Maybe a bit dramatic, but I light
candles with my breakfast, wear a white gown 
around the house like a virgin. Right
or wrong, forgive me? No one in this town 
knows forgiveness. Miles from the limits
if I squint, there’s Orion. If heaven
exists I will be there in a minute
to hop the pearly gates, a ghost felon,
to find him. Of blood, of mud, of wise men. 
But who am I now after all these years 
without him: boy widow barbarian
trapping hornets in my shit grin. He’ll fear 
who I’ve been since. He’ll see I’m a liar,
a cheater, a whole garden on fire.

push the needle of the pen
burning sensation
then pour grief in

there are many kinds of loss
some have names some we swallow
fit what you can in a pill

there is no plan to save us
trespassers take up your tools

we will store things here we need
and when the siren sounds

lay mirrors in the street
bring heaven down to earth

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Like everything delicious, I was warned against it.
Those mornings, I’d slowly descend the stairs
in my plaid Catholic school uniform skirt, find my parents
eating behind newspapers, coned in separate silences.
The only music was the throat-clearing rasp of toast
being scraped with too-little butter, three passes
of the blade, kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, battle hymn of the eighties.
When I pulled the butter close, my mother’s eyes
would twitch to my knife, measuring my measuring--
the goal, she’d shared from Weight Watchers,
a pat so thin the light shines through. If I disobeyed,
indulged, slathered my toast to glistening lace,
I’d earn her favorite admonition, predictable as Sunday’s
dry communion wafer: “A moment on the lips . . .”
I couldn’t stop my head from chiming, forever on the hips.

Hips? They were my other dangerous excess.
I was growing them in secret beneath my skirt,
and when I walked the dog after breakfast
and a truck whooshed past from behind, the trucker’s eyes
sizzling mine in his rear view, I knew my secret
wouldn’t stay a secret long. They were paired, up top,
by a swelling, flesh rising like cream to fill, then overfill
the frothy training bra. Everything softening on the shelf,
milk-made. Meanwhile, at breakfast, sitting on my secret,
I’d concede, scrape kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr, lay down
my weapon, dry toast sticking in my craw. I’d think
of the girl from school, seventeen to my fourteen,
who crawled out the window of first-period bio
to meet her boyfriend from the Navy base. She’d collar
his peacoat, draw his mouth to her white neck,
or so I kept imagining. Slut, the girls whispered, watching
her struggling back through the window, throat
pinked from cold and his jaw’s dark stubble,
kkrrrrr, kkrrrr, kkrrr. Only fourth period,
and already I was hungry for lunch, or something.

Thank you, Republican parents, thank you,
Catholic education, thank you, Reganomics—
words I never knew I’d write. But I hereby acknowledge
repression’s inadvertent gifts. Folks who came of age
in liberal families, permissive cities, the free-love sixties,
how far they must go to transgress—
Vegas, latex, sex tapes, a sugaring of the nostrils?
Yet how close at hand rebellion is for me.
Merely making married love with my married husband,
I’m a filthy whore. Merely sitting down to breakfast
and raising the butter knife, I’m living on the edge.

—2019

All that night I walked alone and wept.
I tore a rose and dropped it on the ground.
My heart was lead; all that night I kept
Listening to hear a dreadful sound.

A tree bent down and dew dripped from its hair.
The earth was warm; dawn came solemnly.
I stretched full-length upon the grass and there
I said your name but silence answered me.