coq au vin

later, at night, sucking a peppercorn from my tooth
i will think of you, coq au vin, no one will ever know,

the boat in monet's garden, the greeny photograph that hangs in
my sister's kitchen. she called me from paris, she was 18, she said
i puked in the subway and was somehow pleased or proud
and so was i.

i will think of going for a walk, think of going.
but i will meet a hunter who will show me the silhouette
of a partridge in a tree on the way home
and i will stay.

in the dripping blue flashes of the evening
i see you coming.

today i have lived a whole life
important, full of strangers, working on something

If Not For The Fingerling Potato, then

Baby, baby, baby
aromatic and secret, the mole under your right arm
that sticks out like a mollusk,
a pencil drawing of a mollusk.

Baby, baby, baby
the boxcar in the copse of birch off highway 91
disappeared and I drive my car into a different frozen pond
every night: it's the only place I can’t touch me.

Baby, baby, baby
I am writing about you, and
there are ghosts and they make me shake
taste sour and fried, spongy like webs.

Baby, baby, baby
there are snakes in the geraniums
hair and soap in the sink drains
spiders in the lamb feast I fed to bad swans.

I am making sauce
I am pouring it on the stack of books
you lent me, you hate me, you fucked me
like a snake in a bag eating itself:

Amulets of jade cascade…
Into fire went the spade
out it came filled with jade
cooling, it laments and fades
don’t call me anymore
and read me poems
it’s giving me cancer
and I hate slant rhymes.

Promising Separation

there is nothing to be done about the ending of anything but,
mountain, no mountain, mountain
it hurts to see you change your status
to see that the candle, the cider, the flame are the same color.
the new wood is too wet for burning
this new light too atmospheric to walk out into
if only the smoke would stop lingering in the cedar trees
reminiscent of silent movie scenes.

the daylight and the moonlight are the same
they breathe the same breath onto the single paned windows
onto the cheap lacquered palms of photocopied saints
promising grapes, promising fish, promising the separation
of night and day, want and distance.

the dulcimer chimes in the attic without being touched
it is still beautiful, breaking or speaking, self-animate.

the moon wishes for a kimono of floral print
to wear on cold nights without clouds
when will the light stop fading
the wax is tired and upsetting the paper.