1.
He's yelling again,
so gaunt, he’s scary now. 
I see him throwing up 
when he goes to throw out 
the garbage. The porter who used 
to clean couldn't stand it and quit. 
In between the times they fight,
I hope he tells his wife
he loves her. I wonder 

if she’d believe him.
It’s been this way fifteen years.

Once a week, he puts on 
a nicely cut suit 
and they walk to the corner, 
hail a yellow cab. 
I never see them hold hands. 

She explains to me they go to 
their favorite Italian restaurant. 
I don’t believe her: 
I don’t think he likes to eat.

I hope they go to therapy 
where he gets help for anorexia,
apologizes for yelling at her.

2.
And then one day he's gone.

He is a catastrophe. 
In catastrophe theory, even with 
one failure a system 
goes bad, which means 

we’re all catastrophes. 
There are so many ways to fail. 
Sometimes, all we have 
is a fast-moving train at Obiralovka.
                        

If an arm falls off a saguaro, 
hits your head, it's heavy, 
might be a ton of pleats 
and spine, as if the tree 

were twirling and let go, eager 
to shed the extra weight, 
when really, too little rain 
killed the ribs, or too much 

left the rot, its burning sap.
The dumb cactus doesn't know
to be careful and kind.
I may have forgotten 

to be careful and kind to you.
Isn't that what love ushers in— 
a careening, and then the drop,
the dance so often ruined?
                        

A two a.m. tugboat blasts its horn 
on the fogged-in river, 
and I jump up from a dream 
of doom and drowning, think a ship
is headed straight for me.

Last time I heard sound that emphatic, 
it was a band at CBGB, 
my angry ex, not yet ex, 
worked to axe us as a couple 
by sweet-talking yet another woman
while the band tortured on.
The vibrations outside my head 
stayed outside my head then, 
as she docked at our table, 
thinner than me, 
more punk than me, 
sure—but, I could laugh then, 
almost anyone more punk than me. 
I could dribble drink rings
around spurious couplings, 
before the club shut its doors, 
before I understood we were a calamity.

My dog stretches out snoring
on my pillow, the bed warm.
The rain that caused the fog 
percusses the pane, as it beats out 
almost forgotten notes to Silly Girl.