I will not be comforted.  Not by the pink 
of his mouth, not by those 
who sluice the last seed
from my blackened urn in a 
tile-slick room, 

not by nausea as I feel again
a quickening -- no,
only in the voiding.  You must
push my bones aside and
slide bawling into life. 

Return like the snow as he holds 
my weight with his hips 
and arms, translating sorrow
into grammar as he comes and I come, 
and, in summer, daughter,
you come.

Zeus’ First Wife
He proposed a game
of shape-changing.

Ever quick 
to such
sallies, she became 
Charles Darwin, 
hypochondriacal
and at home.

Unimpressed 
unsympathetic,
he lit a cigarette.

She became a 
lynx-eyed housewife
totting up the cost
of her buggy’s haul
in the checkout line.

He exhaled wearily 
and opened the window.

Her breath was a cloud
in the cold room. 
She sat
behind a door ajar 
and spoke
of her white dress
her poetry
sewn and seamed 
in her drawers. 

He was moved.
He sat down
on the other side of the door.

“A fly buzzed…” she said
and became that fly,
lighting on his hand.
He raised his hand 
until he could 
look into her jeweled eyes 
as she caressed one silken
leg against the other.
He swallowed her.

Even now, when he is thinking hard 
I can hear her drone.

Chalk Lines for Our Catechism

I. Mathematics

7 was a woman dangerous to 6, even 
cannibalistic.  She would flatten
his belly into her own brainy linearity.
Only 8, mild-mannered, proportionate 
top to bottom, could compute a peace
between them.  7 fell forward 
along the number line, searching 
with tentacular desire:
odd, odd.

I write her now with a bar across
her middle – a collar, a table
where she sits with a latte
watching lovers on their cell phones:
flat top 5, receptacle 4, and 9,
a sexy Sagittarius.