Poems

When I’m old, and my breasts
hang against my chest
like empty pockets;
when my irises have turned milky,
and the creases in my face
look like a drawstring bag —
then I’ll wear the reddest lipstick
I can get, the scarlet kind you
find at Woolworth’s for 99 cents.
I’ll be one of those old ladies
whose smeary red lips stand like a tent-pole
in the middle of my face,
holding up the center no matter how
the rest flags in folds around.
I will fly this red banner as if to say:
Look at me! You, too, will die
by the inch
from the outside in:
but if you ever had a night with a man
who really, really likes women,
your memories live in the lips!
They grin long past the time
your joints could hold them up.
These memories live in the mouth,
the old, red mouth,
just like that young one,
just like that hidden one,
when the body was glorious!

I dreamed of my mother’s clothes:
opened an antique wardrobe—all her
clothes were there that I remember,
from crinolines to hose

with elegant seams
up the back; her housecoat,
her scarves that float
in perfume; I seem

to stand before a bank
of fabric memory,
my mother with me—
casual or swank

in gown, blouse, and slack—
as I rummage through
saying “Oh! I remember you,
and you!”—the fecund rack

giving me my mother
back again, and me a child
in her warm closet, clothes piled
around me like other

arms, the camphor scent of caring.
I find a green remnant
of the tweed coat she sent
me away to college in—faring

alone—long before she left herself,
an old lady in tidy gym
clothes, eyes rheumy, brain dim,
leaving spangled shawls on a back shelf.

In the dream I clutch the fiber
body of her, the outermost skin—
embrace it all, remember when
the clothes, and I, were filled by her.

The man who wants you
is never in the place
you are. He is in Brooklyn,
you are in Chicago;
he is painting houses,
you work for Microsoft;
he is into bowling and computer games;
you are into stargazing
and poetry.

The man who wants you
is never in the time
you are: he is twenty years older,
rugged, romantic, teaching
Shakespeare or biology;
you are a coed with big eyes
in the back row of desire.
Or years later, the man who wants you
sits in the front row of your classroom
raising his hand, hanging on your
every word, trailing you to your office
with a thousand eager comments;
you are old enough to be his mother,
the last crush of his childhood.

The man who wants you
missed all of his cues, never
knew you were the One
until he had a wife and a house
full of responsibilities;
with the clarity of hindsight
he tracks down your number,
calls you past midnight
to weep and imagine
your phantom marriage.
The man who wants you
is never where you are—you
with your laundry basket
and your five-year-old car.
The man who wants you
is in Tahiti or Shangri-La—
the moon, the lagoon,
the gardenia on the nightstand.

THE MAN WHO WANTS YOU

The man who wants you
is never in the place
you are. He is in Brooklyn,
you are in Chicago;
he is painting houses,
you work for Microsoft;
he is into bowling and computer games;
you are into stargazing
and poetry.

The man who wants you
is never in the time
you are: he is twenty years older,
rugged, romantic, teaching
Shakespeare or biology;
you are a coed with big eyes
in the back row of desire.
Or years later, the man who wants you
sits in the front row of your classroom
raising his hand, hanging on your
every word, trailing you to your office
with a thousand eager comments;
you are old enough to be his mother,
the last crush of his childhood.

The man who wants you
missed all of his cues, never
knew you were the One
until he had a wife and a house
full of responsibilities;
with the clarity of hindsight
he tracks down your number,
calls you past midnight
to weep and imagine
your phantom marriage.
The man who wants you
is never where you are—you
with your laundry basket
and your five-year-old car.
The man who wants you
is in Tahiti or Shangri-La—
the moon, the lagoon,
the gardenia on the nightstand.

The miracle is that anyone can love,
look eye-to-eye without turning away.
That youth exchanges urgency for order:
man with his bristling arrows, woman
with her reservoir of life. Seasons die
and revive: husband, wife,
husband, wife.

Yeshua is young himself. He wants to
stamp his feet, slap his thighs,
sing at this wedding! He wants to
look at girls whose toes have
tiny silver bands, whose veils have
little trilling bells. He wants to
flick his fingers and ring
the little bells. He wants to
braid and tangle, run, pursue–
there is no verb for all he wants to do!
He says Yes! to everything: skewered goat,
wedding bread, and to his mother
pressing him for wine.
Why should he subdue his gift within
the logos of his mind?
Yeshua gives the wedding guests the best wine ever made:
he may as well. Even though it’s not his time, the end,
he knows, is swelling on the vine.

Only the sober steward stands tansfixed
by water, deepening into scarlet,
spiraling through the amphorae. He tastes it:
By the staff of Moses! he cries.

What time destroys it cannot uncreate:
the bridegroom sits beside his happy bride,
worlds on the brink. Yeshua sings,
dances, drinks, commits: he feels as though
he’s wedded everything.

Sometimes, alone at home, I say into the air

“Bastard! Thieves!” or sometimes,

“I love you” to nobody, in order to hear

my voice, and to address the people

who ought to have been here, fighting

with me, whom I could resent for hemming

me in so that I could never have

this solitude. For not loving me enough,

or not appreciating my feelings.

“I love you” I say to the one

who did not believe me, who never came here,

that thief, who let my hair grow gray

without him, that bastard.