325

Because if they meant it every time
there would never be a place so heavy
for remembering you
like under the only lamp post on the street
that dies dimmer each time you walk underneath

324

I never felt the tension in a
beaten old table with three legs

323

Don't make me know you
before I move out alone
someplace I want to go.

I couldn't help but hear you speak
to the doorman on the bottom floor.
I'd never have known he played the saxophone
and you were dressed like you had someplace to go.

322

I'll admit I was angry with you
for so quickly becoming so old.
You've had to look at me too
since we've been alone here,
but I hated you for your dirty fingernails
hunched shoulders and lines in your face
that I haven't seen on my own.

321

And later what she wore
would be a pile on the floor
next to your pile of books
and pile of sheets and pillows
in the dark.

But that is years from now
and though you know that it'll come,
for now, you look at her more on days she shows her knees
than when she shows her arms.

320

Staying still is only neutral
if you can't move.
Do you keep your feet planted
when the wind tempts you?

Well you struggled to stand
for so long with the ground
pushing up at your feet.

319

In the seat next to you
her legs were like tree branches.
She must be some kind of unattainable
when she looked like your sister
every time you thought to move
your hand from your thigh to hers.

318

Really we're all amputees
though you say you never though you'd be
I don't remember much of being small
when I'd lean over to scratch my ankle

317

I wouldn't have asked for it
but your permanence is comforting.
Alive, you were always changing
and after we burned the day I'd learn I loved another you,
all that was left to heat into dirt was everything you ever wrote.

316

Our shoulders have been touching since Michigan.
You tied your shoe in Illinois
in no special manner
and when one of us gets off the train
I will not think of you as gone.

315

Who decides what's only in our heads
Once my eyes were closed
it could have been a heated tire,

with my hand pinching my nose
a shot of thunder in the dark,

and with my ears covered it could have been
my own layer of wilderness
underneath the tops of trees
underneath the stars

314

All the furniture is nailed into the floor
and all the lamps and plants and clocks
glued down to desks and table tops

so when the sun began to rise and I finally
got home from you
it looked as if I'd never been away.

313

And did you really try avoiding it?
Or do you still wake up here every day?
If there's another option tell me why
birds sing to you in mornings
whether you're awake to hear it or not

312

I put a wall around you
and ran as far as I could before you got over

I ran too far,
there you weren't, along with the rest
of the people from where you and I lived.

Did I get too far, or go too long?
You knew the only place I could trap you
was inside my home.

311

There was always something I could say
until you told me I had
twelve hours to get to Singapore
from my upstairs apartment
in downtown New York

310

Nailing the cabinets back into the wall
the day after I ripped them out
and all the contents on the floor

was I think your best punishment so far.
When you hung up the phone I screamed your name-
I'll make sure when you get home it looks the same.

You can have the credit for how pretty the kitchen is
but not for the broken wood that once covered the floor.

309

In February I planned
to swim out into the ocean to show
everybody that I know that something's wrong with me

Then in the morning with the sea through the window
the room was cold
and I stayed in bed.

308

In the beginning, there were rows
of houses spaced evenly.
I watched the people coming and not asking
if there was a better way it could be.

307

I met you once at a wedding
of someone I once knew
to someone you once knew.

Where were you when you heard the news?
I couldn't make it to the funeral,
I hadn't seen them anyway
since I'd gotten a job and left the state.

By the look of it you've never been to this bus stop before
and neither have I
and someone I knew was once in love
with somebody you knew

306

For now, every mistake I made
was better than the right way.
I don't know what you'll do tomorrow
besides the things you do each day,
but for now you're sitting on my living room floor
even though you know that you could leave.

305

I look for the new neighbor
in the morning when I leave.
He used to be a dog walker
and that's all he ever told me.

304

Leave him thinking he could have been brighter,
he could have spent more time wanting you.
Let him lie awake trying to remember your voice
until he wouldn't recognize it if you wanted him to,
if he wanted to,
and he'll be listening for it until he's dead-
you could smooth the lines on his forehead.

303

You refused to leave until the apple was ripe.
I took a bite
and we sat down and by the time it was brown
I wasn't angry anymore.

I think in the kitchen you saw me slouch,
I think you saw me turn young
for a second when the wind blew in a smell
from the outside trees
through the window that had been jammed shut for years.

And instead you left when you looked at me
and realized you weren't in the room.

302

There is a day somewhere
when the rustic lighting in a corner bakery
turns me into exactly you need me to be.

My younger self now just a concept
I never cared to study,
I don't blame you for not waiting.

There is a moment, there's a place
that wouldn't be so bad for us
if we knew when and where it was.

301

I can only recall once
We were both living downtown
when we almost met in the day
but lunch in a cafe I'd heard about.
You've said midnight's your hour
since we were young,
when nights in parked cars
in late coffee houses
and on soft summer lawns
blend to meet us where we are.
It's hard to understand
that you go out to the grocery story
and I don't ever want to run into you there.

300

I knew him in the bar for years,
every few Saturdays and he was always there
when I came and when I left. At first I wouldn't tell him
about my life and my wife and everything
that happened upstairs, in the light
until nothing seemed as real as him and the bar.

When I was older I stopped speaking so much
and enjoyed his enjoying my company.
Never asking him where he lived
and never did he leave before I did.

Ten years of the man in the bar, and one day
I saw him at the park
sitting by the big fountain with a can of Coke
and when he saw me watching him he agreed to look away.

Saturday night at the bar I sat
and told him what my wife said.

299

If you can live in margins
in the backs of heavy throats,

kick up the furniture
where it may or may not float back down.

Live where nothing tells you what time the sun comes up
if you can eat with the table hovering overhead
without wondering why

298

Stand where I can see you
so I don't have to wonder

I'm not going to watch you
as long as you know that I could

Otherwise disturb my sleep
blending in with the dark air and the walls.

297

When my brother took my money
to pay for his cigarettes and medical bills
and someone to tell him why
his dreams took place in his own bedroom

I realized I could love you
for if I had to, I would,
and I do sometimes when you forget you're alive.
You weren't born alone.

296

You told me you could build a wall
of cardboard boxes I could sit upon

You were so sure that I
climbed up for yards
and watched you, proud of the work you'd done

So when it fell I wasn't sure
if I'd actually fallen

295

For how much they knew,
the furniture surprised them
as it didn't move across the floor
in swift heavy jolts
when somebody spoke

294

The uncle in the room
can't remember the joke he told last year.
Everyone wishes the kids were small again
as they politely decline dessert
and maybe they should have planned it
so that they would still be young
when a cane leaned against the wall
and later someone would have to fold
back up the table.

293

When the power went out
in the subway car,
they wished they hadn't been afraid
to get caught wondering
what faces match the breathing of the
people next to them
while they still could see

292

Somehow waking up in the same cell
for the same routine each day,
I'm not the one not changing-

as long as you remember not to visit,
not to show me that you don't speak the way
that I remember.

291

Framed by the doorway
holding all the things you decided
I didn't deserve,
You should have known I wouldn't beg.

You could have fallen
into the empty hall behind you
as I sat above you on the floor
refusing to know you better than
the words you wouldn't say.

290

The longer I knew you,
I knew that I let you
into my house and let my
air get into you until
it was my fault when
you stayed in one place

289

You pointed the gun at me
and promised it was a rose,
then closed your eyes and whispered
so only you could hear,
it's a rose.

And I watched you tremble blind
in the garden where roses were all around
and why wouldn't you be holding one?
and for a moment you did until
you held nothing, the garden had emptied,
and I'd never been there at all.

288

When there's rain there's nothing else
so that's where I meet you,
and no matter how hard we try
to believe the place we used to live
together is important,
I just can't seem to think
of anything but my heavy clothes.

287

Not that you asked,
but I didn't skip your wedding.
I didn't exist that day.
You don't have to believe that but you should,
I haven't always been alive.

I told you once I go to sleep,
well I admit I considered staying home.
But I wasn't the body laying next to my bed
as you followed a hand out of the church

286

For a moment then I thought I was a child,
with nothing on the street to tell me otherwise.
The dark of the sky
hadn't yet hit the trees
and all the people I didn't see
didn't notice that the leaves
were flattened to the ground
when it hadn't rained in days.

285

I tried not to have expectations.
When you came, you had aged
as I predicted, anyway.
Then what was there to look at for the rest of the night
when I'd already seen this face
a thousand times in the seat across from me
whenever the phone in the kitchen rang

Now in the same seat where I'd watch you smile at my eyes,
your movements never skip and your voice
fills the room with words I'd forgotten,
but had always belonged to you

284

It's in the morning
when I memorize the cracks in the walls
and the sun treats the tree
outside the window
the way it always has

The morning that I'm just glad you could fall in love,
even if I can only introduce myself.

283

The man across the street throws a party every night
to cover up the quiet that keeps him awake.
He listens from his upstairs room
to the last person to leave,
hoping they'll be curious enough
to open up the drawers.

282

I'd always gone to the pier.
Back then it was bigger,
and under my back.

