Please Listen and Do Not Return
(after Nick Carraway and Tom Joad)

East

She, portrait
in miniature, she
I said I had

found in my youth
a her, a when
men built dreams

with hands
still, I saved
a lock of hers, kept

her like the harbor
lights, ship sounds
at night, I knew

light, green-back
and otherwise
could bring me

closer—
to that mind
daffodil colored—

I wondered again the
meaning of East,
the mean,

what emotions went
with living,
with home

things travel
through valleys
of ash, I walk

in gray
and dead houses,
her eyes porcelain

undirected
like mint
limited

always close
always closed
to me

West

She’s full stamped
on ground
my fingers

drew the line out
before the turtle
came to

dust to dust
my world
was thin

I had no roam
no hope to
call a

road, a line
that would
take

she aired
full of whistle
like brakes, she came

to me like
my sister
what could I—

knot her hair
braid its rust
and mettle

she held the imprints
of children
in her, held

nothing more
like Saturn,
her orchards

too far to know
what fruit
of home could and

in what river
slots we’d find
the used

jalopies, family
was not
a word I had

seen on the chalky
road-signs,
in the magazines

used jalopy
yoked
separate

couldn’t buy
what I didn’t
earn, earth

to ghosts to
graves, her eyes
gave milk.

Storyteller
(after Gloria Rich)

words depend
upon on the breath
between

my voice and yours,
on the mist
that streams

between two mouths
staring at each other
in a lone alleyway

in the dark cool eve
of winter in the bright city
with a kaleidoscope

belly. The breaths
between lips are mixing,
the mouths are black

holes, craving light
and each other.
They are hungry—

they want to kiss
the whiteness
between words,

devour silence and its fruits.