###### LE WEEKEND

&nbsp;

In a Friday

Trying not to let go of it

I lay down on the altar

&nbsp;

If I could wake up

From this dream

Not eat today

Not feed the cats

Not go to Lowe’s

I thought I might give

Birth to a calla

&nbsp;

Friday Friday Friday

My heart cried

Holding on like a cat

To a string of sun

&nbsp;

I lay Friday down

Brush her hair

Hold her purring in my arms

Still she dies

The week dies

The year dies

And I lay reading


&nbsp;

Bolt up from the striped day bed

Doctors shout from the other room

It’s going to be a calla!

But it’s not mine

It has your nose your eyes


&nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

###### EGGS

&nbsp;

I woke up in tokyo

The sun white as an egg

&nbsp;

Outside my window in the tree

My ancestor warmed my egg

&nbsp;

His white robes fluttering

&nbsp;

I opened the paper door

And left the hotel

&nbsp;

When I passed he dropped

&nbsp;

Yen in clean bills

All around my head

&nbsp;

I stopped and neatly placed them

In my wallet thinking

What a wonderful dream

&nbsp;

I had lined my eyes with black

Filled my mouth with red

&nbsp;

Like a monk putting on his saffron robes

I slipped into the mask of a woman

&nbsp;

Walking down a stone path

I met someone who looked like me

&nbsp;

This happens in asia

I smiled wryly and carried on

&nbsp;

Shopping I lost my wallet

In one of the alleys

&nbsp;

Unable to buy anything all pleasure lost

I returned to my hotel

&nbsp;

In the mirror there was another mirror

In which there was another hotel

&nbsp;

The kind someone howls and thuds against

The kind of hotel you go to die

&nbsp;

In this mirror I watched myself

Dance naked

My black hair flowing to my ankles

&nbsp;

Wet black fur glistening like a dream

That cannot forget itself

&nbsp;

Thin and weak as seafoam

Clinging

&nbsp;

Soon three more women joined in

Black hair black eyes red mouths

Naked I had lost my identity

&nbsp;

I could not spot the one for whom

I bought

Candles chet baker and little blue and white dishes

&nbsp;

We ate each other up

In a race to exist

&nbsp;

Chewing I looked up and saw everyone

Was watching

Everyone was there

&nbsp;

Dressing hastily I pulled shut

the paper door

But still

&nbsp;

Everyone was there

Everyone was watching

Two Poems

###### Where you Lost a Finger

&nbsp;

1 

On the phone when you were in Alaska
The seagulls came close 
To your ear 

Their tongues are black you said and long
Men were chasing the birds 
With guns 

And the birds were chasing 
You and it was the first time I heard
Seagulls 

Like that—like they were speaking directly
To me—at the post office 
Waiting to mail your letter 

An unwell woman behind me belittled
The skirt I was wearing 
After the line, I was crying 

In the parking lot 
And I was so young I did not see the romance
Of a boat carrying my letter 

To your boat 

&nbsp;

2 

While the sea rocked you 
I sat in front of the air conditioner 
Like a hunk of frozen meat 

I did not see the romance of making money
Thought it was foolish 
To risk your life for it 

Didn’t know then 
About life’s exigencies 
Awake asleep awake asleep 
In each other’s arms

I thought the day was a bottle of champagne 

I thought eating an Iranian sandwich 
Was a memory 

When you came back from fishing 
Your arms were muscled and brown 
A friend had chopped off my hair 

While another friend videoed it 
But even that’s not a memory 

A memory hurts 

It scuttles past as immemorial
And self sufficient
As an insect 

&nbsp;

3 

Some people don’t like endless night. 
But I liked Alaska.
Black trees making up a mountain.

Going up the lift 
I thought of ways to tell you
I don’t know how to ski, that I had lied about many things

More than once my moral crises have peaked 
On mountaintops— 

We drank hot chocolate 
And took the elevator down— 

But in Montenegro when I broke my foot on the mountain
In front of the Lady of Good Health 
I declined to be helicoptered down, and the men and the stretcher. 

I crawled down the mountain on my hands and knees
I tried to really listen 
To what the earth was trying to tell me

R

E

C

L

I

N

E

R

>

[MENU]