I wanted to ask you if you'd ever been there

281

I was running in the mountains
when the world ended up ahead
and behind me and in me,
testing my bones,
but it never reached my skin,
and I never stopped moving

280

I was in the afternoon
that no one ever talks about;
no one's ever there

to say they love empty main roads,
when all the people who decided to put them there
are in the buildings they already have memorized.

279

It was winter
but I always it remember it like spring,
like the day I don't go to work
and there are no lines at the bank
and like the decadeless street when all the cars are gone,
like thinking only about the weather,

you walking next to me.
And seasons would change,
and people walk by,
and one night, with your face concealed,
you would tell me it was always winter to you.

278

Maybe I left the drawer open
and the books in that order

But they speak to me differently now
and never tell me why except
that I shouldn't be alone

277

They replaced the roof years ago,
trimmed the trees into new ones,
new curtains on the upstairs window,

but if I squint, I can only see
the chimney, not the roof or the curtains
or my own hands
separating the blinds

276

I had to move away, I know
that I gave you a key,
but one day while I was out, you came
to my house, moved things around.
And it would have been okay
had I not liked it better your way.

275

You didn't mean to get so old.
You left your books and clothes
on the street where time wouldn't move them,
make them follow and then you look at me,
like you're apologizing to the waitress for your father.

274

The room shook when I gulped,
and my fork rung when it hit the rim of the plate.
You crossed your legs,
unphased, chewing quietly as the night.
Blink twice if you lied, you do.
And the fork keeps on ringing.

273

A bird comes down from its world-

grids of rooftops and patches of leaves
to land on window sills,

sometimes catching a memory
of your mother reading you to sleep.

272

The ones who know live quietly
in spaces missing air
that aren't supposed to be there,
but he was gone before he ever got
to see his mistake

They know, and they don't
find each other in the woods
under designated trees
or in certain rooms in certain schools
on Sundays

They don't meet each other
in their subliminal worlds,
where one of two things is true,
and both of them mean
that your father must have lied to you

271

It's okay that you didn't change
the way I knew you would-

At least I don't remember what I was thinking
on the Golden Gate Bridge
after you told me you'd been there before

270

It was never just a flash of beige for the couch;
the ceiling below the underside of the table,
the rug not there, but its color tinting the windows,
and never any sound.

That's all I remember,
so when I thought I caught a glimpse of it,
I walked up to your door.
Your shoulders slumped a bit like mine,
and I stayed for a while.

269

You're harder to look at than any other
messed up kid who stopped
looking in the mirror.

I made you out of extra
weekend hours and childhood games
and things I heard my father say.

I wasn't really finished yet;
no one was supposed to see.

268

Once the smell of your pillowcase
was where I was,
it was real, and a lot
like all the other smells that now stick out to me.

Ordinary as a bed at night
and waking up in the morning.

267

You don't know maps,
you just take out your globe
and point
like you didn't really want to end up
where you were going.

The backseat voices blend with stinging air,
you hunch over the wheel.

266

I walked outside the bank
to see you talking to the man
who was taller than you.

265

I'll peel off your face and skin,
and your bones will still walk differently from mine,
and if we walk long enough without eyes
or anything to reach out for,
we'll find we end up in the same place
without one another,
feeling all the same things.

264

When I woke up in the backseat of your car,
and you'd turned the radio off,
I closed my eyes before you turned around
and I laid with the steady static of your breath
the rumble of the road

263

Would I have been easier to see
had I opened the front door,
or did my shadow underneath
look more like me
than I ever could

You must have thought I didn't know
you could hear my feet
pressing into the wooden floor
that ends at the door

262

I haven't tried to imagine the people you've met;
they come with faces that they don't have yet,
and I haven't met anyone in a very long time.
Do you remember the people who were once on your mind?

Tell me where you had to go to get rid of them,
and how you became so in control
that you can wash your hands
and think only of the water.

261

It rained the night you slept on her floor,
and I was still awake.
Staring at my wall where she handed you a blanket,
and you knew what to do.

You probably spoke to her mother
on the phone in the morning.
She must have made you breakfast and then had to go,
and you asked if you could be there when she got home.

260

The people I knew when I was young
must have forgotten all about each other
now, in separate states with the people
who they work with.

I didn't even recognize you until I heard your voice
that always used to go alone with a nudge on my shoulder,
the smell of the afternoon, and the image of my timid hands.

And I can feel it all now.
Say something you used to say
and maybe we'll get coffee soon,
so I can sit with how I used to feel
and discuss the job market.

259

Once my eyes got used to the dark,
you could have been any of the shapes that appeared.
Lifeless as my dresser,
quiet as a chair.

It scares me that you've seen it all before
between your house and your car
and the year you spent in Illinois
when you were just a boy.

258

I started believing in heaven
the year my uncle disappeared and while you were at sea,
I apologized to a chair at the table

but I forgot
which hand you used to cut your meat
and you'd never even eaten at my house
although I'd invited you once.

257

There's a time of the day
I've never been awake for.
First sign of light when the simple black shapes
of trees appear
out of the giant shadow above the roots.

The outside is wider and the air is cold
and the water tower looks
even further away
and the ground on which your building stands
is under a different sky.

256

You, the name that's bounced off every wall
that I close in on.

Who's smile I've watched closer than anything.
I watched it change and I
took the words you said
and wrapped them around me.

But I wanted to believe that everyone was once a child
and everybody loves their mothers
enough not to hurt anyone.

I'll come back in the summer
with my hair cut short
when all the lies you may not have told
may have come true anyway.

255

I wanted to build my house
on a patch of grass you've never seen.
You've already said the name out loud
of all the towns worth living in
to your boss to your brother
in a taxi in a bar.

The closest town to where
your car once broke down
and you finally got home.

Five years later, I'm there,
and the man at the drug store
sounds a bit like you.

254

No one was ever right about you.
She pushed you into a corner
put her hand on your shoulder and thought
she could teach you something about yourself.

She lifted her brow and turned to go home.
You never would find out where she lived
or what she did when she got there.

As she walked away,
her hair was too long
and you hated the way she swung her arm.

253

She didn't mean to keep secrets.
They were just thoughts
that shaped her face
and made her walk that way

next to him in the park.
Twenty years of grocery store days
taking turns washing dishes,
and sometimes he wondered
when her hands got so rough.

252

Don't stop in the diner to watch
the family of signs across the street
telling traffic who their savior is.

Keep driving- before you die,
you'll have someplace to be.

And you'll find that after rush hour
they don't go home, and before they go there
this morning, they weren't anywhere.

251

It's your job to control the music
playing in the airport terminal.
Something jazzy like the people
who can't hear anymore
used to listen to in bars
holding glasses in their hands.

I hear it between the syllables
sounding from the woman on the phone
and between periods of high heels
and rolling suitcases.

I brought nothing to do
but I like your taste.

You must have plain clothes
and a clean face.

250

In a city of a thousand lights
someone has to live alone.
The women at the hair salon
every month yell
"I promise you you'll find someone!"
over the sound of the hair dryer.

And maybe then they go home
to a house with the lights already on
or maybe the glass from the night before
is still there on the coffee table.

249

All the way up I thought
how different the ground must look
than I imagined.

But I'd gotten it right,
wearing the watch I'd bought somewhere
down in it.

I might even want to go back
where I can separate the trees
and look inside the windows of the houses
where people don't disappear beneath their roofs.

248

My arms are stiff
as if you never stopped touching them
and I smell you in my clothes.

They itch in my skin and you're
halfway across the world by now
and matting down my hair.

247

I never blamed you for the things
you did when I was asleep.
Just don't tell me what they are
and I won't wake up in the middle of the night
gasping at the empty side of the bed.

246

You touched her chin and told her
she did nothing wrong. She said
"I wish I was your sister,
so you'd love me by default" that she could

be your happy uncle who always brought
a new baseball cap,
or she could be the next door neighbor
who's early morning wave hello
became as familiar as your front stoop,
the handle on the door.

245

Stay in the spot where you were born
in the middle of nothing more than a field
and your house never more
than a shed

244

I want to bring you where I grew up.
The door I ran out of every morning,
the field who's every season I knew,
so I don't ever have to remember a time
without remembering you.

243

I walked for days
down a wild river with no name
past so many vines and damp alcoves
that I couldn't believe my watch still worked.

It all disappeared when I walked past you,
and nothing looked like home
except the sky, which at night
came down with the fog.

You grabbed me and looked me in the eye,
and the air in the world that never knew you
felt just like your breath.

242

Don't leave; you used to want to talk to them too.
They'll ask you where you're going
and you'll tell them somewhere cold.

Walk barefoot through the snow just so
your blanket will feel warmed
when you finally get home.

241

On top of smashing glass explosions
plays a string quartet,
a voice to a child,
a bird hums,
someone screams.

I don't know which way to go
to find it all
or if I'll want it still when I get there
so I turn the world dark
and walk in a straight line.

240

I'd been wondering where the door was to alone,
but I found it in the basement
of this narrow place you own.

White in a white room
with metal pieces on the floor.
Paint peeled around the hinges of the door.

I went upstairs to eat dinner at your table.

