First published in
The Southern Review

And Always the Sea.

Learn to count time in rye and cards. Leave the light bulb
lit, the latch unlatched in a kitchen where curtains reach for you.

On the street corner, a sycamore moonlights as a martyred saint.
There are days when everything seems to mean something.

There are nights when the moon is held up like a convenience store.
The catacombs beneath Notre Dame conceal two skeletons'

calcified vinery. The water towers of Dimple Dell Canyon
host a green pair of glowing eyes. The sidewalk is a nursery

of blue shopping bags and we fall lotus-like into a nest of jellyfish
where even the brainless are stung by beauty. I love the way words

warp information. I watch the neighborhood and the neighborhood
watches itself. Police don't take kindly to the paranormal.

Even poltergeists have unions nowadays. So, too, do those
whose offices are our homes: milkman, paperboy, gardener,

and missionary. The sea is nowhere near and still it separates us.
An operator eavesdrops, noting the words your mouth makes

that mine can't. Caribbean, Caribbean, Caribbean.
A thousand times over for you. I miss you for the memory

of having not known you for so long, for the way if you
didn't have to leave, dawn would never enter our room at all.