Cursing

Voices from the old tv set crackle. There's fire in their throats.
You're watching your Disney movie about love and magic spells,
eating the omlette I made for you. I hear your chewing.
I just want silence.
The window's open just a crack and lets in a draught but I plant
my ass in bed, breathing the cold air.

I spent last night alone beside you, breathing out of synch with you --
my arms bare beneath the quilt -- my freckles incubating in darkness.
This morning you're ashamed of me. I'm back in bed cursing the daylight.
Desires are just neurons firing and cells traveling.

I look out the window.
Flowers emerge from under snow; bare arms emerge from under coats.
In the park stands half of a lightning-cracked tree,
a rotting house for insects. Barely breathing, never growing.
I look at your soft neck.
You will undress for me and wriggle underneath me like a worm.

You pull your arms up your sleeves.
Take off your bra so I can feel you underneath your shirt.
Fondle my naked torso with your cold hands,
kiss the burn on the back of my hand.
You tease me, hold me down and dangle your breast
an inch from where my lips can reach --
I can barely feel it with the tip of my tongue.
Your hands force mine against the pillow.
I'm at the mercy of your desires, spelled like a seven-letter word.

I lay beside you in the afterglow and I'm cursing you under my breath.
I'm ashamed of myself. I want the TV dinner in the comfy armchair.
Would you at least get me my goddamn slippers?

The whole room's an uncertain cell --
As if the walls may shatter any second.
I brace for the blast.

Divorce Song #378

                                              Recalling all the onion
                                             tears and alligator tears
                            falling off your eyeballs --
                     evacuating a hazard zone     before the quarantine.
                                          They were all one half a seventeenth.

                      Someone watching you fall apart
                                       might have called it all a farce.
                                       But he was really
                                                           all you knew.

                                               It's not all for you to decide --
             not the mold growing in the walls,
                                              not the tall, bug-eyed man at the bus stop
                                                   who called you a whore,
                                                      not all you were for your lover -- clown nose, horsey tail
                                                      and all that lipstick on your chest.

                               When you were finally done chopping onions
                                           you burned all the nachos,
                                              but that's all you knew how to cook.
                               He said they tasted all right but
                              to stomache it and call you sweetie, he only made it worse.
                                                  Practically a bitch-slap.
                                                           Fall down in a heap. One of these days, to the moon.
                                      
                                            You were pallid when he ruined
                                                              all your favourite shirts in the wash.
                                           Punch the wall. It's still unfixable.
                                             So you did all the dishes and cleaned the bathroom
                                                              all the time while he sat on his ass watching roadrunner cartoons.

                                               The fight       never ended. And after,
                                                love was       ebola or the common cold.
                                                        But       that one night,
                                                                    those sweet words,
                                                                    those fingers on your thighs --
                                                               all belong to you
                                                                alone.   

Evening

We used to let the daylight fade
slowly and without shame.
We used to wait for night
to drip into the sky.

It had to happen,
whether we were playing catch 
or digging holes.
But we learned to linger in the end of the day;

we made up tricks to drag it out.
Just one more minute,
one more game.

The evenings of my childhood
were always evening and evening.
Now every one is even.

Sidelines

You've been here before.
The softball diamond at night.
As you bunch up and shiver,
I lean in close to hear your voice,
and stare into your stoned and tired
                                                    beautiful red eyes.

I tell you about when I was a kid.
I once ruined a three-run triple by trying to make it a grand slam,
barreling past the third-base coach.
As I got older my parents made me choose
one toy animal a month to throw away.

Dear Diary, I love you
for listening to me.
Still no matter how opaque I try to make
myself feel, I'm transparent to you.
You're weary through and through.

Falling in love is a hobby of mine
like coin-collecting or tasting wine.
I polish the nickels and pennies, put them in their pouches,
take a sip, swish it around,
spit it out.