ONE

Suppose you’re me, for just a minute—that’s what I’m asking you to do—, just suppose for a minute that you’re me, and ask yourself what it is you want to hear, because that’s what I want, to have you listen, to have you hear like it mattered to you, like I was you telling you what you already knew, or had forgotten, or had tried to forget. Pretend I said it, whatever it is, just pretend you heard it just now and your pulse jumped and your groin tightened and you did that little manic swallow. Pretend you heard it, and it hurt you, and it felt like you’d been opened up and laid out for display. You’re violated by what I know of you, what you know of yourself—supposing you’re me—and everything is too small, your clothes fit too tight, and the air is chill, your fear steaming with your breath. Suppose I took you apart and left you that way, and tell me—really tell me—that you wouldn’t fall in love with me.

TWO

The roots of the old tree had cracked the foundation of the house—a shitty old place anyway—, but the roots were thick and the concrete was jigsawed and crumbled. Quite a job, that one, to mine those roots from that stony ground. The trick is to try to do good in an already hopeless situation. Now suppose you’re me, and I’m looking at you, thinking this. The tools are old, but they’re sharp. Anyway, the old tree must go.

THREE

Impossible to doubt me, speaking to you here, though you know I don’t exist. Try to picture me. Describe me. I’m nothing but the weight that pulls at the back of your eyes. I’m weightless. Listen, you can’t even hear me.

FOUR

The hand that holds the pen and the hand that holds the plow. All the same to me. Not my hand, anyway. Or my hand, but not me. May as well be yours. Take it. Dig us a way out, if you can. The pen or the plow? Or the ditch we look up from, thick roots bleeding sap, sky flashing above us, the cold cold smell of the new-clawed earth. Just try to stand. It’s far from deep, this ditch. But try to stand. Or move your hand. Or mine.

FIVE

I believe you. I take you on faith. For all I know you’re already gone. White sheet against white sheet, that’s a darkness I couldn’t possibly see out of. It’s only that you’re just less than factual. One cannot observe fact. One digests and excretes it. You, dear friend, are a phantom vapor, a touch of gas, a piece of meat unshat. You trouble me a little, but you listen to me speak. That’s a taste I savor. And so, I thank you.

I confess, I am salacious.
That is, in a salted state.
That is, salax, meaning constantly in love.
Much like a Roman pigeon mistaken for a turtledove,
cooing Come along come along.

It’s a hot summer in Rome
where guests, given salt, lick it,
like it, put some in their left pockets.
One day, underground, I see lemons
painted on a lemon tree. I see a blue sky.

Besotted, I become a bride and subject to division.
This is the land where bridal shoes get salted,
so next, I am bedded. And for awhile all colors brighten.
I bloom like a cut flower, I stay fresh longer.
All the dark stains lift.

But I am changing, my cells drift
toward any cool water. I drink
and I take many lovers, love them all.
Gossips call me unstable, and it’s true,
some chemical is missing. I am reduced to my metal,
at any moment I might burst into flames,
I find it difficult to transmit impulses.

Until one day a Frenchman from a folk tale
tells me I am common,
that I contribute to his hypertension,
and though I love him, waves flood me,
flood the lemon tree, and my husband catches us.
I get up from the bed. I cross the ocean.

In my new home, I spend the autumn cleaning copper.
Then winter comes, so I lie down in the road
outside my house, melting all the snow.
And my neighbors thank me.

My blood
suddenly
knows you are gone

It is shouting your name

It runs
down to the ends of my fingers
looking for you

It wants to be
a piece of red wool
unraveling
all the way to Central America

It wants to be a boat
coming into the harbor at Managua
carrying fruit

Through all the rooms of my body
it is running
opening doors

A child in a tantrum stamps
red shoes
demanding to know where you are

Pigment lingers
in the weave of thick paper,

the dusty blood ring
of the wineglass.

The kiss-traced napkins
tossed in piles

like the wrappings of secrets,
disappointingly empty.

Ashes trenched
in the music shelf

have slipped through
the white keys, bedded in whorls

of someone else’s skin;
passed on.

Words leave no residue.
She can’t read their smeared

insistence on the table, dissolute traces
seeping deep in the carpet,

whispers and praises,
conversational treachery.

How little we can know
of each other.

She stacks the plates,
brushes away

the dew gathered
under an abandoned cup.

It dries slowly
on her blank palm.

Just the song, not a fancy video. Also, I think the parts after the first stanza are more lovely than the start.

And now as I would judge and say you’re aloof
but you know the truth is a seed
you know what you need is a conflagration
cause when I see the blood 
and the bits of your broken tooth
it gives me the proof that I need
it’s the proof that you bleed
it’s a revelation
yeah it’s a revelation, it’s a revelation

I thought you were a life-sized paper doll
propped up in the hardware store
propped up on the front lawn watching the parade
of those legionnaires with two-by-four’s
as they’re marching off to war
yeah they’re marching off to war

I didn’t know what you were made of
the colour of your blood, what you’re afraid of
are you made of calcium or are you carbon-based
and if you’re made of calcium I’ll have to take a taste
cause, listen, calcium is deadly tender to the tooth
and it’s one sure-fire way to know if you’re 
MX-missile-proof, oh no, or if you’re just aloof

You were in the ground in late November
when the leaves in earth are down
did you, did you think they would remember
how you almost made stage-out
cause when you’re running for the game against alfonso
and you fell upon the ground and chipped a tooth
oh no, listen, I really have surprised her
to learn that you are really MX-missile-proof

Oh, I thought you were a life-sized paper doll
and you’re propped up in the hardware store
you were propped up on the front lawn watching
the parade of those legionnaires with two-by-four’s
as they’re marching off to war
yeah they’re marching off to war
oh they’re marching

courtesy of TforTwo.com

Excerpt:

Jennifer wakes to the cat vomiting. The sound makes Stephen, the man trying to prove his potential as her kids’ fill-in father, jump out of bed like he did when the neighbor kids lit firecrackers in the alley—like trouble, something to reckon with. He’s naked, and she tries to swallow the slight nausea she always feels at the sight of naked men—even beautiful naked men, which this one might be said to be, by some.

“It’s the cat,” she says. “She always vomits when I refill her food bowl; she’s the binge-and-purge type.”

He laughs, like he does, at her wit, an unsure laugh that says, I’m not sure that I get it, but I’m good-humored, so understand that I want to get it. I’m trying really hard to get it.

He’s already pulling on his shorts and t-shirt. He’s careful not to let the kids see him without clothes—”Wouldn’t want to give them the wrong idea,” he says.

“Right,” she says back, “Wouldn’t want to give them the right idea.”

“Can I find something under the sink to clean it up with?” he asks.

She nods into her pillow, rolling away to cover her nose, the smell bringing back her nausea. She hates the cat, always has, but it was her husband’s before he’d met her, the other woman, they used to joke, and now such a source of displaced love that to get rid of the thing would be unimaginable. The cat is getting old, too—ribs like rebar under her thick coat, fur left in clumps on the bathmat, teeth discarded in corners—an incisor in her son’s closet, an indescribable chip by her daughter’s bookshelf. She both fears and welcomes the cat’s death. Fear for her children, welcome to quiet mornings, an absence of hair stuck to her wet, clean feet every time she steps from the shower.

Read the whole thing at 42 opus.