Before You Come Home

I will look for any reason not to write.
I need to buy belts and shoes online.
There are dishes in the sink.
Television episodes and taxes make
me feel accomplished. I murder
hours at a time trying to avoid poetry.
(Someone already wrote that, that bit
about killing time.)
I use these objects, new jackets and hot
chocolate, to hide behind (someone
already wrote that, too). I'm using enjambment
(everyone does that). It is dark in Chicago
(I'm changing the subject, we do that
when the end is coming) and I've barely begun my life.
(And I'm thinking of a title now, before I
even know where this is going.) (Maybe "Spolier.")
The trains and the waves mimic each other.
(This is about, apparently, the parallel nature
of life, the universe, everything is echoed
and re-coded, nothing is new;
somebody already wrote that.)
When I write "life" what do I mean?
The trains and the waves crash together.
The trains and the waves carry us.
The trains and the waves don't distinguish themselves from me.
The trains and the waves lose devices everyday.
A thousand kisses for you.
We repeat ourselves to death.
I am so thankful for this.

ER

Silhouettes

Alone in your room I touch
panties drying on the heater,
think about your hands on my
hands on your hips. I open your
medicine cabinet, count bottles
of fingernail polish, look at
rings nestled in the corner
quiet like pebbles. The pictures
of your friends in the kitchen,
all in soft clothes, they smile easy.
Their hair tussled. Many people
love you. This makes me happy.
I want to love all the people
who love you. I want to give them
sweaters. I want to make you
laugh gently in front of them.
I want them to see you look
at me. I want to listen closely.
In your closet is a meteor
of clothes. I lie in your bed
and bite my nails. You'll never
find them. Your clothes meteor
is sexy. It makes your closet
feminine. Turns me on.
I don't like the taste
of your toothpaste. I will
still use it. I drink unfiltered
water from your tap. Lukewarm
tap water reminds me of you,
your apartment, morning sun
on your kitchen table, the
desperate space that enormous
table creates between us, ripening
fruit, an origami fortune
teller, a sculpture of a single wing, the setting
for the first time
I said I love you, to you.
The refrigerator motor kicks
on and the overhead light
flickers. I imagine your parted
lips under my thumb. I remember
sitting at that unforgivable
table, heartbroken, I couldn't reach
you, lips sealed, suffocating under
the burden of your insufferable charm.
Out the windows are hungry squirrels
and honking cars, empty
beer bottles, the cuffs to my
jeans wet and matted.
A siren is moving away
from us. A charm on your
necklace. An easel in an
art store, a running faucet,
a saucer of blueberries, slivered
light under a closed door,
the sound of handwriting, the allowance
of outside objects and inside
objects. a voice. This corner holds
me. This corner is infinite.

ER

This Way Out:

Catastrophe happens to you everyday.
12 dyed eggs roll out of the carton.
Whales can't hear your thoughts.
The rope that tethers you is made out of smoke.
Cleaning is impossible.
Riding a bus is the real blessing.
Evaporation is inevitable.
A ring is a straight line
that won't let go.
Another something disappears
but you don't know what.
You are the conductor of immediate space.
You raise your arm and acknowledge the shadows
but can't face the flame that casts you.

ER

Stretch

15 brown Victorian vases
lined up one afternoon
years before we met.
You asked for a motive
and I said,
causality is irrelevant
in poetry, I make
nations out of
hopeful green stuff
tire irons wait
their turn a catastrophe
E.D.'s quick calamity
a photograph of the aftermath
teaches me one way off the wall
you look at the same picture
and see my breath in roses
a wound watch a word
written is not the same word spoken
there are mines everywhere
we have to be careful but we aren't
sure why.

This isn't over.

After Bobby--

Poets
for Robert Dana

A bombed oration tickled me.
Clinked flutes doled out
pointed flirtations.
A contour of life, poetry,
something to shade a body in,
or certainly to illuminate
an otherwise dusty path.
We yowl into it, wait for our own voice.
We chisel ourselves
to death.
We write our way into a shaky grace.
We watch, we listen, we wait in
the corner of a gorgeous room.

ER

3.

I answered the phone
experienced deja vu
watched a squirrel chew
felt embarrassed
investigated you
listened to my name being spoken
held my breath
read a paragraph about forgivness
counted church bells
thought about strangers
rested my arm on a comforter
looked out a window
wanted you
saw the air's infinite allowances
asked for tea
braced my body
against no small impulses.

For You:

Hinge

Love is nothing on this earth
but a way to translate
my raised fists, drawn arrows
fitful tears, taut trigger
weak stomach, puffed pride
gaunt patience into the hushed
mouth that waits for you.

ER

My Latest Effort:

Age

Our coarse intentionality
weakened when the fireworks
reflect on the resting home
windows, my green explosion
reflects our best efforts
at youth--bent over a plastic
cafeteria tray, eating cold
peas, wheeled out of their
rooms to reflect on your red
explosion. Every time I look up
the gunpowder gets in my eyes.

