What Is This Thing Called Love: Poems

Reader, I am here
to assure you of the truth of this account.

how you grew up believing anyway that romance
was going to tuck you under its tender white wing

all the flies getting married to the corpses

and carry you off to someplace where you’d never notice

of bloated deer and raccoons by the roadside,
or the man outside the corner store, engaged
to every dusty bottle on the shelf, or the penned cows
yearning for the hammer to the skull, for something certain;

in the boutique hotel, where in the bathroom
there are little soaps and lotions, a sewing kit

crashing through the shrubs and sending
the lizards skittering, scattering the methodical ants

Grazie—for their generous criticism of this manuscript, and for being my love-dogs: Susan Browne, Cheryl Dumesnil, Lisa Glatt and David Hernandez, Dorianne Laux and Joe Millar, Ruth Schwartz. For all their support: Steve Huff and Thom Ward of BOA Editions. Much gratitude, for asking: Jill Bialosky. And for being my corner man, Rob McQuilkin.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following journals where many of these poems were published, sometimes in different versions: American Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Bloomsbury Review, Chelsea, Cimarron Review, Connecticut Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Points, Iowa Review, Margie, Pearl, Poetry, Poetry International, Runes, Salt Hill, Threepenny Review, Water~Stone.

“Miniatures” was awarded first place in the Davoren Hanna Poetry Competition and first appeared online.

well then
I don’t want to know you anyway
and I don’t give a fuck what you think
of my poem