Regrets Rhapsody

Apology for nothing and nothing’s spawn, apology
that falls like a shed hair. Regret roving

and insincere, rained upon, rhyming.

Sorry for surfeit, sorry for scarcity, for
sobriety, for ersatz

song in the face of sorrow, sickness,
sultry harmony.

Whose stress is it
that syncopates and whose
that strikes the wrong key? Sorry
not to say, not to be able
to say.

Say sorry to the head
that aches, that sways,
that revolves on its onliest socket
in time to a tune so few,
regrettably, can hear.

Simple Simon says, “Sing!”
Sorry that we sang.

Giving Up (to) the Ghost Rhapsody

Roll up your pant legs
Bend double and lick the sweat off your midriff.

The ghost has shapely abs. She eats
sunlight. Good

thing it’s so terribly hot today.

The ghost thrives in domestic chores,
watering the burnt plants, smiling

at the neighbor who hates her.

She would be you would be her, if
you understand what I mean she means

for you. She

licks the salt from the rims
of your eyelids. That craving

for salt is a sure sign. She

pulls your shirt off you as though
you were a little child, arms

overhead. She unzips your jeans.

And then puts them on. Her hips
are rounder than yours. Her roses-

and-cream throat scorches the
open neck of your shirt. Bend

double and your midriff is gone.
Giving up is to ghost

as salt is to residue, the tiny crystals
that dry into stinging grit, her

tongue replacing your tears.

Archipelago Rhapsody

Divinity made of blue
who pierces — a sliver

in skin. Sutures
sew gesture to new shape.

Something not, some
thing whose name is also

her location. Who dies
dyes her name, a tattoo

on the wrist. Whose red
vein looks blue at the pulse,

whose kindness
is unkind. Sister, unsister.

Wave far below wave, needle-steeple
seen from offshore, who

paints her eyes with vials of
perfume, who trusts no one, whose

spirit is emollient on
bereft skin. Cherished

ambivalence is what we
together call this super-

natural. Who seeks
through the palest blue

cloud: pursuit not
to be to be denied, not

to be escaped. Dense
mats in her dark

blue fur. Her abrasive
kinship, whose tongue

undoes, whose voice insists it has
my smell embedded in it.

Nacreous Rhapsody

The soul goes to the irritant, licks
it obsessively.

If the tongue — the true core of the self,
licks long enough?

A pearly raw spot.

Now to suck sweet fluid from
the blistered self.

Next tongue reaches to the eyelashes,
forcing the lids open.

Besotted with salt and sweet,
suppuration that proves

the something of all that
we do not know to be.

A soul in the making,
the tongue is.

The soul sleeps
on this. The soul sleeps

with her tongue for a pillow, hasping
a hoarse sing-song for all the sleepless hours.

Not-a-Monster Rhapsody

Sing bones or bonds, sing
apophatic catalog of

un-monster. Sing broth
and sing stirring. Sing spoon

slapped against the back of your
thigh.

Stirring our tune
is the prick of the thing

waking up, waking up. Who
has an appetite for

waking up. Sing gruel.

Sing viscous, though not
vivid. Not, naught, knot,

nod at this. Sing jewel, sing
fuel. Sing:

you are what you haven’t eaten.
Haven’t eaten

yet. Sing of what wasn’t
ever there. Un-monster air.

Zip, zed, zilch, zero-ogre
no-golem, nada-beast

burnt on the tongue, the tune
that eats you

you haven’t sung.