Sevenling (My Favorite Constellation)

My favorite constellation cannot be found
among Orion’s armament, nor the broad chest of Leo,
nor among the Ursas and their dippers.

My Little Love, eight stars, and this her story:
I uncovered her as the sun went down, traced her shape
with the tips of my fingers, memorized her even as she went away.

My Little Love, eight stars; freckles on the small of my love’s back.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Anosmia

I never dream of scents.
I dream and miss vanilla and strawberry.
I miss the scent of morning hotel coffee.

I dream with my nose cut off.
Dreaming dreams without skin and cunt,
without the scent of ink drying on your back.
I dream of all of you but you.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Bourbon

At two a.m., you are drunk on bourbon.
Celebrating on your balcony,
in the warm air on the last day of February,
with just a protein bar
and some kale chips in your belly.

You write me poems
and send me songs
and apologize apologize apologize

and you text “Call me please”
from three hundred and sixty five miles away,
because you’ve gotten yourself stuck
on the bathroom floor.

It’s the first time I hear your voice
since Birmingham. You are weepy drunk,
embarrassed drunk,
and I tell you jokes to turn you giggly drunk,
and you slip into horny drunk and tell me
the things you want to do with your mouth.

You are adorable, and I am a year of miles away,
coaxing you back into bed with just my voice
crackling over radio towers.

Rest, little drunk.
Tomorrow, you have a hangover
and this poem
and my love to look forward to.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

The Gulf

You are sleeping when I come home.
The cat stirs from her nest,
butts her head against my ankle,
her motorboat purr the loudest sound
in this sleeping house.

The bedroom door always creaks
and I hope it will not wake you,
even though I know by now
that when I strip off my clothes
and crawl into bed beside you,
you will stir. A murmured hello
in the dark, fingers finding a hand
in the dark.

When I wake, you are gone.

We converse in notes and memos.
A scrawled poem, the sketch of a heart,
sticky-note I Love You taped to
a laptop cover, to the bottom of
a bowl of keys, artifacts traversing
the gulf between our waking hours.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Ant Line

A convoy of tiny black ants rolls across
the cover of the book you left on the floor
beside the old porch swing.

For the last hour, I have amused myself by flicking
every fourth ant away from the line of his peers,
just a few inches.

Even that momentary isolation
panics him, and he scrambles, jitter-legged,
to reorient himself into the normal processions
of his tiny black life.

A few inches, a few hundred miles.
It’s a silly thing, the disruption created
from being beside a person and then
not being beside them any longer.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

River Stones

I would like to pick up river stones
and find your likeness in them:
worn smooth, multicolored, still
glistening with cold water.

     But you are not like river stones.
You are like stones before the river has
worn them: rough-spurred and chalky,
your colors hidden under yourself, dry
and thirsting for cold water.

One stone is not better than the other.
One is beautiful for the colors erosion
has coaxed out of it. The other,
because it thirsts to be weathered.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Poetic Forms

You have asked me to recite you poems
but why dwell on poems past?
I would rather undress you,
close my eyes and let my hands
find the poems your body hides:
your shoulder’s sonnet,
clavicle clerihew, haiku hip,
pantoums in the palms of your hands,
limericks that lick your lips,
ballad and villanelle of breast and vulva,
free verse fingers roaming.

Your body speaks enough poetry
for the both of us.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Night

Night unzips a black dress,
reveals the thousand
thousand freckles
brilliant on her back.

How long have small astronomers
studied these curves and parabolae?
Look for the hunters and heroes
drawing back their arrows
upon her shoulderblades,
look for lion and lyre,
look for Cassiopeia queen
and Cygnus swan

look for the favorites asleep
beneath Night’s breast:
Alpheratz and Procyon,
Regulus and Rigel,
Aldebaran, Sirius,
the wild wolf of Sirius,
look for countless other
unnamed children aglow
and clinging to
the hip of Mother Night.

How many hidden worlds
does this celestial body
carry on the black pores
of her flesh? How many
civilizations?

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Monster

You spread dry monsters on the pale flowers:
cracked tentacles, calcified fangs, horns
and hides and pelts of hounds of hell and
Artemisian golden hinds, lined up beside
blinded cooling cyclops;
Viper-tressed gorgons beheaded
and bagged, Scylla’s necks dragged out
of her crags and splayed against sprays
of heather and thyme, junebugs lapping
the sea-salt slime still damp on her teeth.
Herculean thief, even wildflower dusk
won’t mourn the husks you’ve laid out
against sprays of heather and thyme.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Mouse Heart

In the dark, when I cannot see the shape
of your body, you seem even smaller than your
smallness; you are still trembling, the little
needles of your fingernails burrowed
into my arm.

This is my favorite moment:
curled against you, my ear against your back,
I am listening to the rapid patter
of your small mouse heart,
to the quick mouse breaths
you are breathing.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.