And I don't know what alone is like-
if it's changed since I was younger
when every beautiful storm that I inhaled
was just one of the people who I'd once been.

239

Whisper words on your bedroom floor.
Oh now, people know your name.
Look what you told them you could do.

You said you could make the pigeons sing,
make rifles dance together in a chorus line.

You did it all once and nobody saw.
Oh now, everyone's watching you.
Finish off your speech,
then walk off from the podium
out into the street
where the people know your name.

238

We were kids in the same city
and we went to the same parks,
and gripping large hands we looked
up at the same store windows,
neon letters on the delis,
tiny gardens in front of old brownstones.
We must have crossed the street
in the same crowd once before.

But I met you old
after I came home
from cramming miles of highway and sea
and fields of hills of amber leaves
up into my sleeve.

And you couldn't see it all fall out
when I let my hand down
to brush yours

237

The day before I met you
was the last day that the weather
made me happy, that the colors in the air
made me breathe differently.

And the thing that I thought about
was the next thing to do and I knew
that I'd have to go to the library
in a day or two.

236

Wake up tired from the lights
that blinded you in your sleep.

Go to bed heavy from carrying dust
that stuck to you as you walked on the street.

235

I could sleep somewhere else tonight,
but I'll still lie there with my knees
to my chest and the ticking black around me

234

At your reception, I come to understand
the tablecloth and the centerpiece
that you picked from a catalog
months ago.

233

Even you,
changed. I watch you so you wouldn't
but you did anyway.

You, the only thing left from the mountains-
the only think I brought back
from the highest that I've been.

As I watched the peaks whirl around me
you offered me some water
from your canteen.

232

When dirty laundry shares the bookshelf
and the books are on the floor,
the hallway to the front door out
inclines until it's too steep
and you can't walk and it's day.

People are at work. And you'll be here tomorrow too
and all the named that used to come to mind
far away and overused.

And it won't get you out of bed
but it'll help you go to sleep
that all you remember about your last
Christmas with your family
is your cold breath on the flowers
around their mailbox
and your niece on the piano in her velvet green dress.

231

The grown man on my wall
doesn't scare me anymore.
I still don't know what it's a shadow of,
I must have moved the furniture.

But I hope it never goes away.
No face to change when I do anything.
And even if he had a mouth,
I don't think he'd say a word.

230

I've either loved you forever
or never at all,
but always you were there
in every memory of every
day I was alone or I was
on a plane back home.

229

As if you were the only thing that changed.
Not the seasons or the year
or what I do each day.

Just you, so I'm here
in case you change back.

I wouldn't want to miss another spring
like the one when I used to pass you
every morning on the stairs.

228

You can whisper many thing
sitting in the pew.
While my third cousin gets married,
you tell me what to do

about the man who's lived here for years
who I just introduced to you.
You both wear the same watch,
and you're truths can't all be true
but neither of you lie.

I love you but don't follow me
to the tree than can be seen
but hasn't been.

227

You couldn't avoid mirrors,
so now you won't look away from them.
Afraid you'll be surprised
when you look back at it
to finally notice your face has thinned,
the creases between your mouth and your chin.

Nothing changes in a second.
In the mirror, your skin stays on your bones.

226

When you step onto the moon,
I bet you look first at the earth
and the blue is as still as the green.

Where somewhere there's a city,
there's a building,
there's me

And the sky is there,
but I'm looking down
at the sock you left lying on my floor
and I close the windows to worry about
where you've been since you left it there.

225

He says he's going to be an astronaut
and shrink into a speck of dust.
Landing on every book he forgot,
and every kitchen appliance that hasn't been touched,
since her and her bucket of reasons
filled themselves with space.

224

You said I could keep you,
but only if I sit in front of your door
and make sure you don't leave.

But I didn't want to bring you
to the creek in my old neighborhood
to the Spanish steps,
or to my living room.

223

Then when you finally touched my hand,
I watched us from a park bench
taking notes and holding on
to the few words I could hear.

Following us home,
I hid by the trees
and when I watched us go inside
there was only one of me
and by the lamp I could see
every line around your eyes

222

First we shoot into the sky
and hope you'll run
because we'll kill you if we see you
and have to love you even more.

And I loved you when you ran out that back door
with your bare belt, kicking dirt
like a midday child
too far for me to see your face
when you stepped wide to look at me.

221

And I threw out the music box
when I threw out the old ticket stubs,
books I already read

Not because I'm angry with you
for leaving me with it,
but because it took up too much space

It's always had the same spot on the dresser,
but I bought a new dresser,
and it smells like a department store.

220

I tried not to want to go the moon
when it followed me home at night.

Now a whole in the roof is there
so I can watch the cold smoke drift
from where I lie.

I watch it detach from the sky
and fall, rolling on my rug.

I reach and my hand goes through it
like a light projection before the screen
and I fall asleep there
on the floor with the air on my back.

219

Cloudy morning and the bit of light
that tints the surface of your sheets
is sweeter.

Time will start moving when you do
or when the birds stop their singing.
The rest of the rooms in your house will wait
for the clouds to clear
or the rain to come.

218

Once a year in April you sing the song
who's words you never understood
and how long do you think it took
to be written?

But you sing it every year
waiting between phrases as your guests
sit around the table and mouth it
to their plates

And between phrases
you close your eyes and the words
are on wires that tickle your neck as your guests
move their mouths

217

We can't keep sitting in the living room
where there was never anything to notice
or anything to say,
and I can't stay.

If we drive until the car breaks down
the tow truck that comes will seem
as if it floated down from nowhere.

We'll stand on the side
of the road we'll never know as light
and you'll have a jacket in your trunk.

216

It comes to you in a drawing of a cottage on a river
on the hotel walls-

In a man with a beard
and a bandana at the bar in the diner.

The rust smell that blows through
the window of the car before rain.

It comes to you and forgets about itself
to the furniture that knows you,
but won't move unless you tell it to.

215

I was tired too, but I hung the new paintings
when you told me you would come.
It's better though, I enjoy them more
than you would anyhow.

214

I was told about the dent in your car
but I didn't look
You'd still have met me at a free concert at the park

213

Everybody smiles ten years later
when they see each other in a city street

Pictures of the people who are important now
stashed in their wallets in their pockets in their
brown leather bags

Even you'll smile at me
then when I don't need it anymore

I look up when I hear the door,
but you just drop off your things and go back out it again.

212

You live at a rest stop along the highway.
No one watched your house
get built.

And the books about the people
who no one understands
are never about you.

At night the workers at the gas station
drive by on their way home
to their wives.

211

When I'm lucky I run into myself
on the street. She looks older in
different clothes from the ones
I fell asleep in.

She looks more or less like the others
on the street and her voice
doesn't ring in my ears.

I can't hear what she's thinking
and she stops to scratch her ankle with
the bottom of her other shoe.

The first thing when I wake up
where you've never been, I roll over
to the other side that's also mine.

210

When I got home in the morning
the lights were still on in the living room.
You car was in the driveway
and I've never seen a cab around here.

It's like you knew I hadn't brought you
wherever it was I went
the night before.

209

I don't say much when I come with you
to the supermarket but you
like it when I'm there and I
sometimes like it too

The bright lights off the yellow tiles
and sounds of only high pitched wheels

I guess it gets done faster when I'm pushing
the cart but then you stop
and laugh at the cover of a magazine.
A celebrity mugshot or something and I can see you
looking at me

208

Come with me under the leaves
of the trees on the mountains
you can see from the highway.

No one's going to tell us how to get there,
we'll just have to park the car
and walk.

There's no reason to go except
there's not reason to go
and that the people on the highway
are wondering what's in there.

207

After America nothing else
was left. You can discover
a handsome creek as you hike through the woods-
a quaint street fair in the town
that you were passing through. Your great grandmother's
immigration papers. A smile on a child.

But they took the last continent. The last secret
piece of earth. The rest of what was left
for us by whatever left us things.

So let's attach some wires and mix
some chemicals and see what happens
when we love our kids.

Take what we make and sit on a couch
with a map of the world and our
bodies and wonder where to look next.

206

Go on back to Michigan
where at least I don't have to see
the streets and fields and cornered houses
and markets and minds with pretty blouses

I've never been there, I'll never go.
Watch you in the walls that I collected
until I forget you like an old mosquito bite

205

We followed out bags into the dim lit
hotel room. Dropping thing
on the surfaces and checking the view-
a parking lot. Sleep now on the road in the morning.

A hard red armchair smells of the most basic
cleaning products. You say, I wonder who's
sat here before. Where do you think they are now?

I'm in bed. I won't look, I know
they don't think about being here.

204

Everywhere I go I'm in your room
You haven't come back since,
not even to sleep

I open the door and the rest of the house isn't there,
just white empty space past the wooden frame

And I lie in your bed, my head
resting where your shoulder was
and isn't anymore

So I run further, crossing oceans,
lying in fields miles wide

But still the sky sinks down to become
your ceiling and my arm
reaches for your silver watch
that you left on the night stand

203

All the things that don't happen-
a man riding a camel between the
strip malls where I get my food and soap,
the girl who never stays home at night hammering a roof,
you at my front door

And the things that do-
I walk from the train to my car

And the things that are-
the ivory globe on my bookshelf
your car in your driveway
street signs and traffic lights
and the freckle on your cheek

202

You've seen where I live
across from the school,
you used to drive me home sometimes.

