Integrated with a Spurious Head, and: Elegy for Estrogen

Integrated with a Spurious Head

—Museum caption on the statue of a female deity, recently restored

         Again this wobbling dread,this discombobulated pang, as though         my armature's been bent,or the scale is slightly different            between my torsoand my alabaster head.

         What so upsetting? Really,this trip you're packing for—it jars me         less than your insistence         parting isn't torture.We touch, divided by no distance            miles can measure.

         You say I should relax:whatever seas sleep rocks you on, my arms         fathom you through dreamsremoval from me never wrecks.         And once your travels start,            each night apart

         sails you closer home; a journey'ssoonest finished once begun. "When a person         who must embarks,         tears only worsenthe going." Can being cavalier appease         such sadness? I say your logic sucks.

         It sucks my salty heart (no stone,although until I met you it was marble).         Departure's glacial arrivalshatters me. I'd meet its blue         expanse with you, and with you            stare it down;

to you and you alone I'd bare a face         sorrow's freezing rain carveschannels down—but then your breezy stanceabandons me before your body leaves.         Alone, I shiver on            the brink of maudlin.

Still, I'm learning. After all your goings,         I find balancing'sa skill that practice hones. It's true my poise         is largely ruse,             dependent         on some borrowed fragment

cobbled with cement, but I finesse         my gaps so they resemble grace.Even you I'm closest to no longer         notice if my kilter           skews, or the pucker      quivers as I blow this kiss

         goodbye from your resolute goddess.

Elegy for Estrogen

Without which the tits, anxious         rabbits, sit up on their haunchesno longer in the sun nibbling grasses,         but cower, fine fat alertnessespressed flat, who sense         the raptor's presence.And the chin, ample in         its sympathy, sinks downlaying the folded         pleats of its oldcoat upon the lawn to lap the dew.         Must the cunt, too,lament this loss?         Atrophies dwindle once-trophied glades, whose rivulets         rinsed the helmetsof kings? What balm, after lush         spring and summer's flushfall dumb,         to say wisdom will comepressing its cool cabbage leaf across my brow?

         Let all perfumes perish now.

This insistence         clocks can be stopped with resistanceinsults. The one relief         at certain ageis being sage         enough at last to admit when I feel bereft.I've little time left         for liesmeant to anesthetize         grief.