Dear Allison.

Tonight I did not understand (as


I lay with the careening nightskyness


a roof, house of grass with walls of fear,


possible approach surrounding me)


how maps painted a flat brown

inky Earth. The maps lied and I saw


it in the arabesque globe, globules of god,


I was lying alone in a park you see.


And I thought womanly thoughts, how no one
would appreciate this gesture of eggshell bravery,
this gesture of abandoning for abandon! this gesture
of whipping flagellation across its lashing teeth.


And you, you with your breakable tea bohemians, I


am too a breakable bohemian, cupped you have collected me
blown off dust from china stems steaming with chatter
chatter to everyone else, poetry to you (my poetry,

you--

to you). I trusted this schizophrenic city
tonight not to rush upon me from behind as
I turned cartwheels (I never told you because I never
remembered to, but once when I was a girl I spent the
summer learning, rope burn on the backs of knees. It wasn't sexy
it didn't need to be).

Letters are a curse. My photographic memory

a slimy receptacle, I balance as a ballerina wandering

home and tip my mind onto china bohemian fingers (and

I know you wonder the same, despite your love for poetry, the why,

the why, the why, the why, the why)

the illusion imposed upon me by mediator toward love object, you are the mediator,

the world is my love object, so some French asshole says.

I could sleep here-- you jump in lakes bare backed. I accuse you of being theatrical, you beg me to take it easy and you're trying and I now say stop trying. You are so lovely.