Not far from you,
you just pass a few
main roads, the pond, the library and
the fire station.

And you've got a car, I know,
and I've told you when I'm home.

One day you, unexpectedly,
at my door in the afternoon
and then the sky starts dripping candle wax
while a boat surfaces on the road.

201

You read the newspapers
and see all the movies first
and every book I read
you gave away years ago.

But you fell asleep before the rain
and woke up after it dried

As I sat under a lamp
and listened to it
and you'll never know it was there.

200

People I know sometimes talk
to each other about how I never have
anyone over even though
my apartment is so close by.
I let you in

and the floor squeaked differently,
deeper, louder and I asked you
if you wanted to look around.
I thought I could show you my
record collection but you didn't answer me,
just scanned the hall then closed your eyes
and used my back to push closed
the front door.

199

You run your fingers down the bark of a tree
I feel it on my skin
and my back is stiff

You could bump over my ribs
like railroad tracks
and over the holes in my knees
the ones that I see
when I'm walking looking toward the ground

My face is whatever's behind me
when your face touches my shoulder

198

All day and night I drag along my single bed
dressed in a flowered comforter and a
ragged bookshelf and drawers with
dolls and pencils and some bracelets I made
as a kid at summer camp.

I drag it all on the rope
that was tied around my waste. Come inside,
see the books i never returned
the old music box and the stain on the rug.

Kiss my lips, then grab a few drawers and a
shelf or two. They won't feel so heavy to you.

197

You've never been in my head and I
didn't ever tell you everything
like why I didn't go to my aunt's funeral or everything
in my house I let him touch or what he said
and when he did

But when I'd see you the next day
for lunch at the deli between our
two houses with the
checkered table and the waiter who likes us,

you'd watch me knock around
the salt and pepper shakers as I
told you what I could

All I remember from when I was a kid
are the things I did
and never the things I thought.

196

There's an old man down the street
he sits in his garage in a picnic chair
hands gripping its arms

and although all day he watches
he won't quite look at you when you go by

go in through his back door
find a letter telling why
she left him and took the best
bottle of wine

walk by the next day
he's in a picnic chair
and he won't look at you

195

A mile of people
sitting lying elbows on their knees
babies on their laps
guitars on their straps

the ones closest to the road
just specks of color like a big quilt
to those on the other side

there's a city on the farm
and nobody speaks

watching a man on fire get down on his knees
"Nobody touch me"
as the drummer behind him slowly lifts his hands
and lets the air ring

194

Sky black, ground white.
The line between them sharp and flat.
It's a desert of sorts and the people walk in clans
carrying houses on their backs.

The day is just as black as night.
Ground so white it hurts their eyes.
The people walk toward the sky and don't get any closer.

A child will ask, why are we going?
and his hunched over mother will drop her bags
and take the tiny knife from his calloused hands

and say, someone lives in the dark and can't be seen,
but he tells us that someday if we keep walking,
we'll go to someplace where colors change
after a little while.

193

Touching mouths
dry throats
their hands reach behind them
for a telephone or a candle or a stairway banister

They know each other's faces but their eyes are closed.
So later when he takes her home
all she remembers is his cracked lips
her dry throat.

192

You were asleep hours ago
I've watched you from my desk across the room,
lamplit
in case I decide to use it.

I hold a pencil to my throat
I hate it when you go to sleep.
You do it so early
so when the sky gets heavy and the roof caves in
I hold it up with both my hands
over the bed where you lie still as the sea.

191

All you can do is whisper into my neck
I can't hear you over the falling town
I can't feel your breath

190

Between pages in books I read on the train
bites I take out of a peach
turns I make before I go to sleep

I watch us from behind a building
my umbrella rolling in the shiny sidewalk
the golden dog fur drooping with rain
your hand on a wall
your hand on my face

There on the corner
in between bites
my stomach drops

The umbrella the dog
your hand on the wall
the building I hid behind gets father and farther

189

No one moves into or leaves our town
Every wind blown leaf hits a wall at its edges
Words yelled in square kitchens
seep out from underneath front doors
into the rocky river.

And on the main road is a tree
with satin flowers tied to it
where his car wrapped around.
All the lovely people's cries
are engulfed by sticky air
and rain back down at the end of the day.

But they stay
for the winter when the words freeze with the river
and snow polishes the branches
and finds the crevices of pretend flowers
and the crisp dry air coats their heavy eyes.

188

Where shiny black suits
and muddy boats and overalls
meet, in the tundra
where both lose to the cold
can't lift their legs out of the snow

187

Sorry I can't leave New York
It's not because I grew up here-
I've seen enough cars parked in front
of identical houses to know
it's okay to go

It's the seasons
and how every summer every beautiful day
perfect for the beach but my mind blanks on names

I can think "at least the cold comes soon"
and when it does, everyone will be inside.

186

The checkered tables at the diner
stand unreplaced.
The one we always sat at
that would wobble every time you
put your elbows on it.
The same spiky haired waitress
who'll always talk about the government.

You're still the only one who knows
how I used to feel about my parents
and that in the middle of the night I used
to lie down in the middle of the road.

The shell you found me at the beach
would look just the way it did
if I took it out of the shoebox
in the middle of the stack.

185

The child who scolds the table leg
the way his father scolds him
one hand on the doorway
the other on his neck

184

Hello again,
you're stripped naked in his house
and he's not here.

I miss you when you used to think about God
until you might as well have been one
sitting up there on your cloud
deciding the fates of everyone who believed in you- who?

When did you hit the ground?
You floated down like a weak balloon.
It's happy here where everybody touches you
and all you have to think about is the fingers
on your neck.

183

Alaska changed when I got there
but I didn't

I let me go into the snow
and left me there and took me away.
So what, I'd never seen snow.
I'd never seen the inside
of the apartment upstairs, either,
until the lights went out and I needed
to borrow a candle.

I don't want to close my eyes
but otherwise I drip
onto everything I touch

182

Black silhouettes of humble trees lay flat
against the hazy sky.
Leaves in place,
moist summer air sticks to roofs of sleeping houses.
A newspaper page like a rock in the street.

It’s a stadium for the crickets
It’s a concert arena
They play a symphony for the trees

Marble clouds like fish
frozen in water hear

their crescendos and wave of tings
They’re dancing in their streets
They call to children in their crowds
They’re in mobs looting apartments
They’re throwing streamers making love

in leaves of steel.
And the street lights dim but never flicker
as the only car all night goes by
with its windows up.

181

some 1 pms
some lunch breakers meet
in the shady parts of parks
yelling questions
so short,
words so simple,

that no one knows to look in the back room of a bar
or a frozen cave a bird once flew over

world people time god life death why

they yell their questions to be heard
over all the others
different people each 1 pm
though some have come before
but no one knows who they are
having already been there
they feel no more experienced with the art
of pointing flashlights at the sky

180

One long road and a few turns away
they come down the carpeted stairs
pouring coffee as the sun rises
beside the jar they always filled with butterscotch.

I can't imagine it's there anymore,
I think it was just for me and I tried
a couple of times to visit in the afternoons.

The door's always open when I go by but I keep going.
They used to talk to him every day
over the fence between their backyards
so I lost them too so I keep going.

179

You lived in my neighborhood before
I did.
You already knew about the secret alleyway
and why Mrs. Lester has a brick wall around her yard-
I didn't even know that.

I can barely find my way out of your neighborhood.
The streets all curve and every house is the same
to me, except for yours.

Before I lived here you buried your baseball cap
in the park around the block that I walk by every day.
I don't think you think about it much anymore.

178

They left me all broken
on the edge of the stream,
half my face in the water.

Unable to move I decided
to believe in heaven again like I did
when I was a little kid.

No one's here to prove me wrong
and I've missed my parents lately-
they still seem alive enough to be somewhere waiting for me.

Lying face down in the wet rocks
will be much more bearable
if I'm up there or somewhere
being reminded of their faces.

177

Two soldiers
carrying all of the same things
guns canteens backpacks shells extra socks a bible

At night they swat at flies
as one describes his last night
with his girl describes until the Other
knows him better than she can
anymore just by the way he talks about her eyes

One soldier hid
in the thistle brush when they raided
the village with his rifle to his chest his knees
sinking into the ground while the Other
aimed steadily
making each bullet a kill

Because they want someday for all children
to come home from climbing trees
and for all the news the paper gives us
to be that everywhere is peace

176

I come home to tell you where I went that year
when I left you while you were showering, left no note.
When I came back you were in your armchair with a beer.

You hadn’t ever seen me with a beard.
I didn’t know whether to take off my coat.
I’d just come to tell you where I went that year.

I said hello loud enough so you could hear.
I thought you’d ask me why I never wrote.
You just sat in your armchair and offered me a beer.

Now every time I make my way back here,
The words wait like a marble in my throat.
I want to tell you where I went that year.

