Haunt
The fat makes ghosts in last night's gravy.
It is the cold that welcomes them,
and the microwave that dispels them
with its turnings, turnings.
Could I burn all my ghosts like that?
The turn,
the turn,
and they are gone like that.
Yard
We slide into your yard.
The leaves do not appear in the dark,
but we appeal to them anyway.
They follow us, and leap
with our bare feet.
We barely breathe
as we slip,
the only sounds between the trees.
The leaves do not appear in the dark,
and neither do we.
But we cannot hold it in;
we muffle our laughs.
They are the only marks to show
that we ever moved
or were here at all.
Peel
You peel a smile across your orange;
the sun peels one across your face.
You laugh, and with your hand,
you cup the citrus-glory trace
of both
before it laces
down your chin and through
your fingers.
Luckies
You're pulling flowers
kicking from their cribs.
How their root-legs dangle
dirt onto your nice white shoes.
With faces flung to the sun,
little luckies leave the earth.
They didn't make a fuss,
they didn't even run.
Most divine release.
A quiet garden shrieks
in the gleam
of your Holy clippers,
its grasses hide their throats
close to the ground.
You're wrenching cutting
screwing flowers right out of Eden.
Parts
Our bodies touch so briefly;
We part like shards.
The grief of good-mornings,
God-mournings
Whose sun descends
On edge, on miles, on limbs,
On all the things that I
Could never put together.
Not two hellos
Nor two good-byes;
Such things that lead us
Back through all the places
We have come
To know and yet forget.
