“Here, when I say I never want to be without you,somewhere else I am sayingI never want to be without you again. And when I touch youin each of the places we meet,in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dyingand resurrected.When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,in each place and forever”

“Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love PoemMy left hand will live longer than my right. The riversof my palms tell me so.Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finishat the same time. I thinkpraying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I thinkstaying up and waitingfor paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension thisis exactly what's happening,it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamicsof mournful Whistlers,the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge.I like the idea of differenttheres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,a Bronx where people talklike violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehowkind, perhaps in the nookof a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayedanyone. Here I havetwo hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your backto rest my cheek against,your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.My hands are webbedlike the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezedsomething in the wombbut couldn't hang on. One of those other worldsor a life I feltpassing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's bellyshe had to scream out.Here, when I say I never want to be without you,somewhere else I am sayingI never want to be without you again. And when I touch youin each of the places we meet,in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dyingand resurrected.When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,in each place and forever.”

“I had no business trying to see you leave, see death arrive, I owe you an apology, an elegy, I owe you the drift of memory, the praise of everything, of saying it was the best decision of my life, to hold you full, hold you empty, & live as the only bond between the two.”

“I like the idea of differenttheres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,a Bronx where people talklike violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehowkind, perhaps in the nookof a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayedanyone.”

“In other languages,you are beautiful- mort, muerto- I wishI spoke moon, I wish the bottom of the oceanwere sitting in that chair playing cardsand noticing how famous you areon my cell phone- picture of your eyesguarding your nose and the fireyou set by walking, picture of dawngetting up early to enthrall your skin- what I hateabout stars is they’re not those candlesthat make a joke of cake, that you blow onand they die and come back, and youyou’re not those candles either, how often I realizeI’m not breathing, to be like youor just afraid to move at all, a lungor finger, is it time alreadyfor inventory, a mountain, I have threeof those, a bag of hair, box of ashes, if youwere a cigarette I’d be cancer, if youwere a leaf, you were a leaf, every leaf, as faras this tree can say.”

“Making it in poetryThe young teller at the credit union asked why so manysmall checksfrom universities? Because I writepoems I said. Whyhaven't I heard of you? BecauseI write poemsI said.”

“Then I felt up silence. Then silence and I went all the way.”