Second Summer 

Birth Mark

Love, profane or not is relevant
As a layer of sheer cotton
I’m living now
With certainty like a man
With a son and a pitchfork
What patronage gives rose its odor
It’s very feminine
To put out
A living quality
I watched a dead goose
In a basket of eggs
Wielded evilly as a metaphor
For female suicide
The moment a question is raised
It could be any question
When going out one night
I consider dying for a second
And must from then on
Carry the loosed germ inside me
If one must subsume the antithesis
A list then of all precious matter
Going on for me forever
Before ending
As I expected
The choice was not the one of departure
But of where to stick my fingers




Between the Necessary and the Good 

I sipped from a glass cup
Beneath a blue canvas awning
Retractable like a deal
Or a hand when the feeling’s off
On the phone she’d said
She wanted to use my dreams
Without specifying if for
Or against me
There is a choice
To place yourself below a shield
She must assume I’m always lying
I’d said I hoped to tell the truth
As I hoped for a bouquet
Of daffodils to appear
On my nightstand with a note
Saying ‘for you’
I was near to a lawn sign
And a perfect corridor
Made to appear carved
To me by you
Assuming your role
In my frequent unrecallable dream
I told her I had touched the water
Because the truth was so terrible
Never having touched anything
Arriving so near to you
The water transfigured in its transfiguring me
I said I had an associated feeling
Of dread, represented by the water
That had become me
And was proof of a fundamental porousness
That there was no difference
I hoped you would have understood
My quiet amidst the radio waves
Where I could have no shield
Having never once spoken