Have a Nice Day

Thank you but I have other plans. For starters,
you get out of bed too soon,
whistle into your clothes—so happy!—and break

the door upon parting. Partings!
Let me snap your neck,
give you a slow bleed and hang you on a flag pole.

I once asked a lover, “Am I a nice girl?”
It was Fourth of July. “Nice-ish,” he said, kissing
my nose, lighting a Roman Candle.

Today, I set my sights low, but this morning
my car wakes up with a roar, the stop lights all say go,
an elevator carries a happy cabinet of workers into the air.

“Am I a nice girl?” I phone my assistant. “Funny!”
she snorts, tells me I have no messages.
I can’t eat lunch slowly enough: hated phone,

it has forgotten me. I call the first seven digits
of my social security number,
tell a woman’s voice: “I will love you forever, think of me at meals.”

Published in Cranky Literary Journal, Spring 2005

Sick Day

We outlived contentment,
a pattern of tranquility
stolen by a winter, mad
with too much cooking, not enough
kissing the wings of our children.
We killed birds in those days,
ate meat with our hands, played
canasta through midnight. I fed
you butter cookies, you cut
away my stockings with a sheering knife,
and from our bed, shrieks—
yours, mine, theirs. When the children rushed in,
laughing, desperate things!—
the four of us slept toe-to-toe, overslept,
called in sick and listened to show tunes.
We drank tea piled high with whipped cream,
lined up in front of the mirror,
brushed our teeth, compared the flecks
of color in our eyes, watched our gums bleed.

Published in KNOCK, Fall, 2005

A Touch

What if she put her hand on a strange man’s thigh
and kept reading? What if he didn’t jump up,

spill his coffee and say, Pull yourself together, lady!
What if he scooted his chair in, sat knee to knee

with a stranger. What if he did? Maybe he would see
what she needed wasn’t in the poems,

or in the rock ‘n’ roll filling the bright corners—
but in one soft offering of animal touch.

she would close her eyes, remember
everything she is part of.

Published in PONTOON 8, a Floating Bridge Press Anthology of Washington State Poets, Fall 2005

Camping Sestina

How perfect life feels in the red
arms of a sunset. The heat kneels down in the grass, my lips
burn into the day’s gauzy end. I am in love
with these sad cow eyes, the beauty of a collective gaze:
no judgment! We drive by an orchestra of tails,
the lazy swing: there’s no ambition here to jump the moon.

It’s dusk, and we have a new home: tent and tarps, the moon
as our night light. The cows will dream in notes of red,
compose music for their slaughter. Deer will tail-
gate our campsite for food, their teeth warm behind lips
that could play the flugelhorn at dawn. I will gaze
out a netted skylight: count five stars, and see a love

from my past, who wrote poems to five lost fingers, a love-
less obsession wrapped in silk paper. It’s too much, the moon-
y weight of wishes on young faces. Don’t rhyme gaze
with anything: not haze or chaise lounge—and forget red—
or I’ll flash back to Paris, where American lips
tripped over a half-swallowed language and we were tailed

by dykes and Arabs along the Seine, with tails
tucked between our virgin legs until we ran, too in love
with our safety to play it cool. Out here, I watch your lips
puff crystal air into a domed shelter. You have no idea: a moon’s
crowning yolk rises with less longing than I do. Red
is the slither of skin, it’s night on my thighs. Gaze

into your last dream and what do you find? A gaze-
less shade of summer, and too many endings. Tales
of smashing plates and used-up lies are old news. Red-
winged birds now use us as their muse, spread love
songs over the star-lit meadows, pierce the moon-
y solitude of a blind calf, a kitten whose lips

are fresh with milk. It’s midnight and my lips
find your shoulder, a damp blade, a gaze
of bone watching your back. The slivered moon
of your sleep, undulating arc—a tail
of invisibility, from you to me. I love
to kiss you in the dark and deny it. Remember? The red

sheets, so red we could hide everything we loved
in the moons of our touching feet. Our story has a comet tail,
a morning gaze, a thousand wishes: these lips, these lips.

Published in CALYX, Winter 2006

Romea at the Pool

Romeo came to swimming today,
arms hung low, he could hardly carve a stroke,
dragged his lane mates down: too slow, too slow!——
all of us exchanging looks. We crawled up
each other’s toes, passed out tart remarks in
whispers, pinches. But no one had the guts
to say, Romeo! you are dead, you sulky clown,
and by the way: Juliet has been swimming at
Queen Anne, so give us back our daily lane.
Five a.m. is just too early for this much mood.
By six, we have cooled down from never
warming up, except for Romeo, his hard breath,
his hard eyes, turning right, turning left, bodies beating
onto deck, running for showers. But I have
pity, I’m a sucker for a good soliloquy and so—
I get the arm tap, a throat clearing, and take it,
standing here shivering, half naked.

Published in SWIVEL: The Nexus of Women and Wit, Fall 2005