It was a year of pirates in speedboats,
anonymous bullies spreading privacies
on the Internet, and the worst of them

The dolphin was all undulation,
riding its whims and churning 
the ocean, dorsal fin and bottlenose

When it comes to the underworld
and the fragility of guesswork, 
what makes us think the dead 

We knew he was dead
because the dead don’t smile
unless someone works hard

There came a time when she found pleasure
in saying the word pussy, alert to see whom it shocked

She was thinking it was time
to be naked again, to take something off

If a lone feather fell from the sky,
like a paper plane wafting down
from a tree house where a quiet boy

Down from the mountains of Appalachia
and the highs of new love
I’ve come across the extended monotonies

The door had a double lock, 
and the joke was on me. 
You might call it protection 

He was always so interestingly wrong.
I loved him, in fact for years couldn’t live
without him, he who helped crystallize

He disappeared, often, even as he was speaking,
though he could finish those sentences
from which he had disengaged himself,

One day it will vanish,
how you felt when you were overwhelmed
by her, soaping each other in the shower,

Something to drink helps, of course, and humor must live
even on that dark corner where once
your life was threatened. Something in the voice, in the telling,
must signal I am safe now and am trying

 

My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog
    and wife beater.
In bad dreams I killed him

If you, X, take this woman, Y
and if you, Y, take this man, X,
you two who have taken each other

Yesterday in the locker room
a young man told his friend
how he did it to her