The writer

came and sat down next to me
addressed me as “Steve,” not “Stephen”
lifted me vertically from street to sill
showed me the undulating floor half-open inner door
didn’t stop
near her old house in Dublin, where
lemon yellow strings of curtain smash against blue brick
elbows propped up next to mine
in the middle of her Russian Week
hit me with her day after day after day
was the poorest person in the room
cycled out to Marino
that I’m alone in her old house
that I’ve never seen
that was derelict space
that I’ve never been to Dublin
that I’m waiting for my mother to come back
that my face detached like a white petal
and floated toward her
spoke because she needed to

First Light in America

is not the sun but
Atlantic gray

Four streetlight spears
on South Main St. shove
buildings forward

muted red brick
haloes over fledgling maples
clouds cross the sky

Lavender morning is concrete
bleached from black
now rotting apricot
peeking pink

haze settles over Spring
sinking
into thatched roofs
the same blue

like a symphony
in the bright trees
crescendo pushes pink aside
its great march
sky astride

sun strikes horizon
spikes yellow thru white

The Body is a Naked Fact

feet print wet on wood
charred sauna       leaks down
his chest
smolder red       sweat beads at his       upper lip

water plunges across faucet         explode clear
spiral over skeleton
suds descend   spine’s
                     curve
                       the way cars creep
                      at steep hills

he comes close squeezes blue gel into his hand
   staring at my back
it would take nothing   reaching out         to touch him

watching
   for certain lengths of time

       we stand
                   full frontal
  taking the body in

terry cloth then rubs
       down shins        hairs stand on end

dry my face to lift the towel
            opening up              to show him
watching each other stare
     sublime

standing Greek
     ancient anyone
anonymous and nude
breathing
        like marble

Andy

Lines ticked under our tires
as I biked behind his tight jeans
the way he pumped his legs
down into the pedals.

Wrestled into armpits
backs of knees
swimming trunks hovered under water
Our bodies were so warm.

We lay out on his roof in the summer
I rest my head against
his cheek
We talked about nothing.

Windows fogged over
flesh against raw wood
I made his portrait as he
read on my bed.

We sat at the stern
shirtless, at ease
Sailboat watched Lake Michigan over moonlight
We couldn’t even see the city.

When I was very young,
I stole the syrup, frequently
I sucked it
cold and thick
right out of the bottle.

Cigarette

buds are electric lights on trees
breathe street lamp peach
shards through mouth-steam

rain
vivid on the stone
trees are sodium orange
with rust leaves

fence a shining grid
picketing damp road
sidewalk cobbled together
by crows

Panel for Edwin R. Campbell No. 1, 1914

I can barely hear the music
of Kandinsky

whisper symphonies
under the crowd.
Light passes like hundreds of violins.

Wine talks white with people as
I stand in Grieg’s Morning
deafening yellow fills up under my eyes.

They’re brought back to silence
as an orchestra tunes its instruments.
The painting runs its course.

An event recorded

there, smell of rotting
the fish then brought
by the rain, back

brought this summer
back to that, the tide
returning to me

and that, there
finger-tipping those
chest hairs there, the

early morning and that
the crying then there
on his bedroom floor

and of that before
alone, with him there
the wood creaking

under that, the weight
sleepless then red-eyed
unprotected I

then before that
left him there, there
of that are before that

and are before
that before and of
that reminds me

and of that are before
that and of that are
before there and