Lines Written in Public

Small details. A pencil,
for example.
The right hand.

Subtleties.
You’ve learned
a little about me.

I don’t have a clue.
Behind your eyes
secret plans for riots,

your devotion
to an insurrection,
heresy.

There being no
greater heresy
than love.

Dear Critic,

I believe I could learn to love
this newest theory of yours --

if you could learn to tongue
these lines, your lips
smeared sloppily
with that gash-red lipstick I dream on --

a dirty open-mouthed kiss
that I would gently feed
myself into --

obdurating the irrelevant
meat of my art.

house arrest

Writ large your ravished inventories.
I don't even know your weight.
What took place, already forgotten.
You leave, close the door behind you.

In my tower all around the quaint debris
of my winter campaign, my summer,
under a fine hoary dust.

Anna Akhmatova, you and your death poems.
Everyone saying goodbye, even those who failed
to arrive.

Love is the integer, musk, heat.
I am learning Russian the better to take your pulse.
The better to record it in my blood.

lyric from the grocery department

I'm sick of love
that is all fury and storm
and marrow
pushed
down aisle three
on a hand truck.

a metaphysical

Love interrogates
whatever annulments
you and I
over years of disagreement
have by appointment
come
to sign --

Love cancels
what nearly binds us,
and saves.