there

That is me
in the shower. See me staring
intently allowing the last
drops of squeeze
soap to cap each finger.

Each tip is decorated
with a milky drop.

I look funny squinting
as if I am trying to catch
a sound
beneath the pounding water.
I do, actually. Hear something.

Could be you. Could be the cat clicking
his teeth at a bird
he will not catch. Could
be.

My fingers look long
and graceful.

My glasses are on the counter. I
do not see clearly. That
is why my hand is so close
to my face.

I have been there for minutes
carefully creating the appropriate balance
between air
and soap in the tube
so it swirls steadily onto my finger
tip.

My usual checklist
is done
at this point.

The best places for this are as follows:

Watch me wring water out of my wet hair.
Its length is appropriate

so when I lean over you
in the dark
I am not like a boy. Sometimes
you laugh
and pull it into a tail.

But see? I am not in bed. I am
right here, I am in
the shower.

Notice my formality.
If I were speaking I would not
say “I would.” I would say
“I’d.” The lack of contractions
proves

the formality
the seriousness

of watching me shower.
That this has already happened.


If I were to write about me
I would write something else.

This is

the ________________ place for _______________.

I might write how I swing
my legs, trunk-like, over
the side of the bed in one motion
pivot on my backside and stand.

The best places for ___________ slash ___________ are as

follows:


When I get up I always pull the covers up
over whoever is left in bed.

But I don’t write about me.

Being in the shower
reminds me

reminds me of this: Some of my best questions
disappear down the drain.

A shower
is a very good place for this. Are you still
there?

Checklist: when was
the last time I cried?

how many people
would notice
that my nails

are ragged?

my garden is dripping

with weediness.

Being in the shower
reminds me of this          a very good place for this:

questions     crying               staring

intently

feeling            graceful          thinking

about splitting my shin
in half        that

the best places for __________ are as follows:

and

I am not petite and        would not
ride a carousel                        in a beautiful dress.

Even if your large hand
gripped my waist

showing everyone.

Want does not       remove me                 from this cold room

where you    cannot          take time to think.

Even this I need to see in little pieces
small bits: water     tile soap          bah    tulle

All my best quest

shuns disappear

down

bit

Even though
it is black

licorice
is a purple word

sedulous is green

and so on

They roll around
in the warm jar
of a mouth

Licorice
means frozen drunk
and
gentle clinks of glass beads

skimming

lengths

of taut wire


Toile is yellow and sore

an old bruise

A mouth Os open
to say it

(yawning black cave)

Toile ends only
when the tongue retracts
to its hole

Sky is open too
and white:

the rippling scrim
of staring
and sleep

the backdrop
to it all


Smaller bits
are easier


Once more: Lick

or

ice clicks and

the jar

shivers

and cracks

with the weight

Pulse

               —for Geof

Dangerous roofs
dance above the street
buck
and writhe
shingles rolling
with the effort to fling off
ice and cold.

See?
the whole world is up
in arms.

He sings a song to the icicles: red
pepper mangosteen lavender roux.

He sings to charm
the shiny things (diamonds
and bubbles) His song
opens the door as steam as a small
tornado spinning.

The rooflines relax
stretching
like long cats. The icicles unclench.

Later: when they sleep it is
for warmth
parallel
ones
butt to groin his toes
gripping her heel so
she does not spin off into
darkness.

oyster aspen curry rust

(he whispers to her)

blood should be
the color of eyes

(she whispers back)


She listened with her finger
tip to pulse beneath his
ear:

iris maple bird’s eye pear we are dust
in        the corners        sharp
with sun     the ice            lies
puddled
and        the windows
no longer        rattle
with cold

the song she felt.


Flung ceiling-ward
skyward

with both hands

moss
                bay
                          arrowroot
                                                pink

the songs as charms as magics as voice
settle and drift
to the small spaces of the house.

She sweeps into the corners

what she did not expect
but
any way

beautiful

k (no) w)

This parenthetical life slips
in between
modifying the snow
falling again.

Redemption is not
on my calendar. Perhaps
in another language. Perhaps in some
numeric sequence. Perhaps
if I can say these things aloud:

My love should
have (not like snow crystals
reflecting the sun)
been blue
like the arc that fuses metal
to metal; my love should

have full lips (not
gently brushed
with soft tongue)
bitten to bruising; my
love should have (not
torn between apology

and anger) been a simple
yarny thing
knotted, humble
warm enough
easy enough if
one takes the time.

Even the dangerous roofs
(ice and snow) could
have been a love poem
to you if I had known how.

clank

So:
when grey cartoony fingers
poked again into the many
oozy spots of her house
drawing themselves a chair
at her dining room table
squeezing into her morning shower
making her thoughts slippery
as soap or
nuzzling into her bed
it was a bit
too much.

