POTPOURRI (from Stealing Cherries)
we heard about the beach on the other side of the resort, the sign prohibiting all photographs, the mandate to remove clothing at the gate within thirty seconds, or leave immediately. the nudists, we were not like those people, polite and proper we stayed on the prude beach in our bathing suits, discussing politics and the importance of potpourri. by sundown we knew that there would always be just the two of us on this deserted island, as if in the aftermath of a catastrophe, we were the only remaining humans. somewhere out there, hundreds and hundreds of people sporting nothing but sunscreen, sunglasses, sombreros played volleyball, water badminton, ping pong in pairs, legs, arms, balls, breasts, some silicon, some drooping, swinging in a liberated dance of limbs, a return to ancestral truths. we spat on our principles, we embraced those people, we became those people, for the next eight days we wore nakedness, like a luxurious Burberry coat. when it was over, stranded at the Montego Bay airport it pinched our eyes to see all those fully dressed people, and every inseam, every cross-stitch felt like a cut of a blade, fabric, like sandpaper

THE LEFT LEG (from Logic)
on the stone steps
behind the seaport
where three bridges
converged into one,
he pulled my left leg
in a big black boot
over his knee & said
that he doesn’t care
for poetry, bagels or
scallions, or the rain
in Boston where he wasn’t tonight, or the twelve million years
that needed to be understood in order to understand a minute,
but why would one need a minute when he could have twelve
million years, that none of it ever mattered, he only loved
this left leg in this big black boot

They (from Ode to Hotels)
In every can of fruit cocktail with diced apricots, pears and pineapples, bows of apples and nets of gooseberries soaked in sweet sauce, there is always that one plump crimson cherry with an unexpected robust bone inside, forgotten, frightened, frantic, foolishly in love.