In the glass-bottomed boat of our lives, we putter along gazing at the other world under the sea– that world of flickering

She leaps into the alien heart of the passerby, the drunk, the girl who spouts Freudian talk over Szechuan food. She is part herself,

You gave me a rose last time we met. I told myself if it bloomed our love would bloom,

You sleep in the darkness, you with the back I love & the gift of sleeping through my noisy nights of poetry. I have taken other men into my tho…

You open to me a little, then grow afraid and close again, a small boy

Exploring each other’s depths, that surge of connection which makes the world seem sane,

Dear Colette, I want to write to you about being a woman for that is what you write to me. I want to tell you how your face

For Naomi Lazard Sometimes I can’t wait until I… —Naomi Lazard My friends are tired. The ones who are married are tired

My broom with its tufts of roses beckoning at the black, with its crown of thistles, prickling the sky,

I sleep with double pillows since… Is one of them for you-or is it yo… My bed is heaped with books of poe… I fall asleep on yellow legal pads… Oh the orgies in stationery stores…

Living in a house near the Black Forest, without any clocks, she’s begun to listen to the walls.

For Jennifer Josephy On cold days it is easy to be reasonable, to button the mouth against kisses… dust the breasts

I pass to the other side of the pa… —Pablo Neruda On the other side of the page where the last days go, where the lost poems go,

Out in the world, the child cries for the mother as the wound cries for salt as the lover cries for her unrequited lover