Found in Willow Springs 84
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Switches
The first doctor offered
to remove both ovaries.
One minute the lake is flat,
the next the wires on the hoist
where the boat
floats are humming.
Ordinary pleasures:
A card game, straw flowers
on the horizontal plane.
Vertically, silent cells
rev up production.
The man driving from California
to Michigan refuses to turn left the whole trip.
Something ruthless is accelerating.
Our bodies, cozy as beaver dams,
start to seem unfamiliar, property
rented for a season, light switches
our fingers can’t find in the dark.
What Pain Doesn't Know About Me
How I visualize him as a rooster. How I nickname him Sparky.
My rabbit-heart. How it looks motionless in the bank of clover
but secretly continues to nibble.
I can tell time underwater. I sing hymns there.
He’s not pocketed my vanity.
My history with onions.
My skill at parallel parking. Cigar-smoking men have been
known to applaud.
We are not intimates although we’ve slept together. More
like roommates forced to share the cramped space of my body.
Even now, in my freezer, I hoard a bag of rosy peaches
frozen whole. I skin them holding them under hot water.
If hit with black light, I glow like the blue scorpions
used to treat cancer in Cuba.
