“The art of love” and “An idea of afterlife”

The art of love


The wet finger of Our Lady 
of Rain taps across the sea
down the karst-bright tower blocks, 

past the cars disappearing in fog.
Our one-bedroom flat echoes
with Siouxsie and the Banshees 

and I leaf through Dad’s paperback
romances and the glossy Erotika: 
Magazine for Culture and the Art of Love. 
     
My senses are a basin of wet laundry 
that needs to be wrung out 
and I want to be kissed.  

I practice in the bathroom mirror
with a pencil: eyes closed, neck tilted 
like they do it in Erotika. 

And I start smoking 
in the school park after classes 
and when I walk our Irish setter. 

One day I find myself alone 
with Vicke. He’s always in the park, 
he and his mudpuddle 

of delinquent buddies.  
And those girls. 
They already wear bras 

and smell of sour cherries, 
and you can tell they smoke 
more than just cigs. 

Vicke’s curls seem soft 
like bat wings and fireflies 
spring from his eyes. I’m 

put off by his black fingernails
and the cracked skin around his mouth  
but I want to bottle those flickers. 

We’re under an old oak, 
its canopy a liquid of shadows. 
The rain echoes soft and blue

and the gravel underfoot crumbles 
like cookies. Vicke sits on the backrest 
of the bench. I ignore the smears on his 

bomber and remember the practice: 
close your eyes, Dea, lean in. 
His lips are cold, glassy. 

My tongue silvers like a baby eel  
into his mouth. His tongue is lazy 
and tastes like pool water. 

Slightly sanitized. Colorless. 
I take a breath, his lips 
now sealed around mine 

and air thick like tree resin 
glops down my washboard chest.
I inhale Vicke’s breath,

breath bitter, breath sweet
with the reek of glue 
he had huffed.

An idea of afterlife 


It’s easy to romanticize parts. Lace 
veil on a hat. A silk shoulder strap. 
A single instead of an album. 
It’s easy to tend to a garden patch
and not notice the rustling nightfall. 
It’s easy to fall. It’s easy to get fooled. 
To confuse vertigo with affection. 
It’s easy to overdo. To slip between 
the worlds. Ambivalence is easy, 
too, and reading love notes left in lieu 
of condolence. To recognize oneself
in other women. Foolish women.  
In the texture of their hair. Soft 
credulity. Their round limbs. 
To be a sojourn to all, then dead.
It’s easy to harpoon a sliver of lime 
on the bottom of a glass in lieu 
of something fleshier. Less slippery. 
It’s easy to wonder what happens 
to a dead man’s photographs  
of his love-hive. Silken and giving.  
What tech junkyard recycles them
glass with glass, brunette with brunette.
It’s easy to ask what idea of afterlife 
a player might have. A wall of closeups 
arranged like a large, simulated meadow 
that spheres into a shimmering ever after? 
In one, a pair of hands holding blackberries 
in the cradle of her body, their dark juices 
staining her thighs. Another with mica flecks 
in place of hair. A white chrysanthemum 
held between lips. Labia covered in goldleaf. 
Ruby glitter running down the landing strip.
Moonlight sweeping across that meadow 
mirage like a thief’s velvet flashlight.