MiPo Poetry Board Best of 2002

Narcissus and Echo
(Famous Couples Challenge)

You must be half god to stare up
at me with such unforgivable lips.
Come on then, get up; let’s kiss
this water dry, let’s slow it all
to a thick-mouthed amen, amen.

Stand till your sloshed mop dries
stiff and show me things reversed.
Can’t you hear—I’ll slap that watered
mask! Your face folds up—Ah. Down
there, is it? Yes. We’ll swim, water-

glazed to the beheaded bard. Will
you show it to me then, the sky
viewed wet? I see them move,
your lips. Speak. I’m in the water.

I’m in the water and fishes think
I’m food and I am, yours, if water
demands it. Where did you go?
No cave…floating. Here, the sky’s
green. Wait—W—Wa—stare up

like you do, yes, look away when
you do, and those eyes love me,
lips hang for a quick tongue, are
you—me? Oh, I’ll drown to have
it. I’m spilling on your wet cheeks,

but your face just moans quiet
and pales. Oh if there are gods
or arrows in those skewed blue
skies, sink me, sink—or duplicate—
skies, sink me, sink—or duplicate—

Closing the Book
(When you never want to fall in love again Challenge)

You’ll be on a bike, the kind with one wheel,
the kind with buttons and beeps and a small
timer; you’ll pedal on carpet (nearly Astroturf)
while little television screens flash sports news
girls music sitcoms, none of them sounding.

You’ll be a little sweaty, your pulse will steady
at 138, you’ll set your magazine of hairstyles
and astrological upsets, and watch the happy
scenery. Salty drips will concentrate, like
always, on weight loss or grief or smiles

or death. Some young one will pass you on
Nikéd foot, winking something demure at
your spinning bubble. A smile into her
bellybutton, stretched slight over freshly
pressed abs. You’ll dream awhile over her

skin, then crash into her eyes as you pedal.
It will be babies inside, and early morning
kisses and moments of genius and fatigued
crying because you just don’t understand.
She will take you fifty years onto a wilted

loveseat, where you two sit, content and
quiet for the rest of your lives as everything’s
been spoken already, and your legs match
hers in flaccid rest. You die, and she dies,
and you retire back to your stationary

bicycle. All of the breasts and waists and
quiet greens or browns or ever-pulling grays
of eyes, framed by pulled-back straight
curly wiry frizzed hair tell the same story,
and you’ll pedal, legs smarting, happy eremites.