A Bit of Poetry

The Science of Goodbyes
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Sometimes I feel my skin is a city
in Spain, where you live as a gypsy

and I hate how you stand in Madrid,
in El Museo del Prado, naked, 
hunching over your body 
with a dolphin at your feet.

Symmetry, Spirituality: 
the crude-and-cruel architecture 
of your breasts, as a statue,
much like you, 
but refusing to be photographed alive. 

I’m learning how to use Cable Theory and 
squid nerves, electricity of the brain,
models to explain how I woke up in Barcelona,
dreaming about your molecules.

I wanted to wrap you in myelinated sheets
to conserve your signals 
or maybe open up my chest 
and shelter you like a butterfly
in a bullet-proof vest.

I sit in the cross-town bus 
listening to others in love, 
or searching for love, 
making up explanations 
for the concreteness of angels

or theories of how space-time 
folds over our backs
when we swim together. 
A scientific theory
can always be proven wrong, 
so we believe in astrology, 
the throw of the dice, our heart 
as an oracle. Vividly I remember: awake,

thinking you were pressed against me, and I see
the marina instead, with the boats and the sea,
clumsily imitating your irises,
not as grey or iridescent.
These are the strange things I dream about: 
two bodies with one head, 
our souls collapsed like childish lungs. 
When dreaming, I am confused 
like the wall is confused
when I drive a nail through its flesh,

the same wall upon which I kissed your
necklace, leaving an antiquated aura of glory.
Afterwards, I rearranged my furniture and lungs
to be closer to the lights, to see you reflected
in the windows as a maybe-comeback-goodbye,

expanding, smiling, unraveling the arteries.

"for AJS, the duck, the lion and the green pants."
Published in Quarto Magazine, 2006