A blood-thin woman wielding
metaphors,
deep in her cul-de-sac of
everywhere
invited me to come stay the
weekend.
Sleeping down the hours, I
arrived,
dazed against the air
pressing in.
Afraid of her northern ice,
unfreezing
Relics in her warm house,
book-brimmed
sensibilities of screened-in porch
and moths, cicadas yet to
come.
And so-- and so-- she said,
paused
whatever is the word that
brought down
worlds, whirlwind inside the
thought,
Why are we so serious? Ice
cream
shouldn’t be this way, two-three
days long, one shared dream
shortened
Into telling, hours sitting
and you
-- she understood the
bleeding,
fed off long-lost pieces of
the same,
A wild fur hat rotting
somewhere
in Sylvie’s room, that doll
that looks
forever, wooden eyes like
hers and
Yours, matching the painting
and here
is my leather jacket, did you
ever wear
it with wine in Paris?
Dress around
Dollhouses, Champs Elysées,
those lights
and guest-bathroom watercolor
in
latent steam,
someone else’s soap,
Not my mother’s house, not my
mother,
hers long-gone always, mine
never she,
Who are we? Stage set
delicate on the square,
These characters forget
roles, roll their
buttered eyes, yes it was too
easy but,
but full-moon nightmares
every night,
Characters from another
dream, screen-lives
pressed up against reality: Sweet
potbelly-man
who can fix a car, glimmering
eyes and all.
But where is he, I ask, tears
behind the question,
Heaving, how can they always
leave? He
And I, we
slept fast in knots on trains,
I woke up to find the seat a
void beside me,
avoiding eyes of others,
together, but she says
You didn’t do anything wrong,
you didn’t
do anything wrong. So
why, I ask her, am I
alone again, if that is what
this means,
And elsewhere I am comforted
by her past my
Future solitude and nieces
and tea, a house,
Some lovers, none him, all
distances, these
travels, these words at the
end of it, sentenced.
