They


Adam alone had been Adam
unknown, shadowless under
the sun, lost in shadow under
the moon, lost in thought that thought
all things and found their names, and yet
could not find Adam in its thought.

The thought beyond Adam's thinking
grew visible and saw:
Adam abandoned, unwitting.
In her regard he saw himself thought,
in her thought found himself, found
Adam. His lips parted. Adam.

Endeared to himself in a globe
of thought, now Adam thought
multitudes of Adam
vanishing toward purity
 — himself, a column, line, a point,
then volumes of inanition.

Pity him! the serpent whispered,
placing the knowledge on her palm.
It was round and simple and shining:
You see how he consumes himself,
he is dying. She saw,
and offered the fruit, meaning:
of her might Adam eat
without himself falling to food
 — of her, of Eve, he could eat.
Then Adam lay there, sated, sleeping.

Figures crowded his dream in glory
 — while she, who desired only
the bright raiment of his gaze, now saw
her nakedness of food, food
he had dared and then possessed, then
surpassed, he, sealed as himself, as
Adam — ungrateful, starving.

What was she to herself in thought?
As little as thought could be to her?
She needed him bitterly
to raise her being to his lips,
cherish her lowliness by eating.
Descend into blindness, into
simplicity? be food again?
his food? less and less Eve?
sweeten herself all over?
despised again? devoured again?

Forgive him! the serpent hissed.




​
To What's-Her-Name


Being there together could be too hot
for comfort, but that density of life
in common made us zip and buzz, and sting.
We knew our flutterings mattered — the future
was us impatient to become itself,
and our chatter, all those nasty or tasty
predicates, mere excuses to revisit
the loud patch of our intoxicating names.
That rant of pollination fevered more
than anything, than any single passion could!
And now we're thinned out, all gone off to die
or be the scene's newest young hothead's
or hot young thing's dull, bumbling ancestor
 — and even you are full of irrelevant
reminiscences, as if too deranged
to do more than hover, you whose beauty shows
in all these scarred, disreputable gashes.

Back when your gentle attentions were picking
my heart clean in plain sight of everyone,
did I ever dream that, in pity for
your crumpled lips, I'd regret your smile's faint
fume of vitriol, your sudden, awful,
gulped-down squeal when you inched in for the kill,
the ready, shameless, hot gush of your gossip,
always virulent, always victorious?





Elena


Because she did such terrible things to them
with her sexiness and long, sauntering stride
and how she smiled and didn't avoid their eyes
but came right back with remarks of her own,
because day and night she wronged and injured them
with her height and olive skin and heavy jugs
 — Madonna mia! — and the creeps she walked
around with but never walked with one of them,
because anyone could see her innocence,
that having no women's tricks, what she had
to defend herself from all the guys who came
poking and pushing at her was craziness,
yelling out dirty words to hurt their hearing
and dressing herself up crazy and dumb
 — because of this the hard guys from Cherry Street,
they were the ones who busted into her flat
and pulled her boyfriend off her, worked him over,
broke his nose and chipped two teeth.
                                       And then because,
naked, bronze, tall, she stood there and never tried
to cover up while she yelled to let him go,
because of that they crapped all over the place,
they threw her underwear around and stomped it
 — to tell her how she had confused and hurt them — 
then, at wits' end, beat themselves off and scrammed,
having laid the tribute of their tantrum at
the altar of her high and white and double bed.