*I quit writing poetry for 15 months, roughly between the end of my second relationship and my return to Texas.  I'm a little rusty, but these are my new children...
 

Collage Making

bits of magazine ads

strewn across the rug

isn't it strange

what a man will do for love?

with scissors and glue

snipping eyes, lips, hair

to make the pieces of you

placing words under the fullness

of your mouth which glistens

as with dew moistened

by these alien kisses

you always liked a man

with a little two-day old stubble

rubbing against your cheek

soft and warm, and never tongues

which are for tasting, not embracing

your body was like a scythe

lean and hard and male,

nothing like this

almost you

lying shattered on the rug.
 
 
 

Hiding Place
 

"I know a place"

you said

beyond the headlights of cars

and the cookie-cutter suburbia skyline

take me to the park

"i'll show you where the rocks

and the water collide"

buried beneath the canopy of oak limbs

stretching out like monstrous tentacles

across the blue

midnight sky breaking out in waves

of light; i reached

across the sponged-on black

of leaves and brushed my hand

across Orion's belt;

felt the nakedness

of seventeen-year-old lips

somewhere in the blackish void

where the wild things hide

behind picnic benches,

the universe blinks

and you

you start the game.
 

To Adam

my boyfriend's pants
drape across a chair
making me feel that he is here
somehow
like the smell
of fig
in his hair
that drenches these old wool sweaters
that never get washed
never shed
like my skin
into something new
no wonder
autumn is the deepest,
saddest time of year
but never darkest
always illumined
by yesterday's sunshine
filtered through these
strange blue-grey clouds
that seem to sink
to the ground
these pants
draped with belt
smell of fig
and incense
they wait
wrinkled and somber
on my chair.