real—
I draw black curls on all the men I write.
I don’t even look anymore.
7
I thought of you in Istanbul.
Your Byzantine face,
thin lips & hollow cheeks,
the fanatical melting brown eyes.
In Hagia Sophia they’re stripping down
the moslem plaster
to find mosaics underneath.
The pieces fit in place.
You’d have been a Saint.
8
I’m good at interiors.
Gossip, sharpening edges, kitchen poems—
& have no luck at all with maps.
It’s because of being a woman
& having everything inside.
I decorated the cave,
hung it with animal skins & woolens,
such soft floors,
that when you fell
you thought you fell on me.
You had a perfect sense of bearings
to the end,
were always pointing North.
9
Flying you home—
good Christ—flying you home,
you were terrified.
You held my hand, I held
my father’s hand & he
filched pills from the psychiatrist
who’d come along for you.
The psychiatrist was 26 & scared.
He hoped I’d keep you calm.
& so we flew.
Hand in hand in hand in hand we flew.
Books
The universe (which others call the library)…
—Jorge Luis Borges
Books which are stitched up the center with coarse white thread
Books on the beach with sunglass-colored pages
Books about food with pictures of weeping grapefruits
Books about baking bread with browned corners
Books about long-haired Frenchmen with uncut pages
Books of erotic engravings with pages that stick
Books about inns whose stars have sputtered out
Books of illuminations surrounded by darkness
Books with blank pages & printed margins
Books with fanatical footnotes in no-point type
Books with book lice
Books with rice-paper pastings
Books with book fungus blooming over their pages
Books with pages of skin with flesh-colored bindings
Books by men in love with the letter O
Books which smell of earth whose pages turn
IV
FROM
Half-Lives
(1973)
The Evidence
1
Evidence of life:
snapshots,
hundreds of split-seconds
when the eyes glazed over,
the hair stopped its growing,
the nails froze in fingertips,
the blood hung suspended
in its vessels—
while the small bloodships,
the red & white bloodboats
buoyed up & down at anchor
like the toys
of millionaires….
Evidence of life:
a split-second’s death
to live forever
in something called
a print.
A paparazzo life:
I shoot therefore I am.
2
Why does life need evidence
of life?
We disbelieve it
even as we live.
The bloodboats gently rocking,
the skull opening every night
to dreams more vivid than itself,
more solid
than its own bones,
the brain flowering with petals,
stamens, pistils,
magical fruit
which reproduces
from its own juice,
which invents
its own mouth,
& makes itself anew
each night.
3
Evidence of life?
My dreams.
The dreams which I write down.
The dreams which I relate
each morning with a solemn face
inventing as I go.
Evidence of life:
that we could meet for the first time,
open our scars & stitches to each other,
weave our legs around
each other’s patchwork dreams
& try to salve each other’s wounds
with love—
if it was love.
(I am not sure at all
if love is salve
or just
a deeper kind of wound.
I do not think it matters.)
If it was lust or hunger
& not love,
if it was all that they accused us of
(that we accused ourselves)—
I do not think it matters.
4
Evidence of love?
I imagine our two heads
sliced open like grapefruits,
pressed each half to half
& mingling acid juice
in search of sweet.
I imagine all my dreams
sliding out into your open skull—
as if I were the poet,
you the reader.
I imagine all your dreams
pressed against my belly
like your sperm
& singing into me.
I imagine my two hands
cupped around your life
& stroking it.
I imagine your two hands
making whirlpools
in my blood,
then quelling them.
5
I have no photograph of you.
At times I hardly can believe in you.
Except this ache,
this longing in my gut,
this emptiness which theorizes you
because
I draw black curls on all the men I write.
I don’t even look anymore.
7
I thought of you in Istanbul.
Your Byzantine face,
thin lips & hollow cheeks,
the fanatical melting brown eyes.
In Hagia Sophia they’re stripping down
the moslem plaster
to find mosaics underneath.
The pieces fit in place.
You’d have been a Saint.
8
I’m good at interiors.
Gossip, sharpening edges, kitchen poems—
& have no luck at all with maps.
It’s because of being a woman
& having everything inside.
I decorated the cave,
hung it with animal skins & woolens,
such soft floors,
that when you fell
you thought you fell on me.
You had a perfect sense of bearings
to the end,
were always pointing North.
9
Flying you home—
good Christ—flying you home,
you were terrified.
You held my hand, I held
my father’s hand & he
filched pills from the psychiatrist
who’d come along for you.
The psychiatrist was 26 & scared.
He hoped I’d keep you calm.
& so we flew.
Hand in hand in hand in hand we flew.
Books
The universe (which others call the library)…
—Jorge Luis Borges
Books which are stitched up the center with coarse white thread
Books on the beach with sunglass-colored pages
Books about food with pictures of weeping grapefruits
Books about baking bread with browned corners
Books about long-haired Frenchmen with uncut pages
Books of erotic engravings with pages that stick
Books about inns whose stars have sputtered out
Books of illuminations surrounded by darkness
Books with blank pages & printed margins
Books with fanatical footnotes in no-point type
Books with book lice
Books with rice-paper pastings
Books with book fungus blooming over their pages
Books with pages of skin with flesh-colored bindings
Books by men in love with the letter O
Books which smell of earth whose pages turn
IV
FROM
Half-Lives
(1973)
The Evidence
1
Evidence of life:
snapshots,
hundreds of split-seconds
when the eyes glazed over,
the hair stopped its growing,
the nails froze in fingertips,
the blood hung suspended
in its vessels—
while the small bloodships,
the red & white bloodboats
buoyed up & down at anchor
like the toys
of millionaires….
Evidence of life:
a split-second’s death
to live forever
in something called
a print.
A paparazzo life:
I shoot therefore I am.
2
Why does life need evidence
of life?
We disbelieve it
even as we live.
The bloodboats gently rocking,
the skull opening every night
to dreams more vivid than itself,
more solid
than its own bones,
the brain flowering with petals,
stamens, pistils,
magical fruit
which reproduces
from its own juice,
which invents
its own mouth,
& makes itself anew
each night.
3
Evidence of life?
My dreams.
The dreams which I write down.
The dreams which I relate
each morning with a solemn face
inventing as I go.
Evidence of life:
that we could meet for the first time,
open our scars & stitches to each other,
weave our legs around
each other’s patchwork dreams
& try to salve each other’s wounds
with love—
if it was love.
(I am not sure at all
if love is salve
or just
a deeper kind of wound.
I do not think it matters.)
If it was lust or hunger
& not love,
if it was all that they accused us of
(that we accused ourselves)—
I do not think it matters.
4
Evidence of love?
I imagine our two heads
sliced open like grapefruits,
pressed each half to half
& mingling acid juice
in search of sweet.
I imagine all my dreams
sliding out into your open skull—
as if I were the poet,
you the reader.
I imagine all your dreams
pressed against my belly
like your sperm
& singing into me.
I imagine my two hands
cupped around your life
& stroking it.
I imagine your two hands
making whirlpools
in my blood,
then quelling them.
5
I have no photograph of you.
At times I hardly can believe in you.
Except this ache,
this longing in my gut,
this emptiness which theorizes you
because
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