To open this issue is to give way
yield to the gush of blood and time
pushing me, without a mind to know why, back
into pre-war Saigon with its smells of
soup and charcoal braziers and livestock
dirty bare feet marking time with purpose
over a thin veneer of French harlot.

The century-old Chinaman is turned discreetly
away while he prepares you for me.
I wait because the waiting is good.
The waiting lets me believe I still have a choice.
He finally lifts the memory to my mouth.
There is reverence; a dedication to craft

in his hands as I breathe you back into me
I’m ushered through that strange quality of
light in waking up from an afternoon sex nap
waking to a cool sheet and slightly damp hair
and that steep western light.
Guiding me this way to the unspoken knowledge
that we will make love again soon.  Over here is
knowing that I have never been so thoroughly known
and just there is the mango and cream incident.
I hope he remembers to leave certain doors

closed. The Abandoned.  The Lie.
The realization that we can’t live in the French harlot
veneer; that it breaks and we become the
inevitable, the ordinary. 
Leave those shut and bring me another afternoon.
Let the tiger run loose in my blood.

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Because he is my left hand, you see
not the right.
The right hand is a showboat, the
quarterback with all its dexterity
always threading and opening and
making the thinnest slices
the finest lines

The left is the practical unsung.  It is the
opposing force of pressure and
balance; a stage for the right hand’s
magic tigers.  The left hand is the stevedore
the bouncer holding back the herd
while the chosen dance.
The simple fulcrum
upon which the world can be moved

He is my counterweight, gladly falling
so I can be lifted.

He believes it is his job, you see
as a father.

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concentration broken. splattered china. bent, too soft institutional spoon molds to the taste of you. metal is not autocratic in terms of this. magnitude. cheap tin of everydayness gives way to skin tremolo. nothing thicker than impressions left in sheets. function fails, gives way to form. grid to fractal. the push of mattress on ins and outs of ankles takes precedent. eyes roll back in conflict dimension. astral marking of so-plain elements. interfere. redirect.

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Come over me like a chill
climb up into my turret
Christ save us all from a death like this
Strange to me now are the forms I meet
that are not you.

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I wear my snob down
at the end of my nose and look
through the bifurcated light
at this heartbreak
at her Insubstantial
at this sad product of our need
for excitement
for elbow rubbing and walking
in their Jimmy Choos
without ever leaving the couch

Then the critic goes soft
and lets the pity ooze in
unwelcome
So much easier to judge.

What will she be when glamor
leaves her bed
Will she curl up with a
good book
or another 10AM martini
this 21st century Gold Dust Woman
becomes a Monroe tragedy or
an Elisabethan punchline
straining the seams

and while the accumulation of
a vast liquid soul keeps
we plainer types afloat
hers wouldn’t drown a cigarette
in a paper cup

and still, we watch
for the same reason we look
at car races and hockey games
waiting for the wreck
waiting for the blood that proves
them human and damaged
and ultimately bereft of purpose
making our own cracks somewhat
more tolerable

With a choice between us or
them, I don’t know who my snob
hates more.

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