Jealousy

Jealousy

I want to say:

                        there’s a patch of moonlight

                        on the rug.  Get up, stand in it, be seen through—

I want you:

                        … out in the night

                        where the ragged patches converge:

But the only thing that’s said is no-

thing and I think it’s been like this, for the length

of the span of your finger on my arm, but that’s not

accurate.  I don’t want to be, but still, I’m pulled out

of it, my sheath

of skin, as if it were slit down the inseam

and the whole thing ungloved.  For the width

of that, and then the long buzz of nerves’ neurons

aimless groping sizzle when the squeeze

is let go, throbs like withdrawal, or, if after

you’ve stayed in, the slow hum of coming

off pitch.

The moon is new these days.  And out

now in the day.  But clouds, their flat hobnail span,

smother it anyway.  And I am a careless

gardener.  Imagine.  No don’t.  consider—instead—

the cause of our seceding and then,

entering other grottos, it’s all ceiling light

it’s all fire from someone else’s mouth. 

So where can it go, where can it all go but out

the tube of sound.  Oh.  A sighed Oh.  Not the

caught OH! but soft, moss absorbed (oh)—salt-

less.  Words are fine, sure, here in the dark

and the coming rain.  They’re made for you

but fit like a clumsy shirt.  It’s the wrong size.

Is it true that the body remembers everything

it’s ever held?  Listen, the poet who wants you

to walk into that patch of moonlight, the woman

who doesn't give a shit for the thread

coming undone, she’s saying this too, she’s saying:

                        everything that lets go

                        still has its memory of attachment

                        and that which refused to let go

                        still has its uses—