FamiliarHe always wrote me the kinds of things I could imagine him saying in the dark, our eyes adjusted so we could see in black and white, just an inch or two from my face. I could see his chin resting securely atop my head, but I felt no weight from it. I felt weight from his right arm, which never failed to nestle into the depression between my hip bone and ribs, and I could feel that specific sweat that long skin-to-skin contact makes forming between us. I knew the sound it would make if he moved, but he wouldn't, not before I couldn't hold my eyelids up anymore. I wanted to keep staring into the pit that his collarbones made at the base of hisFamiliar
Donald Halldonald hall gave the impression of shrinking away from the inside of his suit(which I was sure was lined in rayon rather than silk)as do many of the elderly who have gone from cakewalks with green dragon prizes to right-angled side walks in cities and learned the nondescript color of concrete.Donald Hall
frailty, however, was not a trait he owned; rather, the crinkling of his skin and marbling of its pigments lent him ruggedness, the scuffs on his shoes spoke
of the toughness of living human hide over tanned animal flesh.
To BeHe is an open book of singed, torn, and taped pages numbered by the day when every one might have been its own novel.To Be
He is
the one who says, Marry me, and his knees stay off the ground. He is the one who promises no one will strike me again. I believe him, but when he says I am beautiful, I call him, "Liar."
I am writing outside
and between the lines, wearing through sheets
as he narrates every moment of his past. We will be written and read.
Irreconcilable DifferencesTime is my ex-husband whose concubines crumble under my back in its slow collapseIrreconcilable Differences
out of his idle hands. (H)our minute seconds are the blades whores hold,
whose hilts I tie myself to when I marry gravity.
Time is the killer sharing my hospital hell, in for intolerable cruelty. I'm in for him.
Time is my lover who has never been in love. He has the sensuality of an iron fist, the reverence of an oak switch, the temper of a heated bitch- he melts together my wax lips, and I freeze them shut until (h)our minute second
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