The necromancer

Look me in the eye, find some truth, find some fear
then use every word you can find to say nothing. I laid

in your bed once when you were not there. I had a nightmare
that your father found me. I let you run your hand down
my body, I let you, but you knew then, as is your habit

that there would be no more, that I would be hollow. I was another
tool, a way to discover another future. After I slid my hands

over you, and you whispered that it must mean something,
you peeled me, left me exposed. It was your nature to know,

but you left me no clues, no tea dried into elaborate patterns
in the bottoms of cups, no dried yarrow in a tangle on my lawn.

Lament for a Modern Danae (DRAFT-A-LICIOUS)

I

There were nights of motion, of wetness,
of weeping and pleasure, of ghasping for air.

Once, she lived in desire. She woke in the night
to the feel of you between her legs. You were

her Zeus, your hand sliding into her was a shaft
of moonlight melding her life to yours, creating in her

a divine pregnancy. The love you left there
was her salvation, her down fall.

II

Looking at you, no one would know your divinity.
She could see it from the moment she first saw you

standing outside her house in the snow, slamming
the door of a rusty truck, it’s creaking was

the sound of the muses that proclaimed your presence.
Months later, you left Perseus in your wake, her love

without a body to hold it, faltered, failed
to live up to the demi-god as it was formed.

III

Your Danae, with seven bite marks on her back
moves thru the world, different. The damage

you left, the bites, purple marks that you lift her shirt
to show another lover; the strange pattern of welts,

the shape of a whip at her hip. Feathering moonlight
between the legs every week, calling her back.

Home

On your back, I traced the words I was too scared
to say. You followed the path of my fingers, though,
and were disappointed by my fear. When you asked
me to give voice to that sentiment, I thought you
could be my new home. I am obsessed with a house

two blocks south of my apartmet. A two story brick
house across the street from a bar I never go to.
My house has had a for sale sign for months,
since long before I thought you could be the place

to which I long to return. I know now, you are no place.
You are a person. You will move, you will shift, you will change
your mind. Like me, you disappear. I carry home on my back.

I carry it when I take the dog to the park. I carry it when
I go to my parent’s house. Maybe this is what the homeless
woman who sat in the middle of the sidewalk this afternoon knew,
that her home was wherever she was. She yelled at me to say
she was not afraid of my dog. If we were young together, I would

take her to my home, I would undress her, I would trace words
on her back that I longed to say. I used to lie in bed and stare
at you and think, I will never love you as much as you love me.

My great love started with the thought that I would never love her.
What a fool, to think that. My great love ended with new scars
on my skin and flailing and job loss. No matter what, I can always say
I went the farthest. I am trying something new these days, I am letting
everything slide. I am walking past that house, my longed for home, daily.

Today, I heard they are closing my favorite dive bar. I thought
of the time you took me there, how we got drunk, how you wrote
my name in sharpie on the bathroom wall. I would like to somehow
take that part of the wall, to have a memorial of our home. You came

back once, but my bed distubed you, the thought of someone new
in it. My next home will have a porch. It will have wood floors,
and a yard for my dog. There will be a light in the kitchen, too.
I will make breakfast there. I will take the dog out. I will clean
the bathroom and decorate the foyer. I will hang my paintings there.

When I was a dominatrix

I.
you drove me to work every afternoon laughing
at how easy it can be to earn so much, to do
so little. I never told you about the seventeen
minutes of fear, alone in a room with this unknown,
possible peditor, the way I listened with my whole

body; I felt what should come next. You saw me:
the high heeled boots, shining vinyl bustier,
my Betty Paige bangs. You saw red lipstick,
eyeliner. You felt the welts I left on your back,
you hear my husky-voiced commands.

II.
Inside my stiffened, well shaped cacoon, my heaving
breasts were not born of excitement. I was not
throbbing with desire for your flesh. I kept my fear
and left you with pleasure. While I held that
many tailed whip, I sent it sizzling thru the air,
I made it crack and twitch against your skin,
I was the one being tortured for your pleasure.

