The one I didn’t go on.

I was thirteen,
and they were older.
I’d met them at the public pool. I must

have given them my number. I’m sure

I’d given them my number,
knowing the girl I was…

It was summer. My afternoons
were made of time and vinyl.
My mother worked,
but I had a bike. They wanted

to go for a ride.
Just me and them. I said
okay fine, I’d
meet them at the Stop-n-Go
at four o’clock
And then I didn’t show.

I have been given a little gift ––
something sweet
and inexpensive, something
I never worked or asked or said
thank you for, most
days not aware
of what I have been given, or what I missed ––

because it’s that, too, isn’t it?
I never saw those boys again.
I’m not as dumb
as they think I am

but neither am I wise. Perhaps

is it the best
afternoon of my life. Two
cute and older boys
pedaling beside me –– respectful, awed. When we

turned down my street, the other girls see me…

Everything as I imagined it would be.

Or, I am in a vacant field. When I
stand up again, there are bits of glass and gravel
ground into my knees.
I will never love myself again.
Who knew then
that someday I would be

thirty-seven, wiping
crumbs off the kitchen table with a sponge,
remembering
them, thinking
of this ––

those boys still waiting
outside the Stop-n-Go, smoking
cigarettes, growing older.

From DANCE AND DISAPPEAR (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002)

My ex-husband in the bulk food aisle
with an empty plastic bag, an infant
daughter, a blond son.
Wow. Hi. We hug. Plenty. Really. More than enough.

There is a kind of fog that rises only so high. Some
mornings, if you lie down on the lawn, it makes

a perfect shroud. Some mornings, if you sit
with your back against the picket fence, it
makes a nice shawl. True, too, that if

you put your ear to the center
of a soufflé, you can hear
the wind in there, no

longer desiring, not
the least bit dangerous.
Works just as well with a paper plate.

And the river, all this time, the river
has been rolling on and on, carrying
with it the infinite
scraps of silver lamé
that every river snatches
from the baggage of the desperate as it passes. Look:

Over there, two spectres,
unable to hold one another,
try to dance a sad waltz,

while, over there, two shadows ludicrously attempt
to strangle each other against a wall.
And here, here

in the bulk food aisle, I find
myself suddenly come to gather

ghostly figs, the sweet
weightless figs of amnesia, the pale
wasted figs of the gods––

gathering them shamelessly, grabbing them, tossing
them,
tossing

them all
by fistfuls and handfuls
into a basket, a basket
with no bottom, a basket
weaved of imaginary straw

and manure and moss––and you, you

with your clear flimsy bag––harmless,
a lie, a small lie, a lie
told simply out of kindness. Such

a surprise! Christ,
so many years
of gathering and laughter––and fairly

decent intentions,
and pretty good times,
and this warm hug after, and still

you could be walking straight through me without a
shiver
and I could be strolling across your grave with a smile.

From GARDENING IN THE DARK (Ausable Press, 2004)

so far behind the others
in their neat little v, in their
competence of plans and wings, if
you didn’t listen you would think
it was a cry for help
or sympathy––
friends! friends!––
but it isn’t.

Silence of the turtle on its back in the street.
Silence of the polar bear pulling its wounded weight onto the ice.
Silence of the antelope with a broken leg.
Silence of the old dog asking for no further explanation.

How 
was it I believed I was
God’s favorite creature? I,
who carry my feathery skeleton across the sky now, calling
out for all of us. I, who am doubt now, with a song.

From SPACE, IN CHAINS (Copper Canyon Press, 2010)