Capricorn

i've forgotten, maybe, 

what made me remarkable to my parents  -- 

the placement of the stars on my birthday,

orion's refutable irrelevance,
his sword a pointed indication;

an index finger stretched in
constellary condemnation --
i've forgotten

what this  means for me  --  (my "cosmic space")  --

proverbial butterflies' wings.

I thought my arms were swords;
To embrace me was to bleed.

but i have known the inside of your mouth for 

quick, intimate moments--

there it is! the soft, billowy sail of cheek, 

the private flesh of neck; 

the dog-tooth, sharp, provocative, the plaintive, 

crazy tongue. and i recall,

under a harvest moon, looks that

even at the time seemed

slightly more than half-intended, 

looks whose futures worm-holed us into infinite

scenarios: soft osculations and 

oft walks along the wintry potomac;

skinned rabbits! too much salt!

brazen manifestos of the heart!

incorrect, (y)our incorrections,
treading waters,

boilings over,
sittings in church with that particular

church-light i was taught to distrust,

and your kneelings at the pew 

in an attitude of humility -- my own indiscretion,

confusion, my deliberate sinnings, my 

socratic questionings; if
god, then what,

if not, then
who, and

that first day in church with that particular

church-light all i saw was you -- neither god nor
constellation -- 

and the future made the sound a flower makes

as it unfolds inside a drum,
My hearts iambic thrum. You

a rhythm moved to match and meet
that which cannot be un become.

and, now, when we're together,

lying wet as mermaids once we've slipped apart,

my heart… my heart.

The Inuit People

Some people, you say,

Are just not meant to be happy.

A headline about the Inuit people reads,

Sun wrong, stars wrong, earth tilting on axis.

I take your hand and it lays there like a cod,

Resolute, irrelevant, and mostly dead.

The cat is sick with a genetic defect.

Every day the little lungs fill up with fluid and it

Takes a doctor to drain them.

The cat is becoming expensive.

His eyes cross and leak mucus, his fur is clumped,

His tail is a halfhearted lag;

Whatever it is that constitutes life in this cat is

diminishing. Some cats, I say, are just not

meant to be happy, and you say,

why do your breasts droop so,

so unlike in the magazines,

and I take your hand and it twitches on my breast

like a cod; enormous, cold, funereal.

One cannot force love,

It is as naturally occurring as death.

The sun is wrong, the stars are wrong,

Your moon is in Capricorn, my Jupiter

Is a cornucopia of misguided goodness;

Scorpio inserts himself between us,

The earth tilts precipitous and we wake to

Constant fall.

You grow up till you’re 18 and then you begin to die,

My mother is fond of saying, and also,

Let’s get this show on the road.

He’s worried that I’m ending the poem with

Too many sad words.

Wrong Irrelevant, halfhearted, diminishing.

            --What do you mean by “funereal?”

He tells me to be happy.

“Our happiness summits, it perpendiculates and it parallels,

Our happinesses diverge, divorce, grow fingers,

Rake through men’s hair—“

Show me again how the Eskimo kiss –

We are guileless, remote from one another,

Regretful.

The cat curls into itself, licking his paws,

And we glom to one another like new cells,

Let’s make us something new.