Dear Yusef, and: When You’re Teaching in Amherst and, While On a Late Night Walk, Your Wife Calls from Brooklyn to Say Goodnight, and: Variation on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop, and: Dolores, Maybe

Again last night, I caught Medusa    Sitting in my living room.Not the devil. Not the dog    In the shadows, made of shadows.Not the old translucent maroon    Sharpening his machete. ButMedusa, lighting a spliff, spreading    Tarot cards across the floor.I didn’t startle when a door slammed,    But half expected a black catTo run over my shoes. She wore    The same red lipstick as the nightBefore, Yusef. Same black teddy    With the skinny strap slippedFrom her shoulder. Singing to herself,    Her voice split in two—contralto,Baritone: Balladeer stroking the braids    Of a woman everyone knowsHe beats; the woman singing Yes    And It’s all right … Sequined sleevesHiding every track, a disco ball    Scattering shards of lightAlong some godforsaken wall.   —Medusa cut the deck, relitThe spliff, flipped one card,    Then another. Took a pull so longI thought she’d catch fire.    You’ve not always been a good man, She said, showing seven cards,    Coughing hard. There was somethingShe wasn’t telling me. She liked    That I didn’t ask. Liked how I watchedHer dusting ashes from her thigh.    I see trouble finds you easy, hey?Light broke in from a streetlamp,    Waking serpents into dance.I pulled her onto my lap, or I slid    Myself, somehow, up under her—I can’t remember which—    She singing Yes, and It’s all right …Then slipping the joint, fire side first,    Between her lips, she took my faceIn her hands, and shotgunned a cloud    Into my open mouth. Some nights,Yusef, the serpents curse my name.    Some nights, they tell me secrets.

When You’re Teaching in Amherst and, While On a Late Night Walk, Your Wife Calls from Brooklyn to Say Goodnight

The dead of February, and everything sexual.So sexual the icicles rimming the barn.Sexual the animals huddled inside, shivering.Sexual the cloud disappearing, appearingAgain, from your half-open mouth. The moonSwollen bright. Sexual the trees, starkNaked, all their branches spread and undulatingIn the wind. Sexual the tundra. SexualThe blackest snow by the road, made blackerBy the city worker’s plow. Sexual, the snowman Leaning in a midnight yard. So sexualDead February, the small town windows litFrom inside, fogging, watching while you burn.

Variation on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop

Start with loss. Lose everything. Then lose it all again.Lose a good woman on a bad day. Find a better woman,Then lose five friends chasing her. Learn to lose as ifYour life depended on it. Learn that your life depends on it.Learn it like karate, like riding a bike. Learn to fallForever. Lose money, lose time, lose your natural mind.Get left behind, then learn to leave others. Lose andLose again. Measure a father’s coffin against a cousin’sCrashing T-cells. Kiss your sister through prison glass.Know why your woman’s not answering her phone.Lose sleep. Lose religion. Lose your wallet in El Segundo.Open your window. Listen: the last slow notesOf a Donny Hathaway song. A child crying. Listen:A drunk man is cussing out the moon. He sounds likeYour dead uncle, who, before he left, lost a legTo sugar. Shame. Learn what’s given can be taken;What can be taken, will. This you can bet on withoutLosing. Sure as nightfall and an empty bed. LoseAnd lose again. Lose until it’s second nature. LosingFarther, losing faster. Lean out your open window, listen:The child is laughing now. No, it’s the drunk man againIn the street, losing his voice, suffering each invisible star.

Dolores, Maybe

I’ve never spoken to anyone about this. Until now, until you.

I slept once in a field beyond the riverbank,A flock of nightjars watching over me.

That was the summer a farmer...