Hyperbolic Geometry

You smell like Tom Ford in a vat of peaches, catcalls floating through
the Lower East Side when the Lower East Side was lonely Lorca
marveling at anemones and angles (angels) gridding the cocaine-
raspberry island where the moon rises over mothers of mud and
shoes push hope on the F train. You said, “I cannot believe
your eyes.” I said I’d miss the hideous strip mall and
the sting of car leather and twelve-hour days at
the laundromat mourning the slow death
of credulity, a spill of strangers patiently
waiting for sillage tight and dense
and, anyway, I always wanted
to smell like pussy, just not
necessarily my own

 
 
 
 

Lavender Eucalyptus Boyfriend

Lavender Eucalyptus Boyfriend has a Russian hat in the corner of his room and a drawer lined with new blank tapes. On bright desert days, he is cast-iron solid, dares to eat a Tucson peach. His vascular lift skyward helps me spot a dove, a quail, a scratch of green. In a dust storm he tells of javelinas, of having more than he felt he ought and never feeling he deserved what he had. He has an ontological enthusiasm for rare birds and knows all the places where each bird is rare.
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Jean Seberg

I’ve gone fugitive too,

when it meant jumping
forward, my ambition in life

to become immortal,
then suddenly and quietly die.

I don’t remember a storm
in the story but thunder

in the cut. A Breton
boat-necked possibility,

pregnant on the street.
There were other scenes,

from other films, but few
who cared to listen,

all mafia and mascarpone
spread thin against the Seine.
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Marion Cotillard

On all sides, all city long
the devil trees escort me.

Niel says, “I am often.”
And sometimes I agree.

The escalator, sparkling
path to somewhere joy is rational,

will start too high to hear
the dead, the summer birds and breeze.

Faith is just fear of being
alone, flowers notwithstanding.

I won’t cry over crinoline,
but I want my money back.