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I stalked my husband's lover until we came face-to-face in the
Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Before my eyes she morphed into a mummy. My husband
appeared. He performed unspeakable acts upon her
as if I were not there, then turned to me and said, smiling,
GET A LIFE.
I was lost in Midtown. Suddenly the lights went out. I ran through
the street searching for a light switch. A drag queen dressed in the
season's new Pollock-drip lavender handed me a switch with cut-off
wires. The party's over, she said in a voice that sounded curiously
like my own.
*
I had never skied but I was not afraid. My husband was with me.
Together we slalomed to the edge. We made love. I pretended
I had to send an e-mail. I turned to him,
you must go now. He disappeared, swept away
by an avalanche I had e-mailed into existence.
A black veil landed on my head, along with some bird droppings.
*
I sat alone in the snow, typing briskly: Où sont les neiges d'antan…
I'm looking forward
to Prague someone
a lover, perhaps,
or another intrepid player
in my story, which,
half invented, was always
only half true, said
you must go to Prague
there you will write
the unwritten poem
phrases will explode like
grenades you will see
their slivers, feel their
carotid cuts so why not
go to Prague, stand, perhaps,
in the cemetery of the Jews
where stones are pages
of a book not here
where words bump & grind
and we, like sex slaves,
are prey to their guile
there, in that synagogue
of resurrection we will
find our songs
our syntax how I'd
love to meet you there,
dear muse, as if
for the first time,
in the land
of Havel's
Velvet Revolution
let me lie beneath
the gull's wing
the span and treble
of its cries
take communion
from the wind
here
time is green
as the tide's hand
upon the shore
your light
gentle as a pulse