when she talks about security she means a quiet so extreme
and absolute that trees would be afraid
to tap her windows with their tossing branches
that translate into Morse code the wind's screams

the swords of argument are whetted on eternal stones
while the cold stew congeals like the tears of the dead
and the countries of passion are erased from the map of the
       smooth bedsheet
the vices of the mind persecute those of the body

to win she knows she'll need rhetoric like a set of flatware
with the right utensils to taste or cut every conceivable dish
the sweetest meat is that pierced by the proper fork
but who will do the washing-up

the birds in the privet hedge sing their species-song
complaining about the perpetual search for mates and seeds
and every winter the same journey
regular as an argument between lovers

elsewhere the leopard in heat
moans and rubs her scent on the cage bars
rebels write songs about her lonely misplaced desire
but even the libertines won't let her out

the lovers' fight is the powerful glow of a wall of TVs
at the mall which replicate the same unheeded drama
and their silence is the darkness after the blown fuse
when all the motors of domesticity were plugged in at once

she'd tired of the schemes love devises
to mummify us with our pet needs and ideas
in tombs where the spice of dust
smells secret and familiar as an old recipe

repeated rituals pacify no one's shade
instead of all these formulas they'd like to hear milk
being poured into a china cup and the crackle of bread crumbs
broken by clean hands in the morning

the most serious things are transitory
as newsprint or the moment between monitored heartbeats
the line separating truth and desire
is dark as surgeon's thread on the Caesarian belly

the only thing she needs is the snow of silence
falling on still faces and covering words of stone
the only thing she wants is to lie in an empty field
green as desire and fresh as renunciation

My work has been published in journals such as Poetry, The New Criterion, and Southern Poetry Review, and in Best American Poetry 1990. I have won two awards from the Poetry Society of America and I was a finalist in the 1998 Yale Series of Younger Poets.

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