3 days, 6 meals, 8 coffees have I driven
just to see the island.
I have turned off the radio 90 times

Yes, my Captain, I was there.
I was the one punching the buttons of the radio

until the right commercial came on

The Seagull was a failure, the burlesque crowd began to shout
   “Intellectual rot!” And then, before dinner at the
   Hermitage

Which heart shall it be tonight,
the fist, or the little lettuce?

Something about the ironing board made him
leave it behind, angular in the emptied living room,

I can hear you in the bathroom: rinsing, splashing, steaming;
Three different kinds of sound slurred, the elements
Confounded by your actions. (Across the airshaft,

 

and the sky, to, has its heavy book,
fat with the glossy photos of someone else’s dream,

she knew that moo shu pork
remains his singular post-coital consolation,

by sweet flour, sweet failure,
a daughter married old, a son gone bad.

The perfect ease of fish in perfect tombs.
She hugs her knees. her sky, her soul’s, small proof

Will it rain? The rain says it will
as thunder pools in every vowel,

Wild asters. A blue
wasp shudders in the gravel.
Laundry on the line:
yesterday, the day before.

One red-winged blackbird can’t begin
Without the other, hidden in the cedars.
Listen, listen, listen,
For he struts between