Kathleen Winter
against detachment
The berries, rolling
toward us, rolling
away from us.
We're realists:
guilt is practical
but not original.
Guilt survives pleasure,
concise respirer.
Even lingerie tires,
frayed cloth bares wires.
Now, my amanuensis
winces.
Yet how else live
but with this involuntary drive
to open and cry out, flowers
following the sun, ours
this craving to sing,
to photograph everything.
Petit Magritte
A miniature is a gift.
A minotaur is a bull?
A wooden horse is no gift,
and a bum steer is no bull.
My lover, a matador,
a matador my lover.
Give me over, racedriver.
A jacket with handwarmer
pockets, a rabbit collar.
Here in the City of Light,
nobody has a dollar.
perfect loser
I want always
to lose right,
to toss everything
necessary, nothing
overly, to know
cold what
other's worth
retaining:
me the mollusk,
lapping sap,
making it, slow,
blind, into myself.
post hoc ergo propter hoc
This is the splendorof calm love, the room
white on the inside
and on the outside.
Remembering reality
is subject to attenuation.
Fed by the moon, dune
grass grows barnacles
of burr. Even innocence
has consequences.
So what if you talk
on the telephone
now and touch yourself
instead of taking
his fingers into
your mouth, almost
swallowing them.
At least you can sleep
with yourself afterward.