But now even to me it is unclear-
all I remember well is that deer on the side of the road.
So I just watch you in your armchair with your beer.

Sometimes when I’m home you talk about the pier,
how you used to take me out in your old boat.
When I came home to tell you where I went that year,
you just sat there in your armchair with a beer.

175

I'm sorry I didn't come to the wedding.
I bet your dress was beautiful.
I imagine the chatter in the lobby
of the hotel must have been pretty loud.

The day of your wedding I woke up early.
I made pancakes in the dark.
Then I sat on the tile floor with the plate on my lap.
I sat there until the sun burned by eyes.

Then when your wedding started I unplugged the phone,
so I could stop waiting for someone to call.
I wouldn't have picked up
but I thought someone might call.

Anyway I hope
you and your groom have a nice honeymoon.
I'll see you the next time
you take out a book.

174

It is winter. I am cooking and I don't
know where you are. And every time
I hear a car you still don't live
around here. I want to tell you
that I'm cooking your favorite soup.
I want to tell you that I'm on the roof
but you still don't live around here.

173

Everyone's saying it doesn't matter what they think
It's there in the books
and all the happy people's stories
of why they smile so much.

But every time I'm on the roof
and the only car that goes by won't see me,
I climb back through the window
and go back to sleep.

172

Behind my mother in her car
her hand would always reach for the song
by a woman with a voice like mountains.

Maybe the song was called mountains or
it was playing as we drove through mountains
but now I've learned to walk
and mountains sound like her.

It took my mother all her life to like that song.
From the back seat of her car I heard the mountains
where she'd been before.

171

There, in the places we forgot to put roads
are the ones who aren't born
who might have dug a hole in their backyards
or made a young girl cry into rubble of bedsheets
because he went to war
or she didn't go to class that day
or because she did

Now they sleep where they cook
and they stay in one place
in a clearing
in the woods
As we drive back because we forgot our keys
and let the phone ring because we know who it is
they live with each other without learning their names

170

My father clears his throat
and crosses his legs.
The wrinkles on his forehead pointed down

Only noise from his newspaper pages.
Still he doesn’t hear me ask to pass the bread

Sometimes he talks to himself
like I’m not in the next room

I put my plate in the bottom of the sink
and leave the house alone with him

When I get home he’ll be tossing
in his sleep,
the only place where he has to see

169

We came here alone and we’ll leave alone.
Our own voice the only one there ever was
the only one the cobblestones will listen to.

That’s when we own a world,
filled with only the buildings and the forests we’ve seen

and we made everything.
Each swollen brick reminds us of our own fatigue.
Each hanging gutter of our own mistakes.

We never know what happened to that childhood friend-
could’ve had four daughters and a dog.
Now them and the lovers and the mothers who weep
are so far away they’re all the same:
black and white faces coming off in the rain.

168

It starts out we’re in your car
on the road with the eyeglass store
talking about what’s on the radio
and I can make you laugh

We’re walking on the beach
And I don’t remember parking
The wind’s in my hair and so is your hand
We’re standing sitting our shoulders touch I’m facing you

We’re in a rowboat in the ocean
And there isn’t any land but the sky is closer than we’ve ever seen
Your voice is mine and it says
That I’m the only face you know

We’re in the dark
and my footsteps don’t make any sound
and I can’t move my mouth
I feel around I don’t feel anything

167

there’s just one place that waits for me
when I leave. everywhere else is stepped sat on touched
by stranger skin like wax. little trinkets will wander in and I close
the door behind them and once they’re on a shelf
they were always on the shelf and there’s nowhere else
because I got it right the first time.

it’s where everything that had a use doesn’t have
one anymore because switches aren’t
switched and rusty amber perfume bottles
are almost full. and every crinkled paper is written on all over
as if one day they’ll go off
to see the world and maybe bring back some of the people they find.

166

We couldn’t speak when I was born
a hundred a thousand years ago,
the whimpering body I started from
and I can’t speak to you now

Somewhere between there were talks in living rooms
from which I only remember a sentence or two
and always the smell of buttered toast and old furniture

If we ever meet again it’ll be
in a place without corners or colors
or cars

You’ll look the way I remember you-
in your khaki pants,
graying hair and lines around your eyes,
a pen in your shirt pocket

I’ll have had two lovers
who maybe you’d have liked,
the night I got lost,
the house with arched doorways
in the city I found
all sinking in my eyes

But you’ll hug me like you would
and say you miss my birthday cards-

And then I’m back on the sidewalk
waiting for the light to turn green
and someone turns left into a gas station.

165

You inhabited my skin
until every inch was rough
until everything I touched-
I felt less than before.

When I'm rid of you,
the rain will come and flow right through me.
It'll come down in sheets of silk
and inches away through the waterfall
your face will be a blur, then fade.

164

Of course there's nothing wrong with you-
I look away when you tear up the curtains
and I don't sew them back up
until I can't bear the sun and I've forgotten
how they got on the floor.

You'll just sit with it burning in your eyes
as you tell me about the river you saw.
I'll smile because I saw it from higher
and tell you I wish I was there with you.

163

It's not your fault your face got old
or that you replaced that shirt in all the pictures
from when I used to see you every morning.
I'll lean on one side of the door
and you'll lean on the other.

Tap me a song and we can hum
until we can't hear our own voice anymore
and one of the people you once were
turns me back to one of the people I've been.

162

Tied up to the dining room chair,
eyelids pried up, I still won't see you eating fast,
your coat hanging off the arm of the chair

as rain taps the rood
and there's nothing outside.

I'll see again in the morning
when you yawn down the stairs
and thank me for the coffee
I made for you last night.

161

Then finally we were upside down.
I didn't know where you were
but you were against me.

And I think for a second I disappeared
because I can't remember what happened
between your breath and your hand.

160

The day after the funeral
she curled up on the ground
and said "Now the only one who loves me
loves everything"

So she went where blades of grass
still stood up tall
and climbed the tree
that only she could see

159

I gave you everything that makes me happy
and you put them in boxes
in your garage

So now when I sneak into it through the back door
to get them from the shelves
to look at what's inside
for just a little while,

I can hear you through the wall
The floor creaks with your feet
and then you mumble, tenderly.

158

Jim around the corner goes
places no one takes pictures of
and shoots people who's faces he'll never see
with home's he'll never see

Dan across the street
buys the paper
reads the numbers
then writes some on a check
for the electrical

157

All I know is I was there with you,
at some place I'll never see

Somewhere you were walked by an abandoned old theater,
then sat down to think of me.

156

You call me when the food is done
to come sit at the table,
tell me about a guy at work
who brings his own microwave.

Then come tings of forks on plates.
It becomes the room and goes away.
I wait for the moment when you wipe your mouth
and say something to yourself.

"Hi it's me I got your call-"
then you pick up your own plate
put it in the sink
and brush my chair on your way out.

And I always forget to listen
to where you go from there.
Always wondering if you'd hear me
if I asked who you were talking to.

155

Anyone could have been the last one left
so it didn't make me special

I always thought it would be me,
but I guess everyone does

Because the buildings disappear
when no one's looking at them

So all I had to do was
go to sleep.

154

And when it rains
the world becomes streaks of lights
floating in a foggy lake

from the inside of a train,
I turn it into snow
and the door opens for you

while the trains still moves.
You come and sit down next to me,
say you were wandering all night

looking for me.
I don't know where you really are right now,
but I'm still smiling between my hood
as I walk off the train and make the run
to my car.

153

The girl on the corner
who always yelled
was never the kind
to disappear
and never be found

three days later,
half buried in the ground.

So when the picture of her
with a birthday hat
got into the local news,
her hair was so curly,
we wondered how they knew.

152

Waste up out my window,
I own this view. No one watches cars here
like I do.

I know where the sirens are
going before I hear them speeding up

Leaning back into the shadows of my roof
before anyone sees me
if they can.

But I watch them drive into the dead end
and quietly turn around.

151

You may never know it
but I've taken slips of paper
with all the things you've ever said to me
scribbled without haste

and scattered them like ashes
sprinkling them out car windows
tossing them into the wind

of everywhere I've been
since I first saw you at the restaurant
that's a movie theater now

150

I think if there weren't so many of you
the way you're standing would be something special.
You're not a thin man,
but you stand like a bird.
Who taught you to keep your knees together like that?

I don't know if I've seen it before,
but you're wearing the clothes that people wear
so no one really cares.

Today they saw a tightrope walker
and she walked it with her hands.

149

I sit by trees from your backyard that you sometimes bring to me
Paper leaves crumbling beneath my feet
I looks between boulders that look out to the sea
I see your city glow and dim but your city cannot see me

There might not be anyone there but you say there is so there must be
The water won't let me here the noises from across the sea,
the silent town where you say hello to neighbors,
and feel plants lean over and touch your leg

You wake up you brush your teeth
And even though there's no one who touches your hand each day
you say there is so there must be

I meet you in the ocean
You can see it from your window
When I try to tell you secrets you explain the sky to me
When you're not there I do not speak

You say you'd bring me back with you but you like me how I am
You're tired from voices but you have to go back
You say people wonder where you are

148

Well you woke up today and you were me.
And you didn't look up
at what you never stop seeing,
the lamp that told you it can always turn back on
so it's okay you can go to sleep.

