Six Poems

If I Leave You Then Maybe I Won’t Have to Miss You So Much

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Lately I keep things
just to throw them away: practice,
practice. What I mean is, I’ve had enough
longing, enough of nothing
ever being enough. Look how the earth
shrugs its mountainous shoulders, how the cows don’t blink
unless there’s a fly, how the pavement quits
to dirt without warning, how the river can’t tell
itself from the rain. Since when can I not
get over anything? Just watch me go
to this town’s lone bar, which is open and chock-full
of blondes, blondes, blondes. The jukebox plays country
for free, which leaves me
with my ballast of quarters and cornered
by a woman who tells me she breaks things: horses
n’ hearts. I wish she would take
my heart out back and shoot it, lame
as it is, run as it’s been
by you into the ground, but she’d rather teach me
to two-step, which it turns out
I’m born for, having indecisively shuffled back and forth
through your door all these years. But from here
you’re a myth, tiny
jockey, impossible as Brooklyn,
elevators, it not being summer anymore.
Look, even the shades
are half-drawn and drooping
like eyelids, the walls
like the patrons, sloppy
and slouched. I promise I’ll love you forever
if you please just don’t make me
start now, in the brief dumb calm
of the just-fine, with this cowgirl pressing
her big stone-washed hips into mine. I want to take her home
but to someone else’s home, or perhaps just send her home
with someone else. What I mean is, I’m tired
of everything gorgeous. Of the burden
of burning. Of wondering
when. What I mean is, on some nights I miss you so much
that I never want to see you again.

The Meaning of Leaving

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Maybe it was there
all along, in our shirtsleeves,
on the heavy trees, every time we turned
left-as in the opposite
of right, which is also
wrong, as in the mistakes
I’m bound to keep making as long
as I long. I still love you but I can’t
stay still, that’s why I’m bound
for the coast in the old
truck blazoned with rust, crest
of snow, crust of salt, the bed
that was our bed, you
in the rearview for hundreds
then thousands of miles-you
the cornfield, you the semi, you
the sirens pulling me over
and over. I’ve got my eyes
on the road’s gray throat, its soft
shoulder, its sign that says
yield. Maybe I was here
all along, driving away in the driving
rain, in the space between left
meaning remaining and left
meaning already gone.

Leaving Home

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Remember the summer
we cried all the time? It’s this
summer, I just wish
it was over, that’s what I mean
by remember. Remember the morning
I couldn’t find anything, neither keys
nor car? It might have meant I wasn’t
leaving, or that nothing
was lost. Regarding the stripper
you’re fucking, you tell me: Now I’m not the one
who can dance. Suddenly the city
is all poles. I’m not sure
where I’ll go, the postcards just say
NOT HOME, say WISH
YOU WERE HERE. I’ve emptied
all the bottles. No genies. Just
worms. I’d wish to burn
your name from the tip
of my tongue, where it’s lived
for years now, the word
I can’t quite conjure, or
there isn’t one. Or else
you were only my first
wish, which would mean
I’ve still got two left, and I know
what I want this time: to remember
nothing. Then
to have everything back.

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Fleshlight

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If girls are apples, this thing’s like a core-
the glossy skin peeled off, the sweet juice drained,
the body (pesky excess) pared away.
And who’s to say you should want something more?
If girls are buildings, all you need’s the door
and one small room. The rest is too ornate,
clever façade and showy balustrade,
inimical to shelter, structure, warmth.

If only real girls came apart like this-
if you could take a mouth between your hands,
and save a second, separate mouth to kiss
when you were done. But no, they don’t, you can’t-
can’t see, through their dark bodies, what’s inside;
can’t take their heavy flesh and make it light.

Amateurs

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Without the camera, though, we’re experts-we’ve
been doing this together ten years now,
and I could write a manual on how
to get her off. Sure, I miss mystery
sometimes, which is I guess why I agreed
to this. Curtain up, let’s earn those bows!
she jokes, hitting RECORD, then climbing down
to meet me on the bed, where suddenly

the camera turns us into something new,
“unprofessional” and “raw” and “real.”
What’s that thing the Buddhists say-how you
are always a beginner? Same deal here.
Only one body’s mine, the other’s hers.
What could I be except an amateur?

Dirty Talk II

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Pretend that I’ve forgotten who I am
and it’s your job to remind me: say my name
and tell me all about my body, what it wants
and what you’ll make it do. Pretend we’re sick,
describe the symptoms: our wild slam-
ming hearts, our fever-flush, our violet veins
throbbing. Pretend I’m blind, and tell me what
you see. Pretend it’s possible to think

after you speak, that body can trump brain
which can trump body, translating the words
into impulses, firing from nerve
to twinkling nerve. Pretend we’ve found the way
to heal, between things and names, the divide:
you be the signifier. I’ll be signified.