsicles, the poem of free verse association, and the poem of India, the poem of home, the poem of my hands are shaking, the poem of will someone know that I was here, the poem of will I have any impact. The poem.