Two Poems

THE OTHER WOMAN’S VOICE

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Orourke1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

A moment like that-you hearing me-
would have an actual, defined sound-
no right hand noiseless pulling, typing
hurriedly, or muffling over the phone.

For once, there’d be no time difference,
no limp excuses of long hours at work,
that woman hovering around you, lack
of privacy, or pub crawling with your mates.

Newscasters on CNN and BBC would shut up
about what color berries are good for our hearts,
how many carbs a day are too many, and how
to fuck by the books. This is not the silence

we agreed on-don’t dig for the secondary meaning.

I’ll pour words down your meaty ear, shackle you,
black on white, with noises, I’ll step across your legs, yes,
like an arched bridge, my hungry legs over your lap.

It will be terrible when I speak.

RESTRAINTS

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Orourke2.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

We can’t tell anyone, I wrote. It’s more intimate this way,
you wrote back. And probably smiled after that.

I touch my mouth in the bathroom mirror,
the face now framed in fluorescent lights.

Cold and hot water drips from separate taps
down porcelain curves, disappears

into the drain, PVC underpasses, down
copper corridors. Dirty or clean, it’s waste now.

The rounded edges of the bone-white sink-
clutched like bed posts, or a pistol.

My eyes in the mirror-bloodshot pipe dreams-
a bolted gate, slurred traffic, a touch of fear, a smack

of lust. It’s like spinning celluloid, but soundless,
like dipping a finger into sea.

I keep returning to each image-as I do to my computer,
the thud of its plastic keys-as if something was lost there.