three

she cooks you green eggs and ham in greener
mornings, skin speckled, drops of emerald tiptoeing
across the floor, she reads him to you at night so
you might remember a balmy green impermeable:
"Today you are You,
that is truer than true.
There is no one alive
who is Youer than You".
Dr. Seuss teaches you to forget until you have
forgotten what to forget, how to know
this child serving you runny eggs, your scrambled
life, will always be a little greener,
a little Youer.

two

you can taste the salt of a tear before it can
bloom down my cheek, you can hear the song of fingerseas
in my conchshell ears before our alpine love may
pop them, you can catch the whiff of secrets woven
into my hair before jasmine may sit in the tangles,
your eyes drape a burqa on my flesh even before night's
velvet may try- this we must call love. tonight when
you draw me into a world of the softest pinks
and dollops of creamed air and an earth who
trembles too for our touch, this universe we
cup into our palms will not have room for words-
they tell me you will not have to ask for what
has always been yours: this we must call soulmates,
sole lovers, a sole self. and as we lie here
contour-pressed, selfsame wondering
at selfsame moon, in sameskin, so I only know
where I end by where you begin, there is a soft

tear: of my mothers, of pasts leaking in, of a trickle
of a snagged fabric you have never tasted. (how have
I then?) there are wormwhisperings now in my bones,
collapsing in disarray, jaunty shapes that do not know
how to fit into your every nook and cranny. they clothe me
in fleshmeats who have never felt lips not tracing
lifelines but drawing them, who have never had
constellations read in their freckles. my thigh
is taught not to swim through yours but only trust
the murmurings of my other (how is not yours?),
my breasts lectured not to swell but to hide away
in shame: they cannot blush if the many me's tumbling
through the ages never could, joints once oiled now
creaking. you once laughed

me through the stories of yesterday, through worlds
where love was a strange word on the tongue, to
swish around the teeth and spit out again: a date
tasted for the first time. today we live in the land of dates.
we laughed at those prying sameselves
apart, and blessed our flesh: those worlds pulled
them back to earth then, but today we tell ourselves
to fly free-

(instead what hollow rivers run
between is me)

one

tonight is the one thousand
(and second) night, where I too
am Scheherazade and the tales have
run too thin, when the sagging
flowered quilt falls too thick
on your skin. tonight I will be a peach
from Paradise to be cleaved,
thighs plied apart: continents pulled
away from one another's embrace,
Pangaea coming undone again. tonight
I will feel the blooming sores of mothers
these walls whisper to me of, tonight
I too will feel limbs ladled in thick
date syrup, sluggish across mine- apricots
that will hope to bob but drown. tonight
I will learn to count by the number of times
you tread that short sad distance hovering
above me, by the strange bubbles of paint
on the ceiling that must be trapping those
voyeur stars, and you will learn to count
by the little red beads on the expectant
starched white hankerchief, rubied
pomegranate seeds. no, these you will never
have: my flesh your map, my eyes a stilled
water you can cloud with your rakı, but my
blood, these jewels, they will always remain
intact. I too will die by the sword, for poetry
has abandoned my gurgling veins, I too will
gurgle silence tonight- try me.