And we probably came down the same streets,
but you came to dance to the fountain sounds
for people who came without pockets or bags.

Then you sit on the other end of the bench
to change your shoes
and pull out something to read.

147

You got a call when I was born,
answered the phone in your living room
with the musty vanilla carpet.
The same smell that's in your clothes.

Now we're sitting here
on the plastic covered sofa.
They left us for the kitchen,
where your legs won't go anymore.

Do you wish we'd spoken more?

How do you do?
Fine, thank you.

And voices in the kitchen swim away.

146

I could abandon this house,
full of furniture that you leaned on,
but my clothes remember you too

I don't want to get rid of them
I wish I wanted to get rid of you

145

The afternoon is funny in the way
that you can sit in it
under an umbrella
around the table in your backyard
telling your vacation stories
laughing at comments you'll soon forget

all the while knowing
the darkest winter will come
maybe in a few years
ad you'll be huddled in the snow
wondering who here hated you
enough for clouds to be covering the only moon

144

Glance at me
in a room of moving yelling bodies.
Decide, yeah, it's okay I'm here-
but you're not so sure about me anymore.
I'm making noise I'm on the floor,
I look around to see what I've done.

Then turn back into your circle,
remember what it is you do.

It's not your fault that you don't know
that time didn't make me this way
but just you, being alive.

That you were there
when I went on that trip
that I almost told you about.

143

I walked into
piles of book on my bed
so I curled up on the floor
clutching the blanket that hung off

Because what's there to do
when I want nothing from you
but to be able to stand on your stoop
ring your doorbell
and hear your shoes pound down the steps

142

Let's sit on the train
and decide the skinny lady's
coffee cup
says nothing about what she did
the first day she woke up
lying sideways across the bed,
knowing for sure the curtains were still closed
downstairs

So we can scratch our ankles
and skip to the comics
feeling heavy eyes around us,
and then never be seen again.

141

And sometimes God leaves
a sleeping dog on your stoop

Sorry it got so cold out there-
just take him for a walk

He didn't notice the bombs that fell
even when no one wanted them to

140

We've sat politely in the living room
knees together, backs straight
staring at each other for thirty years or so

I watched your face drop
You watched my hair grow long
We've forgotten to wonder how old
the kids have grown

You finally got up for a glass of water
You'd never walked that way before
I didn't know you anymore

Not even when I turned my head
to see the half of the room
that you understand

139

I know that face well
Your mouth to the side
like when you were little
gripping your father's leg
drowning in a crowd of cocktail dresses

Bones cast shadows on your face
I don't remember your arms this thin
But the freckles are all the same
The cluster on your wrist

So tell me what you thought about
when you saw
the crack of light
in the afternoon

I forget sometimes that you were there
with me, next to puddles in the parking lot
when we finally got what we wanted
and didn't want it anymore.

138

You were never all that great, I guess
but you could put the bait on the hook,
and that was enough for me.

Oh, you don't change.
We just don't fish anymore.
When suddenly everyone could do something
and spoke about it at those work parties
to people who knew
they'd walk away soon to get a drink.

137

There was a drawer open
but I fell asleep anyway.
I didn't think I could do that

Now clothes stick out of the dresser,
and shoes guard the door,
but as long as it's all the same

Messy as my hair when I'm finally asleep.
I wonder how you look in the day

Let's skip to the part
when I haven't seen you in a while,
and we remember it all the same

136

The rest of the world I haven't seen
is not going to be enough
as long as the people
still walk in streets,
all the flat faces going by

I thought maybe we could all live
in the sky
wake up when the sun is gone
so we don't need to know
who's wrist we grabbed

I thought maybe I could live in the air
but when we got arrived, I'd already been up there

135

How average airplanes have become
They're not the first things
to fly, we say

Be lucky, be born
when nobody's looking
Then find your way out
of the woods, someday

134

I thought at least
if the sink wasn't fixed
it would be broken another way-
spurting out orange juice and plaster
on the floor
next to the skid marks
of yesterday's cry

I looked for you under mountains
of rocks
and I haven't moved an inch

133

Should I be disappointed
I was wrong about most of it
but I don't mind

Some of every even-timed hour
for half a life or so
gone to watching real words and tongues
dance around in space
and I don't mind

132

Our backs face each other
and our voices are the walls
the corners of our faces

And we both want to be the one
to leave straight from here to California
thinking only of the next
city on the map

131

I painted the birds and the skies and the trees
and somehow was left the same.

130

Set your lovers aside

If they care as much
as they said they would,
on the telephone where they were all alone
they'll stay home and make dinner on their own

Go to the dancers
from the street
You never spoke a word
They'll grab your hands
and be the ones you need
for them to be

129

And through the crowds
there are people who
I'm going to know longer than you

Yeah, in a year or two, maybe
you'll be in a country
I haven't seen
and you won't see me in
any of the houses from the plane

And I love how much
I want you to be up there
soon
getting the window seat you wanted
finding nothing in the speckled ground
that you're sad to leave behind

128

It's so easy to know you
How are you today?
Yeah, I could have done better
but your face doesn't change

When the sky moves over
and the houses fall down
and the people can't see
and the streets rearrange

You're not going to look for me
before the dark turns you
into a lawyer or a family
but you'll never get around
to buying a new keychain

127

What's worse than what you said
to me
is you haven't changed
since yesterday

in the diner
where we made fun of each others' sweaters
holding each others' troubles
in our pockets for a while

Or since years ago
when we drove
and your jokes
were even better than mine

126

Years must be different
when you're going somewhere

Well I was here the last time
it was now
and I was probably sitting
down
on this chair

My wrists a little thinner
Eyes a little further apart
The watermelon picture
not yet leaning behind the stove

And my plant grew better then
but I don't care to try again
Spring, roll into Saturday
and Tuesday into a brown paper bag

125

All the people who say
my dark blue luggage
lurking down the belt

all the people who checked it
for the ribbon or sticker they'd left
so that could pick it out

All the people who let it pass
with no reason to wonder
where it'll go

All the people who didn't know
it would stay open on my bedroom floor
on top of a candy wrapper
until the snow came and I decided to unpack

124

The at least
is we won't be this way forever.
Miss your train all you want-
the next one comes in five minutes.
You may spend it better here
watching the couple carrying bird cages
and holding hands in an unprofound love

Well isn't it exciting
to know that this happens every year
and buries beneath your fingernails
where you grow used to seeing them
every time you remember your hands

123

Hundreds of people
are here to see me.

I didn't do anything all that grand
Well you blend in just fine.

Come sit with me in my backyard
when everyone else is gone.

122

It's too hot to sleep upstairs
The walls sweat off their paint
and it hangs in the air

And the first floor is too cold
It finds any inch of uncovered skin
wraps around it, molds

And you know that it'll be that way
so you sit there in your car
glaring at the key in the ignition
waiting to be told

121

The people who go through their mail
when they get home
had no reason to wonder
whether I'd get on a train, only alone,
and get off in different lighting
with none of the people
who were there when I got on

And I didn't,
but I could have-
so maybe they're still wrong
when they tell me you're no good
because
of course you are

120

How do you stop when you don't want to
Yeah, they'll get you in the end
but who's looking

You'll be different by then-
it's someone else's problem

Should you stick your naked arm
into a beehive
The world stands in Times Square
and answers in unison

as the doctor lights a cigarette
and edges through the crowd
smirking at you when he gets out

he's been alone in a city too

119

I can't quite work it out-
which shirt you'll be wearing
Am I up to your eyes? To your nose?

And where we'll be
Has your voice changed at all?
And what it'll say

Because the letters didn't mention
whether you'd just gotten back
from the girl you met
in an ordinary way
or you'd just put on
a fresh pair of socks

118

Maybe one day with a cup of coffee
and a photo album on my lap
I'll say that I was too naive
to see that none of it really mattered

But I'll be wrong,
laughing at the girl
sprawled out on her bedroom floor
watching herself in the skylight

I'll pass stories around the table
to people who don't know me now
though it won't be funny then either

117

I'm lying as still as I can
on the rough carpet floor
but it's too hard to stop time
when the wind keeps coming
through the walls
throwing papers off their piles
scattering them around

116

They're right over the wall

With my eyes closed I'd think
I could grab their hands,
be pulled up to surface
into the clamor of Sunday afternoon

Up, where the walls are miles of mountains
but without a gate to be guarded
by the boy who lives downstairs
and always holds the door

115

I keep drawing the time
when you lived two towns away
and would sometimes put your window down
when you caught me walking to work.

The picture keeps changing
to tell me that it mattered.

114

Nobody walked in the city today
Tinted windows rolled by
on the usual cars
and dark apartments slept
stories high

As I lead a parade down the musky main road
creatures dance all around me
shaking tree branches
making leaves rain on my shoulders

But I can hear my breath
coming from the sky
whispering into the windows
of the empty cafe crosstown

113

Somehow I know how your hand would feel-
the same way the moon would look up close
It reaches through my window
and spreads out across the walls

112

When you stared at the spot
on the wall behind me
and told it you were leaving here
because you wanted to,
I thought you meant now.

