To thrash myself with the knowledge, not
the feeling, that my lover Chris has taken
an Alfred the Great in a very Anglo-Saxon way?

If the man who called you nigger in Dominick’s parking lot
had only dialed 1-800-882-Mary earlier today,
he may have been a better boyscout. I bet

Oh transcendent, this aqua blue and all these health nuts
running back and forth hold nothing—no sea gnome,
no salt to scour your bones clean—only placidity

The day Jim stalked the tomcat between rows of bonsai,
I asked: What kind of gun is that? He said: Air.
And snuffed a squirrel as proof or demonstration.

You were egalitarian with the sleaze you perpetrated, loving
transsexual and coed alike, so shy in your approach, no one
suspected your blue eyes. And when you sat barechested,

Once I thought there was no blue in nature
except the sky—I thought Nature couldn’t make
a blue fiower, or tree, or creature.

I was embarrassed in a garter snake’s presence.
—I’d screamed when it slithered under my hand
as I leaned to pick the first ripe blueberry.

A whole stolen afternoon before us
no hurry no haste savoring every

The hate began a few months after
the blissful wedding he     discov-

The mind of a lover is a labyrinth
of false starts and miscalculations