Her Gripe

And it was as simple for you,
as placing your lips further down the rim
and sipping with your eyes closed,
while discussing the future of Parma
and the effects of war on network tv.

you murmured out your secret easy,
like a malyalee smiles a request for tea.
It is that simple for you, as simple as taking off your
shoes, giving the girl a nickname for tonight,
or getting drunk on Old Monk at 4:30am.

Do not fool yourself, dearest, by thinking
I grip this knife harder only to make sure
the onions are sliced fine. No, do not fool yourself.
Wars have been fought and children sold
because of words spoken while swimming in rum.

Imagine the terror unleashed then,
by this woman you just declared long-hid passions to!
There's a knife at your throat for only one reason:
no woman wants to know she was put away for a rainy day
Keep your mouth shut, your bottle corked, or just-- keep away!

Message in a Bottle

you send pictures and news,
wear your life like mosquito bites
draped all over your pale skin.

You have new people in your bookshelf,
one dog-eared more than the others.
you have started smoking. I only smile.

We laugh over sex and future plans,
knowing with quiet comfort that it will
or wont happen. You'll wax your cunt anyway

and I will leave my heart open, and point at
the fireflies on the sill, rorschach undies on the floor.
What would you have done, if we kissed that night at Saarang?

for I loved you then, as much as I loved anyone else;
your light-eyed, soft-pawed grace. The way no man could ever mark you.
We both carry tattoos now. Mine are underneath the skin.

You take pictures of the night. The stories in your beaded,
red and silvered pouch sound familiar to me,
like I was there, naked in the forest inside you,
Caiman-staring at your cigarette's rising smoke.

You are beautiful now, just like you were that night-
bra-less, smiling with the grasshoppers
under amber-lit trees.

Dryad. The one old women warned them about,
only because you ate bread-jam with your left hand.
I come gladly, and with only one fear--

will you stay unhurt, tree-being, you whose hair
has grown long with moss and iguana song?
only the lack of faith ever killed a sprite;

and I have died many times over,
as I have killed, many times over.
I stare at the pictures you took:

under the night a cloud moves.
Under the green mist, a fish darts unnoticed.
This is how it will be, then--

passed over and precious,
like a cloud at night over Ecuador.
Like a fish at rest in sleeping reeds.