Daytime Television, Late Night Sex

If this were a soap opera, the music would switch on
before we made it to the bed, the lights would dim

as if on cue: no need for knobs or remotes, electricity
would live only in the spaces where we touched.

On television, the hidden parts would be shown
in flashbacks between the sheets, our best angles

wrapping each other past spilled glasses of champagne,
lipstick newly applied, with a subtle coat and a pair

of heels predictably sunk into the pink carpet
of a Paris hotel room. There would be no off-screen

shots of unwrapping condom, no clumsy reaching for bra,
the long rip of a zipper, never in the backseat of a car

or up against a bathroom stall. We would wake
looking perfect, no worries except for what the writers

may throw our way: a sudden illness requiring a miracle
transplant, another woman who claims to be both my sister

and your ex-wife, the collapse of a cosmetics company
you inherited from your biological mother—or perhaps

a dead husband now alive, though the whole town
watched him fall from a bridge only one year ago,

leaving nothing behind except my three-month pregnancy
and a note telling me he’s so sorry, and it’s all my fault.

Amy Winehouse’s Husband Sends Letter from Jail

Yeah, I meant what I said that night on the boardwalk:
love, or something like it. Amy, these promises move too fast.
In the arcades, teenagers contort their bodies, their tongues

surging like fireworks pressing into each other.
Wasn’t that us once—the wet hair, the warm mouths?
I could tell you a story about this woman who swam naked

in the water and then told me to get lost. Her body,
some instrument of summer. What is she to me, or you?
We’ve lost the darkness that kept our movements hidden,

but honey so what? Let’s find a spot on the beach
where no one can see us. Let’s strip off our clothes
like we’re the things on fire. Let’s think of cities colder

than our own, rain that doesn’t sizzle when it falls to pavement.
Here, beneath the whistles and sirens, I find a picture
of you in the sand: shirtless and exact, thighs stretching across

the blanket, lips moving in moans to the rhythm
of my hands—touching you like we were speaking, saying oh
baby, yes, yes, yes, please, don’t hate me when I go.

Amy Winehouse Admitted to Hospital Following Seizure

So I plant clothes in the garden,
bury dishes beneath the dirt.

Twenty-eighth of July. All evening,
I count each crocus. Five, six.

A telephone falls to water, his voice
one two seven ten.

The sweater hardly breathing,
tulips like candles tracing the wrist.

Across the floor, mostly moon
and ribbon, the skin of fruit.

Twelve, thirteen. St. Lucia, where
are you? Monday. Half past eight.

Set to Record New Album, Amy Winehouse Sings for Fellow Hospital Patients

“All invention and creation consists primarily of a new relationship between known parts.” –Maya Deren

It was twelve minutes

before the phone rang,
the wind steering

each woman against afternoon.
It was mirror at first

but soon a man, glass floating
across bodies that were waves.

The key to the house now housed
above tongue—or so the voice

on the record sings, each ring
of the phone a silent scene

spoken through walls.
She is sandal, is flash,

is sleep, is knife, water
burying staircase and throat.

It was flower but then noon,
the loaf of bread

lost to field,
every mouth unhooked,

calling.