A love poem is what forms naturally behind her lovers’ eyes as they walk away down the street afterwards. The decision that lies ahead, whether to cross directly in front of the church or to tack towards the tree-lined border of the park and the yelling soccer field beyond … all poetry comes to an end when the encounter includes heavy traffic and they wished they’d checked out the view from her second story window. At what point do they shrink to the size she turns away from, imagining, of course, that she’s even there?
Mary’s room, mid-afternoon. Positions, as they change. Straight up, or rude, or rolled into a ball, broken-backed. A love poem is what forms naturally. Pulling back to expose the greater or lesser (the bra and the ket) of some movement: two bodies, composing, decomposing in clubfooted arching or delicate spasm. Even the most attentive voyeur is overcome by the tableau’s complications. It is impossible to tell who eats and who is eaten.
The love poetry laid in light by her walkaways is brief as twitch, with the afterswell of strung-out haiku running out of memory like a slow puncture. Love me love me not let air be air love me Mary love me not not. Though from the better served she bleeds the occasional ode, rheumy with color and verbs, queering after strange dogs. Esmeralda, for instance, ruined blond, say, or for example white queen of rainy wood.
The quick fish as one of them imagines himself writing, regard you (you, Mary, or whichever name you stripped and lay back to), the quick fish regard you from their elegant dwarf spirals … your arms, mangled to a near-nakedness of wounded bone, lifting in languor through swaying submarine clarity. Drowned in your shepherdess’s clothes, how many lovers have you cradled with so seductive a sorrow? I’m not one of those who fell into your arms to die, my mouth open in the thirst of your hair, my eyes emptied of all presumption of innocence or shame. And if I return again (may I? will you still me lying where I left you?), to tend your grave of false-light and thoughtless water, none may say ‘this is not love’.
But the correct heraldry has nothing to do with fireworks or forgiveness, least of all the released fusillade of sperm over ice. Mary’s sketchbook, lying open on the floor, disappoints with the frugality of its lines. Guesswork makes one feel dirty. The bug hums beneath the terrace table but the reception is dialed in so low even a wedding party would bleed through as little more than insects stoked on a rave. Knife and fork, blood-crumbed lips, perspirant fingers, a slightly damp tablecloth: love’s images. The coldest eye sees and says ‘truly’. And Mary records it all. With colored pencils and file folders stamped Esmeralda, Carmilla, Alejandra, or Lucette.