--WE SLEEP LIKE ANIMALS, WE PLAY PRETEND

…I have a new story, “Ask and You Shall Receive” written with Meg Tuite and a couple of other writers up at Used Furniture and here under “Words in Print.”

…I just got the print anthology, “Love Notes” in the mail. I have three poems in it—“Teenage Summer,” “If I Were A Poet” and “Aladdin.”
Here they are:

Teenage Summer


The good thief watches while
we soak in a night-blackened sea of shimmering oil,
water that makes us weightless
even as you kick and paddle.
We’ll be old soon enough.
Now the stars urge us to write songs or
yodel so that our laughter rifles through the sky.
The waves rock us like babies.
They slurp across our slick skins
and beckon us to kiss,
kiss deep and long
as lovers do.



If I Were A Poet

If I were a poet I would
say things better,
string sentences across a window with a thick font
so you’d see me in a new light,
see how serious I was,
how tender I could be with this sheer
and fragile love of ours.

If I were a poet I would reshape syllables and sonnets into
a song sewn specifically about the sound of your breathing when the stars
hang up on a night wire to watch
like so many bejeweled birds.

If I were a poet it might make me a better lover,
less insecure and needy.
I might be able to shake this sense that you are in the closet right now,
looking for something to wear
while filling a suitcase for your escape.



Aladdin

There was something once,
a small shimmering thing
that sat between us
that was us
burgeoning
beckoning bigger than either of us knew,
but now it rests in a dim closet
no thicker than a dime
no different than Aladdin’s lamp
waiting patiently for fingers
to bring it to life.

If you could move your heart
a little to the left
I would slip in behind you,
spooning,
rubbing just gently enough
to let you know how much
I care.