from the ocean’s sheen.
The sheens alarmingly similar to one another
to be so close together—like two bodies making love.
*
We imagine a vertical meadow
complicated into our world needlessly
but complication is all X ever wanted for us.
We misunderstand purity. This is purity.
*
I am your lover and X’s.
I am too good a lover
to ever be bored:
Skinny, hairy-chested,
made of pellets of rice,
cheeping in a way that’s
endearing and inappropriate,
confused, surprised at the confusion,
surprised at the surprise,
and so on, very tiringly, so on.
THE SENSES
Everything feels so good to me:
my wool hat,
the cocoon of dryness in my throat.
The sound of burning vegetables
is like a quiet, clean man folding sheets.
But I keep having thoughts—
this thought always holding at bay the next thought
until it sours into yet
another picture of dissatisfaction
that loves to be thought,
another pear, ugly
as the head
of a man who is thinking.
I thought my next thought would be a vision of my suffering;
I thought I would understand the yellow lightning in a painted storm—
the crucial way it disappears
when I imagine myself flung
headlong into the painting.
Instead I have this picture of dissatisfaction,
the thought not rising, but splitting in half
on the unanswered question of lightning,
my mind
like a black glove
you mistake for a man
in the middle of a blizzard.
HOLDING A FRESHWATER FISH IN A PAIL ABOVE THE SEA
He strips health out
of the water,
reminding me
of my mother.
I walk in sea
and hold my sweet
fish above me,
no small feat
given the rice-
hard salt scraping
my eyeballs twice
each blink of lid.
I put the pail
in the ocean
and then unveil
the decorous
frail, white-eyed koi.
But the salt, I
think, will destroy
his rocking breath.
Where he wants space
he will get salt.
Where key traces
of the silence
should hang inside
his cathedral
of musical
blood—
Instead, delicious
crystal drills
will crack it all
open; the church,
its ebbs and flows.
I scoop the fish
up by its nose,
a forked affair.
I show you him.
Looks fine to me
you say (Ha!), dim
and lovely you.
This happens more
times, stopping and
starting, me showing
you my full hand,
my fish. Where have
you gone? I was
hoping to wake
from this dream
with you drawing
the curtains, a gold
glow on the sheet
wrapping me up.
You aren’t here
but I’m aware
that somewhere
you have moved.
THE WATERCOLOR EULOGY
for Melissa
