Four Poems

Ode to a 20-Foot Steinway Concert Grand Piano

Nights awake I think of you                                             r curious three-legged body, resting in stately silence, a concert hall                                                    full! of sound, like a secret with(in you.   Oh how the vaporous night breeds the most potent of longings! I can see the sheen of your smooth                                                           black skin— I can taste your scent of wood and varnish, intoxicating. I want to run my hands along the hard                                       curves of your body, shameless as the un- thinking gentleman trailing absent fingerprints on an auto                                      show Ferrari—fingerprints soon to be buffed away by some poor worker whose task is endless. I want to throw open all your doors: your polish-                                                                                ed hood with its magnificent hump, tinkly strings of steel                                    maturing to brass, thick and rich. then the final silence—to be broken gently, like unfolding                                                                                             hands in prayer. I’ll pull               the blanket off your smile with an ardent arc of the arm, sending red cloth in rippling flight into a heap                     off your treble end.  Then I will play you— though better hands have done it before. I will tremble                          with anxiety and desire.  Perhaps I will only manage an A-flat major chord, winding from the lowest                                        lows to their overtones—Chopin’s notion of amorous disaster. Uncertainty Pleased to see you—your hair is ravish- ing and your fingers delic- ious.  It’s true I become mawkish in your absence, dull and bored as a school of gray fish. Reluctantly I furnish my life with distractions, devour Miss- ion burritos while watching the demolit- ion of sidewalks by small, garish bulldozers.                       At night I sh- ower alone, polish away lather from skin like the residue of a Danish pastry, gaze with dismay at my stylish fingers (their touch not yours)—I extinguish the spray and crawl into the soft, lavish cove of my bed, where mostly I lie* awake and wish you were here, among other thoughts not fit to be publish- ed. Inertia: The Kiss in my dream          you reach towards me          I cannot move to meet you:          inertia: the kiss lights where          there is no turn- ing away *    *    *    * The girl is on a plane: this is not unusual, but nearly always difficult. Ah, the romance of being whisked away!  Miles into the air with the lilting desire of some bird whose feathers ruffle with sudden height. But the loss of gravity is distressing to her now. She presses her nose into the ridiculous airplane window.  Her desire is vast & carnal.  The metal bird that contains her dips low, teasing, grazes the island lengthwise: the meaning of the Empire State Building is not easily mistaken.