She thought: being the she
meant she could not be he or
it or one or
none that she was
and would know where to look
where to put lips and tongue
mostly

and: a finger
in the pocket
beneath the pillow behind the eyes

She recorded a little song
not a pretty lyric but something
to remind her and some
times she played it back to her ear
tight like trying to hear the whispered words
of a new love sure
you’ve heard the words barely breathed
as your body says it feels it knows
it proves it.

To see the coincidence
of 2:34 a.m.
is sometimes enough to convince
anyone of any
thing.

and again: here
in this under
this

Surveying where she sat
suddenly it all made sense
fixt foot remembering a voice
clear like nutmeg like cut grass like
bare foot on stone
asking as no one else ever did
how do you want it how
do you want me how do you wish
it were?

once more: any way any
way anyway

Well: some songs
are public but some
are not. To say
I love you
is the ultimate selfishness
someone told her.

Certainly now: this
parenthetical life (or
foot note) begs
to be grabbed
by its handles
plunked down again
at a better spot.

She considered
telling some
one The basement floor keeps
falling away leaving my socked feet
dangling above the lithosphere
the shower water whispers
a measure or two a word
or three but never repeats them
that words
are songs are
dreams are thought are ooze
beneath crust are splinters buried
in the lawn are scissors cutting
yarny snags

So: now.

It is 1:27 a.m. and she thinks:
somehow the snowbanks have pushed
me flat against the window
and I cannot see
around my squashed nose. My unborn
children have decayed behind the radiators
their clanking keeping me awake. I should
stop scribbling in the margins. Because
I am ready
you would slip in easily and perhaps
the rocking of the bed
will stop that damn chattering.

really: now:

See, even in the midst
of this
(the heaviness
of being
surrounded by smudgy disquiet
mirrors steamed over
kitty litter quartzed
and sweet on the floor) it’s
hard it’s
strangely dull.
The children grumble and
shove each other
in the hallways
of this busy movie
and at 2:34 a.m. no coincidences are mere.

code

Imagine a day imagine
waking
to falling snow falling
somehow everywhere
filling in
the boundaries of your
yard within the fence line filling
in the spaces between grass blades
and dead leaves
dog tracks and gopher holes except
for. Imagine waking
one snowy morning to find
the borders of your house
cleared and clean
as if no one
had ever been there. Who
has done such a thing
you might ask
rhetorically
since no one could answer. Would
the answer you provided
satisfy?

What if you woke
one morning
to step out of the shower
glimpsing your wet
nakedness
stepping over the tub
out of the shower
and saw on the mirror
a series of thumb
prints thumb and fingertip
dots even dashes with frayed
edges written not in soap
but in the steam a clear
message since you could see
your own eye in a blurry
negative circle
right there in your own
bathroom right there
on your own mirror over
printed over your wet
nakedness. Would you stop
struggle to break
the code? Would you
wonder the sender would
you read it even
if it were not
meant for you? How
would you know?

Think now that you had
a line
thought locked
in your head. As life
intervened, thought lost
to parallel parking
or needing to pee
deciphering
a code waiting
for a note
in soap or steam trying
to sleep as snow crashes
about the house
a line forgotten
half remembered
how would how could
you recall that? What line
would you write
in its place
in snow or in steam? After
life intervened would you try
to remember the words?

key

See a vase of flowers
pink and pointy
staring wide. See the

other vase full of
something else
pink or not
perhaps
some flower that looks
even more
like a flower
in a vase sun
from a window bending
through water or
the only bright
spot on a table some
thing I can
not even imagine. See

a picture of me as I
fumble in my bag
my big leather one
with the several pockets
for my keys
for here
and there. The jingling
is the key but to which?
See me reach

in and grab. I go
by feel not
sure what I have until
the bottom. Until
I hold it beneath
my nose in the palm
of my hand. See my bed

old with a cover plain
as a book. It is not
pretty but
it pleases me and is soft
when I need
to sleep. See me searching

for myself in the words
between the lines
wondering which
color which tree which
nose which place which moon
which skin which eye
I am. See a movie

of me as I sit
in the audience
leaning forward
hoping
for a glimpse of my wrist
or small of back or long
fingers in the frame. See

me reading all these: bed as brown
as a book, flowers pink.
Black night. Jasmine tea and
star gazer lilies, pink
not white but really blue
if they were my
color, like eyes
staring out and up. White
as sylph as snow as
beauty. Stems and leaves green
as tree as
eye as summer. See me write

a note
that spring doesn’t
always mean
new beginnings
that some
times autumn
red
as scars as woman
does.