But I still see your little car
parked in your driveway
on the way to work each day-

It never occurred to you
that I'd look for it there?
Then I don't want to change your mind.

Still, I hold my breath
as I turn onto your street.

111

The sky was so beautiful today
when I said to you what I say to me
every hour I'm awake.

You, who I was important to.

But even you looked up
at the sun outlining the clouds
before getting into your car
and backing out onto the road.

110

Walk with my down the old railroad tracks
deep in the now useless woods,
through the crowds of statues I've been building all along
of the bank teller when I was young,
and the lady in the elevator who won't look at me,
and my mother and my father ,
and the teacher who once called home.
Cold and quiet, they watch us solemnly.

109

Hundreds of birds create a symphony
rocking back and forth above our heads
as newspaper pages lie on the street
and the trees are frozen still

108

You look old and happy
Where've you been so long?

Throw your keys on the table
and kick off your shoes

Don't be startled when you see
I've cleaned out the basement

107

I lived well across the world
where I was awake while you were asleep
and always knew exactly where you were
on your bed, pushed against the wall
where you once showed me your collection
of baseball cards

106

Tell me what you did so I can forgive you
Do it now before I remember
the car ride around the block
back to the front of my house
where I used to run barefoot
around the lawn

Now I just want to sleep
so tell me, because I'd rather
your voice abandon me
than my own reliant memory

105

And even when the world explodes
and I come up from underground, alone
where I explore the houses I've always known
though I've never really thought

of the rug where the family wiped their feet
and the checkered table where they would eat
to discuss the foreign policy
and who should give the baby a bath,

you're going to follow me, suddenly wise
withholding the answers by closing your eyes
offering no good advice
as my steps echo down the highway.

104

Watch the faces, child,
watch that woman with the dog
because she's only there when you see her.

Before you grow older
and her baggy eyes
look to you like a beaten car
and a dim lit room still the way she left it,

Watch her pull the leash
and fix her hair,
then turn the corner
and she'll disappear.

103

I can't help but pity
the girl I would have been
had I gone to the bank
before the store
and never saw you get out
of your tiny car.

She peels an orange
and plans her next day,
satisfied with the clouds.

And the only difference
is she went to the bank.
But someday, I'm sure,
she'll hurt someone
and no one will ever tell her.

102

I wake up between days
and open my windows
just to sing along
with the man who mows
his lawn at night

101

Send me a mile high hurricane
that won't feel any regrets
because I'd give my roof and car
for the next disaster not to be
like the last one.
I didn't like when you were a machine
but I knew you had to be;
I couldn't do it again,
watch you carve your meat,
put the squares into rows,
and stare at them a while.

100

It looked the same as it does now,
the way I remember it.
With the cheap stained glass window
above the marble counter

At the time, though, it was only
the painting on the wall
behind where you were standing
and the sound the coffee maker doesn't make
when it's been off for a while

Everyone said that it goes away.
Well it didn't,
but now the windows look just like
the broken glass on your basement floor

99

The night isn't as long as you think
You wake up the way you fell asleep,
with your hand hanging off the bed

How does it feel to dream
of ladders leaning on the moon
while the jungles across the ocean
overflow with sharp rain?

Well it must be happening somewhere.
As your paper walls let in the light
and I run into the sun

98

In this envelope is twenty minutes.
Now, choose between the ground and the sky.
You're going to lose something either way.

Where's your dad to say "hey,
it's no big deal",
and hand you a hot dog on a stick
to roast over a flame
that may be here longer than you?

97

I see the plants on the road
of one of those houses on the beach
every day, from the bridge above it.

And I'm telling you now I'll never be there-
not that there's anything there for me,
it just looks so close.

Even if I were to prove me wrong,
I'd still be the same,
all my voices in tact, whispering in my ear.

So I'll sew myself some clothes,
then close my eyes and jump on trains
to someplace fit for a movie
but where no director would ever look.

I mean the roads that could have been an accident
where even the birds are blind
and I understand the dismal clouds,
and there's no one to know me.

96

If I could just tie one end of a string
to your wrist,
and the other to a street sign
without you noticing

I could hide behind a fence across the road
and wait for you to scratch your nose
in a way I want to live with
and to see across the table
through the people that'll come for holidays

95

So you want to build a skyscraper,
a needle in the cloud
to grow up with the sidewalks
that know it better than its own buildings,
and the boy with the baseball cap who never moved away

Maybe the tourists will see it and want
to know something about you

So take a picture of the corner store
where you sit on Sunday afternoons
with your cigarette
though it won't get that swamp off to the left
where that tire used to be.

94

Yes, I heard about the game last night
I was the one who told you, remember?

You were at the pier again,
watching the lights go by.

Go on a ride, next time;
You don't have to be the old man
on the Ferris wheel,
not when you get home.

Because I don't mind if working late means the carnival
as long as you bring me one day
and show me where to buy
those tickets I find in the pockets of your pants.

93

Just admit that you were wrong
Say it softly, to my feet
before I clean up the shattered cups

I don't win
but I'm not allowed to hate you this much

Do I look big to you?
You do to me

Sit down or something, kneel
Our arms are crossed, we throw back our heads
and breathe in the ceiling

I know that you won't say it
and I won't say a thing
We'll both have to be the last to leave

92

Somehow I was surprised
when the big green shape
through the shuttle window
had no lines to separate the countries

And somewhere on the blob is a town
between the city and the countryside
with all the restaurants in the chains
that their millionaires forgot-

Where a boy stops for a milkshake
on his way home from school
hoping the rock he's kicking
will roll across
the smudge on the glass

91

I only drove a couple of miles too far
to a place where the people throw soda at boxing matches
and follow unlit streets home in cars held together by masking tape
to televisions that won't answer them

And the dirt road out goes into the woods
but it somehow took me to the highway
where the boxing town floated up to the air
and everyone around had someplace to go

90

I've always been walking towards a rocket ship
when I walked around my block
past the kids playing kick the can
and guilty consciences walking cars.

But this time, it's ahead of me
and these are the people
who won't move until I return,
though they may have more or less family then.

And I may know something that they don't
enough to wonder the color of their living room rugs
or I may only learn that the universe walls
don't look much closer outside of here.

And the stars look further from your backyard
when you've been really far away.

89

So the man down the street looks you in the eye
to find your past in your shadowy prose
While the man upstairs dreams he's in the light
that reaches our view long after the star is gone

We figured out fire and democracy
as children ran in yellow fields

And one day cops and criminals
will all have the same fate
We'll remember what's balancing
our houses and our feet

The world's last explosion will be a spark in the corner
Still, the people in the streets will gather, solemnly

88

You look up when you talk to me
Like it will make your tears less conspicuous
Or is it because the sky is the biggest think you know?
Yeah, well even that grows

Look up, look back at me
Close your eyes, but you'll still hear me breathe
What disappointed you most, I wonder
The sky, you say, it has me beat
The far things, they should look further away
And we should earn the right to see them
When we learn how to see

Well there you are, shrunken, and you don't even feel it
How can you think that this is all there will ever be?
Yeah, the sky is the biggest thing you know
And it's a whole lot bigger than I've ever been
Keep your head down, cry to me
You'll earn your right to hold another galaxy

87

It was finally almost over
so I came out of the woods
I rejoiced between the bullets
as some were for me
and no one bothered with the silly girl
who they had stripped the forest for
only days ago

And they were almost diminished
when I decided I didn't want to be found

But at least in the woods someone looked
while in the midst of contention
you weren't there to grab my wrist
and take me between walls

So my leg was lightly grazed running back into the woods
to the tree reminiscent of the one in your yard

86

I wanted to be an astronaut
until I realized it was hard
I still haven't said that yet,
but it's in the wrinkles of my hands

I can't forgive the kid
who made it too late for me
What were you thinking?
I always said I wanted to go far away

So the universe is a luxury
It says, dig up the dirt
for as long as you want
You won't find me down there

Then a trillion more voices
shout a deafening wind
to compensate for
the white hum that follows

So I sprawl on the grass
put my ear to the ground
and ear the rumbling city
start to shoot up around me

85

I treader out of the mountains with snow numbing my ankles
and distorted human voices that I'd strained to remember.
And there you were, no blanket, nothing warm to drink,
asking no questions
Then you spoke to a beat that wasn't in my feet
crunching the ice and snow below
You said you'd be going away, but you'd
be here for a while
And I adapted to your cottage
though I filled your frames and drawers for you
Because when you left, I'd have to leave too
but I could bring the things I threw away
I think that's how it works

84

Carry the dripping sun on your back
The rocks can't shine much more than the ones
on this part of the river
Still they don't tell you to where it flows

So stay upstream on your resting day
and hang your feet off the rocky ledge
Dreams of sunsets over wide open lakes
are no good with your country guarding the boats

83

She smiles and says she loves the rain,
throws back her head and it fills here eyes,
drips from the wispy ends of her hair
Then the dash to the house

to change her clothes and stay in for the night
And sometimes, she says,
to open her window and take out the screen
so she can hear both the patter on the roof
and the pounding in the street

when she sticks out her head and leans on the sill,
as the drops find their way
through tops of trees,
And her desk lamp becomes a fireplace.

