MY SMALL NOVEL

I couldn’t smile for weeks the weeks 

I waited in Germany. You asked if I’d meet 

Your husband, to share, over sausage 

And espresso. Cafes split on a rebuilt block. 

Elongated lights to signal crossing the post

-War block. Caffeine on one side, decades

Between. You told me his name later

While I shot you, zooming close on silver 

Scratching hairs along your inner thighs. 

Some curling back under the skin. 

Gorgeous man, annoying dog—I remember

Across a reclining chair, you asked for

Something harder and I said Kissssssss, 

K—drip, steep, swallow. I spilled the boiling 

Kettle on your snowy pug’s swollen back.

I was sobbing, apologized, dabbing wood

With my waterproof hands. You were sweet.

I said don’t touch that, I can’t do the family 

Scene—cold German water was hard. My legs 

Scaling your belly on the couch. Recalling

Schoolboys in bedsheets who’d improvise

What their popular Jesus might say— 

When I make furniture, all I think about

Is the pleasure I’ll feel watching you live on it. 

The schoolboys’ laundry, tailored blazers 

Dyed in hypodermic darkness—You said 

Let’s stay awake for forty-eight more hours.

We can get naked, lock my husband outside. 

Take our time crossing over to feel safe on 

The curb, out of traffic. Jesus, Germany, 

A steaming spot of mold seemed to grow 

Bright as I bit the bread in your mouth. 

I remember your name started with a j but wasn’t

Pronounced. I said no. We said fuck schnitzel,

I hate Germany. I wished we made plans to meet

At the end of my life, supporting Isabella’s hind 

Legs with my elbows while her fur fully dried. 

With my camera eye becoming a cousin. 

And the Jesus secret becoming my face. 

You were on the side of history that melts 

Statues, shared husbands—slipping in and out

Of a few languages ordering alternative milks.

Generations between us, you would both be long

Dead and I’d have hours more to mop, sorry. The end 

Stop which opens onto more brutalist grays—I kissed 

You, in public, without thanks.

THE REVERSE 

I lost sight of my lamb walking but I felt the leash move, so I knew 

My lamb was, at least, alive. I briefly brushed against the polyester trapping
Heat and arrived at the party with skin on my mind.

There was that and a few admissions
We tried to discuss in the living room.

The old pines insist that we see

Too much in common.

I can be gracious if the yogurt requires 

A few more days to grow. I want to know 

What I would say to help everyone help 

Me leave me alone.

MY VATICAN CITY

Inside the boredom of walls,

Along the clothesline strung

From bed to partition, blood 

Was rhyming inside the paint

Laid, was a misery of angels

Incarnate, some like us, spines

Supporting curved routes 

For their messaging to sound.

Dear, on a leash, with 

A mouthful of chestnut,

Walk with me a minute.

Before the city was born

Cousins loved cousins

Behind the safety of walls.

Because the cousins would die

Without trade lining walls 

For guilds they demanded,

For gowns in new silks

And genetics in conference 

And young ocelots slinking 

Far away hills on a map,

Cousins lived in rumor and 

Secret, demanding cats 

Between kisses and coughs, 

Breathing fuckable moats 

Where peasants had gathered 

To cry and cry out in the quiet

Of conference and vacant

Stares above new demands

For romance the city wriggled 

Its fist in a dream that was history 

And sexually historical but for

No other reason than gross

Propagation, as the clinical 

Test for inverts didn’t capture

The problem, or exist in 

The ways I’ve come to love you. 

Inside, the painter tried

To conceal a silver fragrance

As that document of bone 

Broke in a healed face looking

As if fists had consented

To small majorities of cousins

Tearing ditches into lands 

And wetter lands entwined 

In the heath letting kingdoms

Stomp history in stolen brocade. 

Beyond the velvet membrane, 

Children couldn’t shoulder past 

The painter pressed into ceilings

Dripping fumes on carrier fats 

From the hearth straight into

The pores of the architecture

That was chestnut and incest 

In the regal frescoed streaks

Named “imperium” for the spoils

Accenting cousin tongues when 

One cousin said “kneel” another

Cousin said “I remember being small.”

With you drawing bridges 

Over moats, to the hungry 

Masses, skilled and gathering 

For wives were a wish 

The painter couldn’t smell, 

His nose so full of liquid 

Myrrh and stirred egg yolks,

As the closed chamber doors

Protected cousins from a raid

And thus protected beauty 

From the rotten fruiting 

History the Pope declared 

“Gentle” as the fist began 

To tear the veil of the mother

Looking down at the cousins

With their servants stroking

Scratched light onto the bad 

Bones inside of the wings

Beating around what dear 

And festering dates had fallen 

Through some unraveling sacks 

Into a hazardous pool

At the center of the kingdom.