Posts for June 7, 2015 (page 2)

In Lewiston, Maine, I attended the United Nations of Poetry,
a monthly gathering at John Tagliabue’s house,  
where I left my shoes at the door and read poems
and watched puppet shows and kabuki theatre.
From Lewiston, I rode the Greyhound to Augusta to hear Allen Ginsburg rant
and lunched with Denise Levertov in the school dining room. She listened.

In Iowa City, longhaired students packed the steeply-inclined amphitheater
to hear Anselm Hollo and other international poets. In Lexington, Kentucky,
poetry comes out of the engineering building, the art museum, the florist,
the bookstores, doughnut shops, libraries, and bars.   

The poet may distance himself from the poems with explanations
or read in a stylized drone but emotion will seep through.
She may acknowledge friends in the audience or a baby leaving the room.
The tone may be ironic or polished or tongue-in-cheek,

the lines may contain more layers than can be expressed in one reading
or chords more intimate and memorable than life,
bridging the gap between reader and listener,
between public and private.

It’s easy to imagine what could have been
when we never had a chance, cut off
by time, miles, and circumstance.
The snippets we got delicious melt-on-
the-tongue morsels we savored, greedy
& decadent: we snatched as much
as we could from the sinking ship.

Our love-making nothing of the sort—
spilled over lust scampering up stairs, hands
groping, probing each other’ secrets
just to feel their slippery textures.
When we fucked it was against the clock,
hit snooze until we couldn’t any longer,
swallowed each other like pelicans.

We hear lopped-off echoes of could-have-beens:
ghost stories in haunted rooms, warmth, tender kisses,
sputtering words, searching eyes, giving our sweat
a chance to dry, to feel the coolness of your skin.
I kept your beauty my dark secret, even from you.
You called me dreamy but this, too, an indictment
of the disappearing phantom in your eyes—not me.

Now you’re far & your memory crumbles
like Rome, reduced to lore, reduced to campfire
stories told between luminous mustaches mouths.
But I still think of my T-shirt you stole, brazen,
staring directly at me as you shoved it in your purse,
a memento, a trinket you wear naked around the house,
braless & shameless & utterly without regret.