Patois

 

 

1.  Incompatible

 

inevitable

                   as taxes

 

you are held

                   in the jargon

                             we project and overrun

 

unaccountable

                   the expense nobody could predict.

 

once I thought it could be written

                   off

                             that you could enter love

                             across from income

                   and everything would balance

                                                          out

 

that the books could be explained.

 

                   it almost broke us.

 

now I hunt through your body

                   for deductions

                             invest in forgotten islands

 

                   claim the heart

 

          and keep my receipts

                             for years.

 

 

2.  Spatial Form

 

breath

                   breaks you

                                                apart

 

          as a lovers

                   quarrel, domestic

                             spat

                                      in which you need

                                                the last word

 

how you get up and leave the room

          and the air collapses

                   in the space of

                             your disappearance

 

and how return trembling

          to each other

 

                   to our impractical selves

 

                             and know this form

                                      is a body

 

                   and I am breathing

 

                             heavy.

 

 

3.  Patience Plant

 

because the globes of nectar

          hung sweetly on its blossoms

the kids loved this plant

 

          they touched the petals and said

it grew sugar and I told them don’t

          touch, it kills

 

the flowers, but you said plants

          like it, sing

to them

 

          and when later I thought it got

its name for its own slow

          growth you said no

 

everything else waits for it, look

          how the kids have grown up attending

it, how it has grown evenly and

         

          a sweetness still hangs in

its blossoms, look how the light waits

          constantly at the window

 

          you said

                   turning the pot around.

 

 

4.  Appattite

 

names have to do with hunger and

hunger is a misspelt word

 

names misunderstand the stomach

but that’s natural.  raw

 

oysters.  the hand tightening

upon air when you try to pet the cat

 

and the cat vanishes.

after we went out for dinner

 

at a Spanish restaurant and came

home and made love on Dombsky’s

 

narrow bed.  that was the night

I cut my foot on the mirror tile.

 

hunger is the way your body

closes upon mine and there is no

 

vanishing.  how Dombsky hoped we were

still close because we would be in that

 

bed.  how I bled all over the glass

in my sleep.  the morning

 

holds so tightly.  it smells of oysters and

garlic butter and has a sore foot

 

and we have never been so loosened

into the ordinary world as in the

 

body’s spell.  this present magic

makes the apparition real.

 

and I am cut by a surface that in

theory should be perfectly flat.

 

 

5.  Spatula

 

the omelette of dreams

folds in on

itself

 

          ah, French cuisine

 

the genuine

article

there at the end

of the handle you proffer

 

what is given is the real

thing

 

and you scoop up the whip

of egg, pepper, tomato, onion

set it on the plate

 

                   and on the table

                  

                             precise

 

                   flowers

                   in a jar