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We’re in bed.
I can see as I look at the floor
that the carpet’s hairy. Should we be doing more?
I could vacuum. You could write down the lyrics
to your ad lib song that’s making me hiccup
from laughing so hard. The cat’s at the screen,
the dog’s on her pillow. My ex-girlfriend is curing brain
diseases in her lab. Your ex-girlfriend’s writing a sermon
or ministering to the poor. The cat’s got worms, and
I keep forgetting to go to the vet. Your made-up song
is petering out. So is the feeling that we belong
in this bed. The dog stands up, yawns, circles,
lies back down. We touch hands, shift on our pillows,
and we’re starting to giggle at something
you’ve said in a Martian accent. Somewhere a phone rings,
a motorcycle roars by. The summer is lying
to us: Lounge around. Sleep some more. There is no dying.
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Sometimes I like to pretend we’re Chagall
and Bella, flying like kites above the town,
afloat in air like sea. Yes, the painting’s fairly
water-like, greens, grays, blues, Bella’s hair
buoyant, her arm drifting, her black gown
pulling down at the throat. And Chagall’s
arm around her, his leg outspread—he’s pulling
her ashore. God, he is. She has drowned,
you can see she’s gone, her flat unblinking stare,
and his eyes are ringed with gray. There,
can’t you see? He jumped in when he found
her floating, her seaweed black hair, the pall
of her alabaster skin. Without him, she’d fall
to the town below. Fueled by overpowering
grief and love, he transforms water to air,
that’s all he can do, I see now, just barely
hold on. Now I see a grave in the sky, down
and up reversed. One of us will die first.
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