If you would look at me I would show you something.

The size of it. The size of it, ask any man and it is this big.

I don't really know what interests you, but by watching

the tick of your wrist by your side I could drum up

a thousand doves assured over Palestine, beaks tweaking

it is yours, undoubtedly. What mine. Dovecote. White

woolen snow a shameful cage on the ground. Grass

bent in grief owned by this sharecropper. Knock knock

who's there? The door is a trestle and the water's low.

My love's a gothic push straight out of the University

of Chicago. I should have asked your name. I should

have said your name out loud and answered yes?

To the Understudy

It is true I am afraid of the stranger in men.

On the Internet some woman kneeling
provocatively.

O one of many crickets
I crumpled into toilet paper,
deafening.

Where are the lacy
Christening gowns. The babies
leaning headstrong.

Took a walk in my neighborhood
past the church. Touched the
freshly painted siding, my side
that said sit down girlfriend.

Sidle up and let's watch
the traffic like faces for
confirmation.

The night sky that does not
twinkle, the headlights
one

after another

not friendly eyes
averting.

I know I will probably die
with no one
around. I'm not sick or
anything

like that—
there they go. There they go again.

The Potential of Rapture

I locked up all
of the beautiful things
that might move me.

The bell around a dark ankle
turning and turning.

A stranger smiles.
Her face is no curling-up
in bed.

If I knew the world was going
to end, I'd just run out into
the street and fuck the first
chick I saw, says a
teenage virgin.

Where you go when you are scared

that we might have the verdant
and the humid. Friendly air.
People meaning their handwaves.
An answer is the way you can jump
from a ledge equal to your height
without getting hurt.
Your home.
Every pane of glass
someone laid on their precious
breath. There.
Or there.

Boy I am
leaving too many rooms
for the crowded street. Lay
down your sweet head
for now

to know as we do know
to know. To know
one damn thing.