time,
as Iâm sure theyâll finish the task at hand,
which is to say that whatever is in front of us
will get done if Iâm not in charge of it.
There is a limit to the number of times
I can practice every single kind of mortification
(of the flesh?). I can turn toward you and say
yes,
it was you in the poem.
But when we met,
you were actually wearing a shirt, and the poem
wasnât about you or your indecipherable tattoo.
The poem is always about me, but that one time
I was in love with the memory of my twenties
so I was, for a moment, in love with you
because you remind me of an approaching
subway brushing hair off my face with
its hot breath. Darkness. And then light,
the exact goldness of dawn fingering
that brick wall out my bedroom window
on Smith Street mornings when Iâd wake
next to godknowswho but always someone
who wasnât a mistake, because what kind
of mistakes are that twitchy and joyful
even if theyâre woven with a particular
thread of regret: the guy who used
my toothbrush without asking,
I walked to the end of a pier with him,
would have walked off anywhere with him
until one day we both landed in California
when I was still young, and going West
meant taking a laptop and some clothes
in a hatchback and learning about produce.
I can turn toward you, whoever you are,
and say you are my lover simply because
I say you are, and that is, I realize,
a tautology, but this is my poem. I claim
nothing other than what I write, and even that,
Iâd leave by the wayside, since the only thing
to pack would be the candlesticks, and
even those are burned through, thoroughly
replaceable. Who am I kidding? I donât
own anything worth packing into anything.
We are cardboard boxes, you and I, stacked
nowhere near each other and humming
different tunes. It is too late to be writing this.
I am writing this to tell you something less
than neutral, which is to say Iâm sorry.
It was never you. It was always you:
your unutterable name, this growl in my throat.
I NTERROBANG
As an advocate for the precision of communication
I have to tell you that the typographically cumbersome
and unattractive combination of an exclamation
point sidled up to a question mark could be replaced
by a more compressed pairing; if the two separate
pieces of punctuation merge totally
into an outpouring of astonishment
to express modern lifeâs incredibilityâ
Who forgot to put gas in the car
You call that a hat
Did you see the way she fell to her knees
in the supermarket because she was suddenly
overtaken by an erotic paranormal experience
âthen faster breathing implies candor when we
shift these two elements together: I send
my love! You must carry yours in a luminous
tent rounded at the top? Latin for query
with a shout, in the dark I
seek you out as a witness because I adore
curiosity wrapped around wonder:
and in the second coming when I bare
my interrobang, located in the lower right corner
of nowhere youâve seen, my skin does not tremble
before you, but rather
becomes punctuation for this illicit
almost-run-on sentence. My interrobang
should not be used in formal writing
as itâs socially irresponsible and tangled
in knots over our inappropriate situation
which is exactly the shape of naked John Lennon
wrapped around clothed Yoko Ono, their
intertwined bodies (eternal, glorified) captured
just hours before he was shotâcan you see
the way he clings to her as if heâs drowning
in astonishment at his good luck?
John Lennon is dead and you and Iâ
you and Iare separated by miles
of ticking, snarled night.
N IAGARA
Witness this: peonies and roses on the bedspread. Her red dress. The motel curtains sliding together to cover their view of parking lot oil stains and cigarette butts, the billboard that asks How Will The Falls Transform You? Their bodies give way, unresolved
as Iâm sure theyâll finish the task at hand,
which is to say that whatever is in front of us
will get done if Iâm not in charge of it.
There is a limit to the number of times
I can practice every single kind of mortification
(of the flesh?). I can turn toward you and say
yes,
it was you in the poem.
But when we met,
you were actually wearing a shirt, and the poem
wasnât about you or your indecipherable tattoo.
The poem is always about me, but that one time
I was in love with the memory of my twenties
so I was, for a moment, in love with you
because you remind me of an approaching
subway brushing hair off my face with
its hot breath. Darkness. And then light,
the exact goldness of dawn fingering
that brick wall out my bedroom window
on Smith Street mornings when Iâd wake
next to godknowswho but always someone
who wasnât a mistake, because what kind
of mistakes are that twitchy and joyful
even if theyâre woven with a particular
thread of regret: the guy who used
my toothbrush without asking,
I walked to the end of a pier with him,
would have walked off anywhere with him
until one day we both landed in California
when I was still young, and going West
meant taking a laptop and some clothes
in a hatchback and learning about produce.
I can turn toward you, whoever you are,
and say you are my lover simply because
I say you are, and that is, I realize,
a tautology, but this is my poem. I claim
nothing other than what I write, and even that,
Iâd leave by the wayside, since the only thing
to pack would be the candlesticks, and
even those are burned through, thoroughly
replaceable. Who am I kidding? I donât
own anything worth packing into anything.
We are cardboard boxes, you and I, stacked
nowhere near each other and humming
different tunes. It is too late to be writing this.
I am writing this to tell you something less
than neutral, which is to say Iâm sorry.
It was never you. It was always you:
your unutterable name, this growl in my throat.
I NTERROBANG
As an advocate for the precision of communication
I have to tell you that the typographically cumbersome
and unattractive combination of an exclamation
point sidled up to a question mark could be replaced
by a more compressed pairing; if the two separate
pieces of punctuation merge totally
into an outpouring of astonishment
to express modern lifeâs incredibilityâ
Who forgot to put gas in the car
You call that a hat
Did you see the way she fell to her knees
in the supermarket because she was suddenly
overtaken by an erotic paranormal experience
âthen faster breathing implies candor when we
shift these two elements together: I send
my love! You must carry yours in a luminous
tent rounded at the top? Latin for query
with a shout, in the dark I
seek you out as a witness because I adore
curiosity wrapped around wonder:
and in the second coming when I bare
my interrobang, located in the lower right corner
of nowhere youâve seen, my skin does not tremble
before you, but rather
becomes punctuation for this illicit
almost-run-on sentence. My interrobang
should not be used in formal writing
as itâs socially irresponsible and tangled
in knots over our inappropriate situation
which is exactly the shape of naked John Lennon
wrapped around clothed Yoko Ono, their
intertwined bodies (eternal, glorified) captured
just hours before he was shotâcan you see
the way he clings to her as if heâs drowning
in astonishment at his good luck?
John Lennon is dead and you and Iâ
you and Iare separated by miles
of ticking, snarled night.
N IAGARA
Witness this: peonies and roses on the bedspread. Her red dress. The motel curtains sliding together to cover their view of parking lot oil stains and cigarette butts, the billboard that asks How Will The Falls Transform You? Their bodies give way, unresolved
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