as the Graces work, slow

i am working on my oeuvre,
the thing that will make you gasp
& say: This is what i meant,
this is how i pictured you: sweet like
the blossoms but heady
like how a bar smells at 2am.

i miss the
chalkiness of your teeth:
lined soldiers
i fired once.  the night
opened its stamens one after
another into that

silence.

i am where you are not.
i am where the fault lines have
forgotten their jigsaw
patterns.  not even remembering
the shape of pangaea
or how supple it was, all buff
against the water -

i smell of how you loved
the desert's solitude

& outside
the streets stink
of rotten meat
& inside
the bed tilts
toward the window
in order to
better take in
the view

from here to the Tiber.
from you to the
inside of some ship, cargo-heavy
& traveling to
where the pyramids
sink in
to the rivers
at sun
set.

trapeze artistry.  dangling
jagged-like above

the city in
its pinafore waiting
for you to
pour the water
into its eager tea
cup -

this is memory.  the filth
rotting, retched
where you cannot see my lines.
i open the honeysuckle
& taint your tongue with its
lies.  this is more about
flowers & buildings & the vast
of time than you
or me.

i'll turn the lights off &
light some candles at night
while i work.  deft
like i am spinning a
lattice where you
cannot find a place to rest
amid its loops & curves, hungry like
a room in which
all corners refuse you:
too filled with angles, bony, un
shadow.

takeoff2

some notes on the trees

i.

as the scuffling continues: as the asphalt
gains depth of field, as
the leaves gouge their noble way across it,

i am not sure how much more i can take.

There is no thing to take, you would say. you did say: God you make it sound like a death scene,
or an epitaph, or a sex scene in which each party wants to engulf & swallow
the other whole. you make it sound like

you have never seen the trees before.

ii.

of course i have seen the trees/ in all of their seasons. i remember
climbing a tree when i was six-years old because i had nothing else to climb, & no
where else to go. my mother stood at the base of the trunk, calling up to me:
some thing about Death, five days too late.
for five whole days they did not tell me she was dead.

(she smelled of calico & chocolate & strong italian vinegar; in those years
when i was hers to mould, she was my tree)

when i climbed down i had sap in my hair, stuck there. i had
taken death in to my mouth, as one would a lover or a piece of candy.
remember: i was six years old/ i shouldn't have been opening my mouth to just anyone.
i cut the sap out from my hair, myself, with a rusty pair of scissors & left the hair in the bathroom sink
for my mother to find. i was in mourning - if i had known then
the customs, i would have begun to rend my clothing, to band my arm in crepe - &
i realized that while i'd been up there in the confines/ in the expanse
of that tree i hadn't once heard god speak to me
to tell me he was sorry.

iii.

yes: climbing out of trees has been my life story. or at least part of the story.
i refrained from telling you every thing because i thought
that in autumn there would be time enough for the details; plenty of time
before we needed resuscitation; we could banter back & forth until december if need be
about words & the origins of all species & whatever else you wanted to discuss -
i don't know. maybe: politics, (not sex), the Silurian period,
the way the south smells in summer of peaches & too many goddamn flowers.

trees make me think of Ovid, naturally. you had no idea who he was
or why he mattered. instead you made me watch some drawn-out discovery channel special
about Einstein & the theory of relativity. even the experts, the scientists
who were being interviewed couldn't break the theory down into simple layman's terms.
i wondered if you understood, or were merely fascinated by the idea of Space. i thought to myself:
AND THIS MATTERS?

there were some topics for conversation that were (obviously) considered taboo,
off-limit. over dinner one night, when we were not
together, i brought Rape up -
you choked on your beer.

it was then, though, (several moments/ beats later) that you spoke the word Love.
maybe i should have made you choke more often.

kris t kahn's poetry has appeared in The Cortland Review, Naked Poetry, Stirring, and various other journals. His chapbook, the Gospel according to Thomas, is available from 2River View. He is also co-editor of SOMETIMES CITY. He lives in New Jersey.