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The aphids
will drink dry
your pretty porch plants
and turn them brown
before August
or the vacation
with the forgetful neighbors
in charge of your living things
while you are
what are you?
away
get the chance.

Are you
pretty inside? are you
lovely are you
in love with a
humid night and a
hand in your hand saying

you'd better let me
lead you down it
can be a
little tricky here?

I'm not talking about if
your glass is
half empty
of half full

only if you are thirsty.

The 50 Year Anniversary

Doris "DD" Geoffrey
married Phil Derrico
in 1958.

You can't know
your seagoing ways
you can't
you can't know them at all.

I put in
at a likely spot
with a mossy mouth opening to
dark water and brown-edged
blossoms dripping from the
overhanging trees moving and
proving
there's some current here

how can I know
which tributary I chose if I will
come finally
to a delta
the opening
the shiny sea
of which
I know we know
we dream

or instead
narrow and
dwindle and dry up
in a sandy plain
with no trace
that I was here at all?

I cannot live
without water
without swells
without lapping
can you
did Doris
did Phil?

have to leave
this wooden old canoe
in a swampy
and then just muddy woods
with the twigs snapping
and biting
and hurting
our bare feet

and live as pure
land mammals

and live like
the damned.

What You Should Do

You know
what it is and
how it is
between us

You know
what you're
afraid of
the most

it is not
death
or impotence
or being contacted
by the
New Yorker
to publish

those are nice and
thrilling fantasies I have a
number of nice fantasies too

you know
how we're
always hugging + kissing

how we're
touching the back
of each other's necks

and its comfortable

how we're
making this much
eye contact

how its
cake and wine

how its always
no no no no no

and then

yes yes yes yes yes.

Cape Cod

The worst boyfriend I ever had
dumped me
in a sad little
beachside bar
at 2:30am
on the fourth
of July

before that
he drew funny little pictures
on my palms

and let me
cut his hair
with my keychain scissors
one afternoon picnic

and I remember
in particular
the feel of the powdery
and nearly purple
sand I rubbed
between my feet
leaning back
with my elbows up
on old driftwood
his tongue so
warm and sweet
in my mouth

and then of course the
stick of his leaving steps
on the beer-tacky
concrete floor

and from the door
his shape
against one last firework

before anything was complicated
before anything was lost

before worst was

times like these.

The Greatest Show on Earth

my god

do you recall when
we went to the circus and
what the pole looked like with
the two strongmen
holding either end of it

the bright light on it
lighting it up
beige and backlit
like skin under a
medical lamp

and the dust sloughing off in
little puffs as she
in bare feet
goes bounce and bounce and

once
twice
three times

that's my pole and
you're on it and I am barefoot and
jumping and maybe you
are crouching and
holding on for
dear life and I am
leaping
bouncing

higher higher higher

and right up
and over you

my god

up I go.

Untitled

Something is coming
for both of us and

I know there will be a blue
night with a disc moon and
an undulating glittering ground come
January or come

sooner than that and I know that
the grass will go long and matted and be
full of asters and wet with
just a little bit of rot and the
smell alone of it will

make you know everything
you ever needed to know and

the restraint it takes to
accept the ice
and the asters

without going into a panic of
digging and digging with my hands a
hole in the sand that
fills and fills and fills
with waves and waves and waves

and caves in on itself

the will it takes
to know what I know

and to do nothing more than

wave hello
and remember your birthday
a little late

what excruciates me
about having anything to do

with you.

On the Day That You Were Born

I promise
that I will not
ask you for
the honey

I just want you
to sing me that song
so sweet and high and
dry that I know you
know that I know you
wrote and sang one
hundred times in your
mind and played out on
your pretty
little guitar

the universe
didn't want
either one of us
and no one was
all that glad when
we were born

the rejoicing of
the animals
and the birds
and the people
and the sun, the moon, the stars
in a big circle

is just a fancy way of
obscuring that a bunch of
space dust
became you
became me

that is the
cold hard facts

but can't you see
what your hands would
look like if you
pressed them to
my shirtless back and you
leaned in close and
with your face found
my ear through my straw
hair and you sang me
that song that I know you
know and sang it
high and dry and I would
of course I would

love you too.