Middle Distance

Nothing to write about
but my youth as it is ending,

as there is nothing but youth
in my past. My mother. How she made me

bad in some ways and good in others,
the body I’ve had as it comes into focus

in the world’s cross-hairs. On the street
a man says to a woman: I ain’t done with you.

Now and Then

Now and then you meet a stranger, desire
to make him unstrange. The moon is full
as an angel’s throat and you spit in it
as a girl spits with her father
in the ditch by the road by the river.

Bliss. Crushing gentleness of snowfall.
The world so white you want to fuck it up,
white river riding on the stranger’s back.
Now and then you meet desire, a stranger—

and in the morning the moon’s
still full, the girl no longer
ashamed to be ashamed.