III.
That fall, when I was a dominatrix, I gave.
I gave and gave and gave and gave. I pushed
your face into the floor with my boot, I pressed
your nose against concrete until it bled, I tied
you up and left your when the snows finally
came to press against the wounds.
Your frayed skin, in the end, was mine.

Seal these wounds

I’ve been drowning my fears
in astringent and slitting them
open with the tip of a knife.

Your words can dissolve
the edge of my anger, but only
motion can wipe the residue

of horror and sadness
off of my skin. Only the feel
of paper against my index finger

or the warmth that lies
inside your mouth can seal
these wounds I created.

I’m a theif

I woke, eyes blurry, as you packed your bag
the morning after I pushed my hand into your jeans
under flashing lights, after I made you shiver without
anyone else noticing. I hid your thin blue shirt,

hems unraveled with wear, under the blankets.
I never wanted you to stay, but I needed something
that would remind me you were here. If you return
on a rainy night, I will dress you in it again.

What I told you

I can remember the low orange glow
of lamplight lost in the high cielings
of my first apartment in this city
casting the shadow of your profile

on the wall when I told you
my poems are all fiction, and none
would really be about you. I told
you you might recognize gestures,
movements, but these have been
ripped out of life at the seems

and transplanted into a world
full of deer and queen anne’s lace
that I write in blue lined notebooks.
But I never told you this, even after
you moved with me into that low

ceilinged loft across from the drug dealers
and families with dirt for front yards
and children wearing only diapers playing
in the street. I never told you that that
blue lined world is my world, and you became

a part of it the moment you slipped your hands
down my body, the moment you locked an arm
around my body while I was sleeping. I never told
you that since then, every word has been for you.

Tracks to Cover

That winter snow piled up
to hip level. Every morning,
I broke the trail, pushing

my mountainous body thru
heavily drifted snow, glaciers
clinging to the wool of my gloves.

They all followed the wide path
left in my wake. A thin layer
of ice lay on the top of the snow,

creaking to break as I passed thru
solitary for these moments, traveling
thru trees and shrubery. Clear and textured,

its window distorted what was revealed
below. Years later, I travel these streets
breaking a path, my body now cuts

thru like a knife, though there is no one
to follow my tracks. My windows
are frosted, and my trail from lover

to lover is deep and uncharted.
Its been years since anyone
pushed their face against

the ice like window to my life,
but still, I turn back
I cover my tracks.

ode to lube

What follows is a work of collaborative poetry. I threw down a gauntlet for Dana from my gorgeous somewhere the other day. She is constantly making comments about lube, so I said, hey, lets write a line by line about lube. So, she put up a post on The Poetry Collaborative and off we went to lubesville for the afternoon. Enjoy!!! Also, check out the comments of the original post for our educational and entertaining discussion while writing this together!

ode to lube

between my legs, you work
your moistening mimicry

so I cry at the rhythm
persuaded out of me.

break through resistance
to water-based intimacy.

clear and viscous: do not
abide by those who deny

entry to fingers, to silicone.
without you, we are free

to smell and taste desire
but not to ride the sweet

pulse of another, the fine
caudled intermingling

of bodies pumping toward
a flourish. certain finality

of moaning contractions
flanks muscles and lubricity.

somewhere between echo
and stutter comes release

as one of your loosed droplets
glides down the side of your bottle.

And Another

I will feed her your
essence, the last gift
you gave me

to nourish this moment
of golden sun, these seconds
between one breath

and another. I will give her the blankets
you once laid beneath, the touch
you once treasured. It will all become

hers before she steps back out
into the ether that is fogs
lifting off late summer

pavement, before I kiss her
in the street, in front of her door
like she kissed the my shoulder blades

last night before telling me
to sleep. How I wanted all this, to feel
this skin, to suck this marrow

but then she was gone
and I had to find someone
to nourish with what I had left of her.