Love me as you relish your loneliness,
the anticipation of your death,
mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.

Women don’t riot, not in maquilas in Malaysia, Mexico, or Korea,
not in sweatshops in New York or El Paso.
They don’t revolt
in kitchens, laundries, or nurseries.
Not by the hundreds or thousands, changing
sheets in hotels or in laundries
when scalded by hot water,
not in restaurants where they clean and clean
and clean their hands raw.

Remembering Revelation I wanted to laugh,
the way a nonbeliever remembers Sunday School
and laughs, which is to say–after flood and rains,
drought and despair,
abrupt invasions,
disease and famine everywhere,
we’re still left dumbfounded
at the persistence of fiction.

Were you guys lucky, too, to caddy the light
of freshly-sprinkled fairway delicate and bright as eye of an
Indiana owl
or glitter of fish flickering in the Shedd Aquarium of the
imagination

Our matchbox bedroom in the loft above your
sculpture factory
Turns magical at times
Behind its dark blue Druid door.     Last night,
Inside you, sweetheart,
It felt as if I were coming from the soul itself.

My mouth is snow slowly caking that stiff pigeon.
My mouth, the intricately moist machinery of a plant.
I have forgotten if I ever had a mouth.