Though from Another Place I Take My Name

And every evening,
this one desire of mine
saw her face in another man's wine.

I looked. She raised her arms
and moved her dance along,
tossing flowers to everyone
and spending herself in song.

She pirouetted past a window.
Surely no human hands
turned those pages.

That her face was soiled linen in that light,
like a jaw-clenched winter sunset.
That her lips (the palest blood-clots)
whistled again and again.

Hear!

A snake-heavy, dull-dusty voice
dragged yesterday like a corpse
onto tomorrow.

I died. I started again and all
will be repeated as before.
The frigid snickering of a frozen creek.
The night. The barn. The dog coop.

All the snowstorms of my youth.

There was present in her secret song.
Wedding wreaths crowned
the imagined mountains of Michigan.

And behold,
                    I'm so feebly mute.

And Be with Caution Bold

I dreamed my moth-winged soul — 

all splutter-smogged, all dirt and thought —

lit close to a thistle’s eye.

I dreamed a butterfly — all color, rainbow, shine,
two silken circles on her wings —
fluttered by.

I dreamed we danced flamenco on the wind,
flaunting laughter-flight and laced 

escalloped lines of flame-desire.

I dreamed we flew all curious and curlicue,

rose skyward on such fist-warm air,

wing-twisted with each other into blue.

Oh, my tangled soul!

I'll forget my wounded deeds.

I’ll forget my wing-
broke dreams.

When Ezra Understands

I’d like to walk home,

smile and jest, just

as everybody has —

is this too much? —

asked, no, prayed
to go home again.

Still, foot by foot,
I’ve learned to run,
lung-paced in step with everyone.

I chant frost-linger songs,
sing lost-finger stanzas,

tongue-touch gloss-glove notes.

Stand up! I stand.

Sit down! I sit.

I’ve learned

my sentence by heart,

and for that roof of words —

admit my virgin soul
died running in the dark.

Andrei Rublev Never Painted Icons in Mississippi

I said: Provisions for the foot

dug-up and the unwatered foot

appear in “Excavations for Tower Footings.”

Tonight spreads, she said,

a knobbed laticlave across the sky.

Oh, how that purple bleeds, I said.

Who says the quality of distinct sides,

she said,

is derived from the name of a man?

Who says after the usual time

that the mitigant day forgives

even the fallen arch of your left foot?

Is what she dared say to me.

To forgive and receive the like thing,

as to exchange thoughts, I said,

is next to—oh, here it goes,

here it goes again.

Should have known again.

The Devil’s Rag Piano

High above
the sluggish Mississippi,

way higher than
the southern pines

that reach like nervous virgins up

this hungry valley—

a crow flies.

I go

it alone.

See the crow fly.

Ya'll pass me
that bottle.

I go it alone.

Honey, I spit-comb
my gray-black hair back,

and I go

it alone.

I come round your room,
sweet-heart, I come.

Pass me
that bottle,
baby.

Six is this
and seven is that—

I’m coming over, 

hands in my pocket.

I’m coming over, 

girl, and I’m coming

alone.

I bet I go it alone.

Some Love Don't Got No Right to Speak

We asked for the noir suite
with a flashing neon sign

outside the window.

I closed the door behind us,
and here's what she whispered

in my cauliflower ear:

When two equally dangerous people

sniff around the same flame,
they both lose 

their wings in fire and smoke.

Her father was attorney general

a few years back.

You're not a turnip, she said.
You're not, are you.

I blew cigarette smoke out my nose
like a cartoon bull.

No advantages known by the police, she said,

putting faith in an obviously dubious turd.

This is a story 

told from the point-of-view of a crook

with the hots for a high-heeled

daughter-of-privilege
and lots to lose.

A self-centered way of looking at it,

she said, like an undistinguished actor

playing an undistinguished human being.

Listen, sister, I know
the difference between a good

and a bad girl — so's I can,
so's I can
spit in anyone's eye.

I did before and had my share.
I got nowhere, she said.
It doesn't matter what you did.
We could see this night through.

What are you,
I said to the naked
two-pane window,

a bunch of cock suckers?

Stop laughing

or kiss my fist.

When the Revolution Came to St. Petersburg

Night came galloping over hills

like a troop of blue hussars

chasing a wounded bear.

Sleighs along Fontanka

split the icy air.

She told me last April:

Here’s a perfect place to plant

a garden of Pushkin sonnets.

This morning she told me:

We’re quits, and we don’t

need to inventory a rash of stars.

White horses slashed

ice on Liteiny Street.

Muted guitars pressed

cold stilettos to our necks.

She said someone—I think

the moon’s footman—

kissed my collarbone.

And the tiered soldiers

sipped their clean vodka,

humming songs they didn’t know.

The moon, master assassin,

came out to pull a job.

Don’t put on your sword, she said.

Don't take part. You know

how many snowflakes 

it takes to kill a heart.

I was watching the horses

trample acres of winter-hardy songs.

If to the Left, Suspicion Hinders Bliss

Clouds hang low

like a gray veil across the night,

the corduroy face of God Almighty

bent over the flesh of the world.

One and just one

shape of the mouth

pronounces the ineffable name.

All existence opens like a wounded sea,

but only infants read the fishes and the stars.

They know the moon was born above

such questions, during a warm hour

when winged darkness held

the earth in its breath.

An orchestra watches

all the layered

depths of existence—

and is at best

noncommittal.

A violin whines

herself to silence.

Somewhere, a silly cymbal

crashes.