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Records
My sister lost her virginity to the White Album
and even now she thinks Bungalow Bill
is a love song. How music photographs
a moment: I was thirteen, dancing
with a boy I wanted to kiss
when Al Green
told us to stay together. For three minutes and eighteen seconds
I believed, but over the summer
he moved to Wichita . Nights, much later
I fell asleep with someone else
to Dark Side or Kid A, until that afternoon
driving home the day after he left. Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me, Babe
was in my tape deck—maybe even
worse
was the low rush of cars
going over the bridge
after I cut the sound.
Pearl The best birthday present
is a blank piece of paper
and a white typewriter, each key
glowing like a baby's first
tooth. A dozen rolled
sweat socks, fresh
from the dryer, and new chalk.
An orchard of Q-tips.
White walls breathe a room
bigger and white sheets
deepen sleep. Bread
rises naked and fat,
snow melts in your hair like baptism.
Hospitals are white hollows
we die in, beeping
to heaven, and love
a white balloon
hugging a high
ceiling, missing its string.
Getting Ready
He is a thumbnail, a smudged
pencil eraser, a dull
penny. A pebble.
It would be a he. She dresses
in front of the full-length
mirror, smoothing her size
seven skirt and inching
her sweater down. She studies
the skin of her stomach, taut
like a balloon stretched
before you blow in air.
No cigarettes, just in case.
He is a kidney bean,
a piece of chewed
gum, a sunflower
seed. A soap bubble
popped on the grass.
The First Time
it happened I didn't know what
to do with you, face down
the only way
you can fall
asleep, with your
arms that don't hold
heavy and lying
across my body. Turn
over , I said, wanting
you to see me, an angry
skillet left on high.
If you woke, your lips
would hiss
on my skin
like water drops.
You looked like a child
as you slept, long
eyelashes, back
swelling in and out
with each breath. Look
at me, I whispered,
my mouth puckered
into a tight O:
Sweetheart,
look at me ,
my green forehead,
my insides,
pink as raw
salmon, my octopus
heart overgrown
and reaching.
You Asked What I Meant by Love
The only words I could teach you
were please , thank you , and meat ,
which
you combined randomly to form your own excuse me . I remembered
how to say with, but not without.
I know, will not forget, the alphabet.
How sounds come together,
what can't follow what, the rules.
I can pronounce words I don't understand.
I loop them together in script, admiring
the secret code of hook-tailed
Ms and Ls. But even
what I know comes out wrong:
We would like we are going to Moscow ,
I said to the ticket agent. Now
on the phone I confuse things
in English. My syntax is perfect,
verbs, adjectives, everything
matches. The only thing
I contradict is myself.
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