The Fish

I catch her ankle.
I catch a fish.
She kicks. She
snaps. I wish

I could swallow
her ankle. I wish
that ankle could be me.
I wish I could eat

That fish forever
as it dies in my hands.
The stream slivers
underneath, silver.

The ankle blooming
on it’s own.
I feel the dome
of the bone

like a mountain
on a toy globe.
She didn’t sculpt it
and there it is!

My favorite sculpture!
A part of her!
A letter in her
language.

I hold it
gentle and firm
like a fish,
like a prayer.

I reel her in.
I kiss
the fish.
I release her

into the stream.
She swims away.
I’m left here,
holding the sky.

Frog Legs

A scrap. I'd probably reverse that metaphor about logs and fires though. It's nice to have things in my own handwriting.

I Am Trying to Remember Her Eyes

I am trying to remember her eyes.
I am trying to explain to you her eyes.
What they looked like.
What I saw them look like.

They were brown. That's indisputable.
But what was held in them,
the rays streaming through
the stained glass,
how to describe that.

Unscarred. Like she’d never
been thrashed. Eager. Not
unintelligent. Dog paddling eyes,
unaware how they're not that far above water.
Certainly not pensive, not hiding
any thought. Almost never manipulative
and unskilled when trying to be.

Orioles.
Convex eyes.
Her sorrow was amusing,
the tears, the pout,
the sorrow of a girl who’d dropped
both scoops of her ice cream cone.

I remember her eyes.
I am trying to describe them
to you. I am trying to describe them
to myself. I remember her eyes.
I want to keep remembering them.

Alcatraz

I see you in the park.
I want to look at you.
You want to look at me.
Our eyes ricochet
off each other.
I can't catch you
looking at me.
I can’t even give
a smile to you.
You’re Alcatraz and
I’m swimming to your rocks
and when I get there
you'd rather stay in jail,
kissing the walls.

There is no you. There are a thousand yous.
I know no you. I see 30 yous an hour.
Where are you?
Are you out there?
You’ve got to stay away. You get too close
and you crumble,
or I crumble. Gravity sends
two lives shaking into screws, identities
unable to hold.

But I could know how fragile you are.
How you sit on an iron bench and open
your long, dark lens
to the ultraviolet April blooms.
Shamble into my arms.
I won’t laugh. I promise I won’t laugh.
I’ll break your fall.

It’s my mistake to think
that you’re fragile, that
you’re a flower.
You are a flower, but
flowers are only
advertisements
for the tree.
Flowers fall away early
leaving only the wide, armored waist.
It isn’t you that will crumble.
It’s only me.