9 October, 2005

You say she wore a blue dress,
and that she was always stylishly turned out,
but I know she wore it two seasons only.
The picture fixes her;
it fastens her to time, spreading her image to fill all space.
She is not the child, not the woman, not the old mother,
but the woman in the blue dress,
the woman in the blue dress with her hand against the sun.
Still and fixed, you are the mythmaker,
and she is stripped of all else.
She is a photograph, she is a period piece, she is a place.
She is the dilated pupil before a point of light,
and no one can find her.

CPR

3 October, 2005

kissing you just now --
the long autumn sun
fingering through your lashes
and the hush of your last breath
before you lean upward,
the shadows making mad dashes
into your eyebrows --
I thought of that fat kid
with the wet, rubbery belly
and the lessons in cardio pulmonary resuscitation
at poolside when I was eleven --
except that
your lips aren't blue and
I like you more and
I let you stick it in me.