Girard the trolley tracks’
steel harmonics humming
it was dark and
in a poorly heated room
north of Pine a lover waited to
dismantle me Yo-Yo Ma was
playing the Cello Suites
again they echoed in the
rib cages of the
squats on 54th my thighs
lace-encased glissando of
black stockings the Suites
begin with what the instrument
can do cunning hook
and eye of the garter belt
progress to what it cannot
beloved in the piebald
park between the cemetery and
the dollar store the monkey bars
sang with cold Bach makes us
hold one note in mind so
we can hear several as though
at once here on Eid you held
my hand other people’s
families converged and
the dark tremolo of
goat smoke rose sweat pressed
the sundress to the small of
my back beloved I listened
to you wishing your mother
on the phone a sweet breaking
of the fast it’s a trick of the
baroque beloved those old
notes the mind keeps trying
to hold onto before I left
the house my son who is almost
seventeen played me a song
he wrote called
Doctor Misery your baby
left you he sang beloved
in the illuminated laundromat
on 47th the clothes rotated
to the cello’s churn to a
police siren’s wolf tone my own
body was once
so pure only one person
touched it and only
on Fridays so pure it spun
water and fiber into gold
music Ma says is not one
thing look beloved
inside my uterus a gear-
box inside the ridges
of my sex a mountain
range beloved when
you left it was another
December you folded
your many-colored
scarves sealed your
books into boxes now
in a blank room in another
city you are writing an
academic paper on
perfection you chop
carrots into bright coins
dusk’s adagio on snow outside
you touch the dancer’s hip
point lift that long
bowed note from her
mouth you told me
beloved there are two
kinds of perfection: order
and seeing things as they
are the cello constructs
a galaxy of neutron
stars from the flicker of
light in each row house
on Resurrection Blvd
the well-ordered scene in the
crumbling Victorian where
my lover slides a hand under
my skirt undoes my
bindings in the body
cavity it is the emptiness
that makes air
reverberate it is the
emptiness that sings

poetry-magazinebeloved, I was driving down

poetry-magazineOn a Line by Petrarch

beloved, I was driving down

On a Line by Petrarch