My dearest Anne,
I am living by a lake
with a young man
I met one week after you died.
His beard is red,
his eyes flicker like cat’s eyes,
& the amazing plum of his tongue
sweetens my brain.
He is like nobody
since I love him.
His cock sinks deep
in my heart.
♦
I have owed you a letter
for months.
♦
I wanted to chide
the manner of your death
the way I might have once
revised your poem.
You are like nobody
since I love you,
& you are gone.
♦
Can you believe
your death gave birth to me?
Live or die,
you said insistently.
You chose the second
& the first chose me.
I mourned you
& I found him
in one week.
♦
Is love the sugar-coated poison
that gets us in the end?
We spoke of men
as often as of poems.
We tried to legislate away
the need for love—
that backseat fuck
& death caressing you.
♦
Why did you do it
in your mother’s coat?
(I know
but also know
I have to ask.)
Our mothers get us hooked,
then leave us cold,
all full-grown orphans
hungering after love.
♦
You loved a man who spoke
“like greeting cards.”
“He fucks me well
but I can’t talk to him.”
We shared that awful need
to talk in bed.
Love wasn’t love
if we could only speak
in tongues.
♦
& the intensity of unlove
increased
until the motor, the running motor
could no longer power
the driver,
& you, with miles to go,
would rather sleep.
♦
Between the pills, the suicide pills
& our giggly vodkas in the Algonquin…
Between your round granny glasses
& your eyes blue as glaciers…
Between your stark mother-hunger
& your mother courage,
you knew there was only one poem
we all were writing.
♦
No competition.
“The poem belongs to everyone
& God.”
I jumped out of your
suicide car
& into his arms.
Your death was mine.
I ate it
& returned.
♦
Now I sit by a lake
writing to you.
I love a man
who makes my fingers ache.
I type to you
off somewhere in the clouds.
I tap the table
like a spiritualist.
♦
Sex is a part of death;
that much I know.
Your voice was earth,
your eyes were glacier-blue.
Your slender torso
& long-stemmed American legs
drape across
this huge blue western sky.
♦
I want to tell you “Wait,
don’t do it yet.”
Love is the poison, Anne,
but love eats death.