Third night this week I’ve seen
                                all our exes milling
                                              around the front
                            yard. Each lighting
                                          strike outlining
                            haircuts and ears we begged
                               the earth to hold.
Flash: and there’s the one
                             that got away.
Flash: and there’s the boy
                           whose wrists were only
                          beautiful when they held
                                                         a trumpet.
Flash: and there’s the decapitated
                           body lifting weights.
Flash: and there’s the guy
              who wore a sock
                             as underwear.
Flash: and the mailbox is full
                     of letters post
                                marked years ago
             like the office staff of lost
                                mail got back from holiday
                all at once.  This letter’s from Matt,
                                                 the red one’s
                        from Jeremy,
                                 the unmarked one
                  just says “you up baby?
                                                          I am horny.”
      This one,
        a bill for the Royal
                       Hotel in New Orleans
            that neither of us stayed
                        at. This one, a used
                             Oraquick test.  This
                                            one, a DVD
                                 about a marching band.
     This one a black
                    cat with its back forever
               arched. Like squall lines,
                         or a found photo album,
                         or the box in the back
                                    of the closet,
        no amount of waiting
        on the porch with a hatchet
                    will keep them from
                                           coming back.

The belief that women can’t resist
talking smack about each other
should be called the fallacy of animosity,
though I admit I hate my friend’s bangs.
Every so often, I examine my hair
under a microscope to see if I need  
to deep condition. Am I the only one
terrified of living life without
fully realizing my popularity?
I resolve to work harder, to act natural,
to redact my overeager smile
the next time you tell me I’m pretty.
But thank you. It means a lot.
I tried to check my ego
with a controlled burn and accidentally
scorched the whole thing.
Is it better to be loved or respected?
Not to whine, but why must
women choose? I think
my hair looks nice when I wear it up.
My neck is my best feature,
fluted like a calla lily.
At least that’s what people say.

Nothing matters so
without the possibility of being  

altogether forgotten. I was a girl,
which meant something to me  

and to others, which seemed
to mean more the longer  

I’d become it. Phenomena
of us gathered on deck  

as each thunderbone struck.
Today wanted tomorrow’s  

temperature, I wanted Eric’s
look at Amy for myself. 

Ardor settled over. We pined,
so we became. Madness is taking  

the same measure repeatedly,
but then, there was daylight,  

which did the same. Sky,
envy of all transformations,  

uninjured and split from a space
it invents. Who didn’t wish  

to be studied like that: for stars
or for a change in plans.

My desire is a different sun going down and down and I too am falling, pulled and curled to the shape of the earth, disappearing or already gone. Don’t say tomorrow. Don’t climb to the edge of a cliff and look out. I’ve placed the horizon deep into a small hole with my hands made and remade a hundred times just to see what is done to the under air. Nothing is ever diminished. Remember me slipping out of your arms. Remember my body like the heat that leaves your breath. Imagine my arms as some dying language and the afterglow is me and I am the indefinite sky, how I open and open like a mouth with no sound, my skin half full of smoke and sundown. See how there is no sun and only rain like a billion apologies, all the quiet trying hard to break away into living. It is almost like touching. I’ll never know enough to know how to translate a body back into something bearable. I think it has to do with emotion. I think it has to do with dirt and air and silt and stars over and over and then the wind so loud it becomes a tall black bell tower ringing. I think it has to do with leaving everything.

                                                            “Have you been living
              as an object that you manipulate at a distance?” 

                  Lightning is the most
                  delicate bizarro.
                            It briefly fills the room you sit in with her.
                     It stems, and has no mother.

                                            “I think you’ve been living
             partly as an object—”

            The other part is
            if you walk out to refuse her that and just pay her next week.
            Not as fun as when
            you were a child and your sister
            bent your limp body
            into furniture she’d sit on

             a chair             a table             stop it          you’re too heavy
             Once or twice she might have settled on
                                             a tall, proud lamp
             and switched you on and off, on
             and off, and that might have looped
             a few smiles between the two of you