165.
Or morning only comes when something
breaks
how to tell your mother you’re gay
the stains your pleasures leave on
you
the roof cracks the birds fly out
it was no house after all it was the
woods
only halfway through the catalogue of
sins
remember never to confess unless
confessing is a pleasure too
girl fell off the lighthouse made her
lover fall
both drowned our coasts unguarded
deep-rooted on a shelf of rock below
the sea
some sins will never wash away
one slight twist it comes off in your
hand.
166.
A wave is pure motion in substance
with no substance of its own
a brilliant shadow of a man at sea
left in a terra cotta lekythos takes
two to hold it up
ten to drink it dry not ten of our
kind ten of theirs
let Ovid tell the story his own way
forget the Greeks
they are not in your blood your
bloody veil
Mavors inside me made me leap three
times
over the solstice fire into the sea
of Seven Oxen
I swam to Venus though I cannot swim
walked gingerly on my friend’s
adventure
at the intersection of now and then a
yellow flag
come not aboard this plague ship of
love’s sicknesses.
