Ivy ties the cellar door

in autumn, in summer morning glory

wraps the ribs of a mouse.

Love binds me to the one

whose hair I’ve found in my mouth,

whose sleeping head I kiss,

wondering is it death?

beauty? this dark

star spreading in every direction from the crown of her head.

My love’s hair is autumn hair, there

the sun ripens.

My fingers harvest the dark

vegetable of her body.

In the morning I remove it

from my tongue and

sleep again.

In the steamer is the trout

seasoned with slivers of ginger,

two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.

We shall eat it with rice for lunch,

brothers, sister, my mother who will

taste the sweetest meat of the head,

holding it between her fingers

deftly, the way my father did

weeks ago. Then he lay down

to sleep like a snow-covered road

winding through pines older than him,

without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.

Mother and daughter sing like young girls.

If my father were alive, he would play

his accordion and sway like a boat.

I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,

nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch

the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers

running away in the grass.

But I love to hear it sung;

how the waterlilies fill with rain until

they overturn, spilling water into water,

then rock back, and fill with more.

Both women have begun to cry.

But neither stops her song.

I’m sure you won’t believe this,

but if a policeman walks behind me, I tremble:

What would Shaft do? What would Shaft do?

Bits of my courage flake away like dandruff.

I’m sweating even as I tell you this.

I’m not cool.

I keep the real me tucked beneath a wig,

I’m a small American frog.

I grow beautiful as the theatre dims.

When I am fat,

Ladies sipping diet colas will whisper:

Look at him. My God how’d he get so big?

And beneath those questions they’ll think,

I wonder if he still makes love?

I wonder what he looks like naked?

Love me skinny girls,

As you love jenny craig and vegetables,

Love me fat girls,
As you love insecurity and everything filling.

I’ll let you kiss my triple chins,

I’ll let you swim in the warmth of my embrace.

I have a goddamn for every blade

of snow. You’re not even to the road

before it’s clinging to your coat.

Said I wouldn’t write anymore

about matters of the heart,

so I’m writing about the snow –

God’s cryogenic rain; cold trick/le

of repetition falling quietly as ghosts.

Is this what Etheridge meant?

Walls blacker than a throat;

Poet dying at the window;

Flakes / covering your tracks as you go.