Phantom Song: July
you start out somewhere & end
up in a strange bed listening to the moaning
in the walls, pretending there’s a trace
of hair-smell in the sheets
or that it could make you know him.
how to say thank you
for being gentle when my head is a great rock
lodged on distance’s shore & never known
kindness as anything more
than a leaky pure
the lived-in body can’t afford.
we hope valleys. we say nothing.
what a stir in the corner
of the eye what a heat-dark shadow.
fallow field, plowed & harrowed
but left unsown, unsung—
even somewhere else & very lonely I am singing you.
Phantom Song: June
glass on the gray coffee table & light came through it in three fragments
little glove, little empty handful of crow
was very much loving me then. hands velvet ghosts
coalescing in sleep. strips of white chiffon
placed over waves. when will I say
enough is. & not have it sound
like sadness flung against a mirror
if having had is present tense
imagining its past. this flippant proximity
its own bloodshadow sweetness. ripe red plum
for the sake of a plum, juice for the sake of lips
