Ellen and I Go Back—at least as far
as her pre-op days when she was still a man
and minced each midnight through the local bar.

Never was there a time when I did not lead him,
when I did not feel his hand upon my shoulder.

May we tinker with nature, define &
adopt, adjust her procedures, till
we can make a nature

Harassed with inquiry, I
waited up by a scale-flaked
boulder in a willow glen,

My poems, if poems
other than casual
entrances into systems, are

In Jaime’s picture of the world, a heart
As big as South America shines out,
The center of the only ocean. Three
Stick figures (one is labeled “me”) are drawn
Beside the world, as if such suffering
Could make us more objective. Jaime’s bald

I know this really isn’t Spain. But still,
You’d think I’d find my father here, his lips
On every cup. You’d think the holly bush
Weren’t quite so sharp. I think Rumanian
Is coming from my favorite table in
The back. Are all these people reading Lorca?

I didn’t know there could be so many silences
listening in on our conversation,
or having their own conversations

  A daffodil from Emily’s lot
I lay beside her headstone
on the first day of May.

On his knees, his back to us: the pale honeydew melons of his
        bare buttocks, the shapely, muscular hemispheres—

        the voluptuous center.