ER

Take your pick:

Now Showing...

David Bates' "Anhinga"

It's small, but I love it, and it's the only image of it I could find online. Try to enjoy what you can make of it.


ER

Photograph, December:

The shade of the pill-
Ow changes over months.
It begins relaxed,
Blue-grey, a cool hint
At blooming.

Her hands shake at the possibility
Of my body. She holds her apron
Like a shield but when I reach
Out I find a rope. I pull her
In and we are bound.

The first time we kiss she
Is a ghost and I am a gambler.
We dream about vacations.
I speak when there’s nothing
To be said.

Pillows inflame, puff out
A little and the sun sets
Her bed ablaze. I watch
But can’t speak. I grit
Down hard on this desire

But I don’t know how
To stifle it. To be in love and
Miserable is the same as
Being in love and joyous.
She teaches me the truth
By saying nothing.


ER

A "Birthday" Present:

I wish you satisfaction, but cannot
find a box big enough so it lays
all over my floor and sighs.
I wish you joy and
that's what this flapping
noise is about. Hundreds of
wings stir the air and will not
be gift-wrapped. I got you
poetry so sloppy and wet
so nubile it needs a nursemaid
and shackles.
I wish you wishes of all sizes--
pick them up while they are hot
and you are young
enough to waste them.
I wish you peace but don't know
how to leave you alone, tell me
how does a sailor leave the sea?
She doesn't: the depths so-far un-
touched but loved, its swells the biography
of her life, its whimseys keeps her afloat.

ER

2.

Our skin pressed
together makes raw
material for words.
You find graphite
between the sheets.
I examine it--
you do the accepting.

1.

I watch the light
travel down you
as though it asked
permission, and you
gracious, benevolent,
gave it, now a fugue
of slivers in your eyes.

Before I run off to work:

Blueberry
It's our password.
No logo in the sky.
We are going to spill.


ER

Do go on:

"There was one book I read not only at the right age, but on the right afternoon, in the right place, at the right angle. I read The Waves on an island, on a plotless day, when I was twenty-two years old, sitting on a terrace from which I could see in the distance the ocean, and the horizon where it met the sky and the changing light that played there as the sun climbed to its zenith and descended again while I thumbed the pages and my blood pressure washed up and down with the words. The Waves is not one of my favorite books. But my memory of reading it is. I was very silly when I was young. I have that to be thankful for."

-Mary Ruefle, from "Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World"

Yes, this is an interesting idea for me: having a favorite memory of reading a book, that might not necessarily be one of our favorite books. So often the experience of reading is tangled inextricably with the content of the text. So, I was trying to think of an experience of a book, which I loved, but the content of said book left something to be desired: Jack Kerouac's Satori in Paris.

Kerouac for me, like many young, red-blooded, hot-headed Americans, had seminal influence over me in my early twenties. On the Road, yes, I will get in this line, changed my life. It is my go-to read when my life is falling apart. It put me together, put me in a context, that of Ginsberg's "Angelheaded hipster searching for the starry dynamo," at exactly the right time, when I could appreciate being there. I love On the Road, and Kerouac, but did not love Satori in Paris, it was a sketch of a novel, one thin and lack-luster: after OTR and Dharma Bums, it falls frail. But the experience reading it was phenomenal because I took it with me to Paris.

I was 22 and "in love with my life" and I will hopefully always remember lying in bed, patio door ajar, sunny afternoon, sweet, unseasonably warm breeze toying with my feet, children running around in the playground below my window, hollering in French, did the air really smell like baguettes, or did I impose that? And I laid there for hours, read the whole book in (almost) one sitting. The book wasn't great, but that afternoon I felt alive in that great electric way we all feel from time to time, when we are in our early 20s or in another country or in love or writing a lot, or well, or well enough.

I showed you mine, now tell me yours: tell me about a time you read a book in which the experience was exhilarating, but the text was not the reason for the excitement:

And so:

Stranded

Our looking-in cultivates
Heroic moments.
In this column a thorny side
The other columns wait.
Apology is not the only
Missing piece—our histories
Unsettled. There are
Elixirs to consider.
Thumbs need hitching
If we’re gonna get out.

ER

And then there was:

Stranded

The exercise enacts bravery.
In this column a thorny side
The other columns wait.
Latitude is not the only
Missing piece—our histories
Unsettled. There are
Opposites to consider.
Thumbs need hitching
If we’re gonna get out.

ER

But oh, "opposites" is really only a place holder until something better comes along; aren't we all?

I'm still squinting at it, there will be touch-ups:

Stranded

The exercise enacts bravery.
In this column a thorny side
The other columns wait—
Gibbons move into place,
A sweet connection colors
The harness grazing face.
Latitude is not the only
Missing piece. There are
Impulses to consider.

ER

About Love:

"But as Thomas Merton said, one day you wake up and realize religion is ridiculous and that you will stick with it anyway. What love is ever any different?"