She cups her hands and holds a lake.
Waste down, she's inside,
knowing she won't climb out onto the roof,
as nice as it looks from the living room.

82

Sky, damp with gray
My pockets are empty, I left the front door unlocked
We've never both been awake this early
How could we?
We've never been awake, so I know you must plan
to live in the sunrise now, and for me to come
and sleep in the afternoon until you stop calling
and I'm the one who can't see in the dark.
Let me just take a picture of you against the bricks
of the building where, I guess,
you couldn't always be everything that you were
Not all at the same time

81

It takes an old blanket
deep in the closet
clinging to a smell made partly
by the stories that she would read to me
and her seat at the edge of my bed.
There will be easy days, she said,
and weeks that turn out well.
But now I know of the cold
crouching naked in the storm.
Years and moons repeat themselves,
enough that I forget
that a song was once good for only a tune
lyrics merely a shape of the mouth

80

His mother says he's special
knowing he won't believe her
that his chin won't lift an inch
but she rests her hand upon his back
and she's done her part.
Well, he was wrong today
and I covered my ears
so his disconcerted back in the seat in front of me
could mean he's sanding a new birdhouse,
concentrating gravely,
instead of digging his nails into his hands
and begging them to tell him why it happened that way.

79

From upstairs, I hear your suitcase clanking in through the door
The door locks, the room clears
You fill it with breath. Look around,
nothing's changed in a week, you've just forgotten the size
And thousands of people who need my money wait in silence by my window
as I carefully step forward
and tap my fingers on my leg
listening to the floor, creak
searching frantically for the staircase
before you fall asleep

78

It doesn't feel like last spring.
Why would it though, I guess.
So it wasn't the wet morning grass on the rim of my socks
or eating dinner with the sun,
but the tune you started humming when you looked up from your feet
and how one eye stayed squinted when you got beneath the shade

77

You're still a problem, and I'm still afraid to solve it;
I'm afraid I'll have nothing to do
when I give up, and sit up in bed,
That's when I need you around.

Say you're sorry, you don't want to change,
but you wish there was something else.
And I'll say, that's okay, just sit there a while,
I'll take you back home soon.

76

I'm digging through a pile to the ceiling
of shoes and books and furniture and little bits of string,
things that have grown up since I let someone see them
the way I do.
And I'm wondering if it was me or him who forced them to,
and what that means I should do tomorrow
after my cup of coffee.
But I ask you how you know you love
the girl who gets off the bus at your stop,
and without a pause, you say, I've never felt this way before,
then you bite into your apple, and you walk out the door.

75

Is it anything for us to skip the same step
on the stairs to our front door
if we've never been anywhere else?
Because you'd skip that step anywhere it was,
but it's here,
and so am I,
and I'll see you going up the stoop through the window,
then I'll get far away from the door
as you search your pocket for your key.

74

And sometimes the rain comes and shrivels the town.
I know that if you're not outside,
you can still hear it hopelessly pounding on your roof,
even if you don't stop to listen like me,
and that used to be enough.

73

Lately I just lay in bed
tapping my fingers in front of my eyes,
unable to see them in the dark,
afraid to fall asleep
and wake up from a dream you were in.

72

You push aside your empty plate
to look at your old neighborhood.
There was a wooden fence on one side, a metal one on the other,
trees here and here,
by your napkin and the edge of the table.
Retelling your game of kick the can,
it doesn't matter if I don't understand.
You tell yourself anyway.
And I listen to the picture and I make it in my mind.
At first, it's even you, between two fences, one wood one metal.
But then they disappear,
along with the can and trees, here and here.
And soon it's me, looking for your car
in the parking lot we drive by each day.

71

From plants, with hands, they made automobiles.
And trains, and planes, and rocket ships.
I was there, when they learned the could end the world
and dug themselves underground until they couldn't breathe.
I've borrowed the books, and I've sat with the wise,
and I've been a million places between the sea and the shore.
And I see you standing there
with your arms uncrossed
like you'll know what's behind you if you just look at me.
But I've been staring between stars too long.
At the empty black space where the things we can't see,
the things that question everything, might be.

70

I don't want to tell them,
I want everyone to know
that you and I are meeting by a river in the world
sometime in June.

It'll be a stream in the woods on the side of a road
to a village long burnt down, never fully grown.
We'll sit on rocks and flick the water,
because that's what we came to do.

And the voices of the people who know we're somewhere
are so far, they release grasp of our necks.
Even when they overlap in a pile
on top of a city smaller than freckle on your nose.

69

Tell the one thing that takes everything else
since the time I saw you leaning on the building
in a shirt you never wore again
and drags it all underwater
where it wasn't what you were saying
but the arm hanging from your hand on your neck
so I can move away and say
I don't remember you,
anyway

68

You put back up all the doors you knock down
even though you live alone
and you sleep with all your windows open
afraid that you'd be so happy if a bird flew in,
you'd have to trap it inside
afraid that it would look at you
with your knees together, dinner on your lap,
then go back to pecking at the corner of the ceiling

67

Years will be removed
so that the next day I see you
will be next to today.

I won't tell you I'm going east
to the sea
I don't want you to see it.

That way you'll put me in a taxi
though I'm really on a dock, far away
And the taxi will leave me in front of your house.

But I won't get off the sidewalk, not even from the dock
I'll sit and face the street
and you'll keep wondering what I'm thinking
until you don't know me anymore.

66

You could have asked anyone found on the street
when I still held your hand to cross it,
will one day her nails dig into her arm
her knees to her chest, rocking herself to sleep
on the cold floor next to her bed?
Yes, they would think; I don't know what they'd say
and I wouldn't have anything different
but a mother who asks
I don't feel better knowing I'm supposed to break my favorite things
But they can't care about everybody
They would hurt, too

65

Here was the barn
where I watched you burn all my clothes
then you sent me back to the house
to fill up buckets
and put out the fire

And the trees are tall or gone now
as I used to know them all
they seem to have shifted over
towards the sunset tinted evening

You can't keep up behind me as I advance
towards a black wheelbarrow that corrects my memory
my presumptions bury underground
as you stand in the patch of missing grass
and squint at the dirty barn

64

If we were told there's a way to see what we feel
we would look for it, even if it meant
watching a cave shatter around us
dropping boulders where sun still lived
over the kind of silence that comes
when the sound of the wind we hadn't noticed stops.
At least we wouldn't have to wonder
why we've been staring out our windows
and we're so tired our eyes are dry.

63

I'm taking you on a trip further than people go
where there's no one to drive by and see us
and nothing would be different if we were the only ones left

I'm bringing all the things we have to do
watch their colors fade
each time you see a different moon

I'm planning our return, I am,
to be the same time of day when we left
I'll remember when that was because the last sound that made it
through the basement walls are what made me want to leave

I'm going to be important
I'll brush a shoulder every day
and I'll talk about the place we were
though I won't know how to tell it right

62

You fight with me in the dining room
Everything I say is right
except I'm not leaning over a chair
with a glass in my hand and water forming on the outside
and a memory in the back of my eye
of people who weren't there long on one of many streets
kicking rocks that mattered into alleys and ravines
and lights that are only blurry streaks
You yell so loud you make yourself hate me
We stare so hard we're looking at ourselves
so you go to your room and pretend I locked you in
and all you can do is read
something that's not really about you

61

Your tie, and the way you know it isn't neat
tells me to believe everything you say.
That, and the way you look me in the eye
and tell me why you do those things.
I didn't want to see you meet my father
who knows so much, he's sad
because he throws shoes, and you won
with your hands in your pockets, modest grin.
And I followed his suit back home
and looked down when I saw him stumble
but he didn't look back at me anyway.

60

I know how to get on the roof of the house
I've just never done it before.
Because someday I'll escape from a city that burns
and find my way back here with ashes across my forehead
yet it'll look here the way it would
if I were coming in from the sun
and wiping my shoes on the doormat.
Every trinket in place, the same glare between the curtains.
Someday I'll need to see what I already know differently
and I wont know how to leave
I won't know how to leave.

59

What if I'd been different yesterday?
Intoxicated with a notion that everything I do is me
An epiphany that came in the time I gain
from being awake in bed too long
Because I could fly to Idaho,
and tell you I wanted to go for a walk in the country
I could be back today
sitting here, at the table
reading every article in the paper with coffee
while you open another box of English muffins

58

There's a presence in the fire;
Not the one below the mantle in the den
where they squeeze dining room chairs between couches
amused at the same discussion as the year before
and the amber glow touches every face,
But in the candle at the bedside
of the last one to head home.

57

We finish every book we start.
Even if we don't like it.
It makes us feel, complete.
But we didn't read the copyright pages,
or about the authors, who we hate.
Nobody said to,
and we know enough reasons why.
But we finish every story
because we've finished every one so far,
but we don't look for the epilogue,
we don't have to know it's there.