More poetry, posted before my editor's eye kicks in (as part of my new year's bid for upfrontness in writing).



Confirmation



At twelve,

I knew something of the longing

That marks adolescence.



I wanted to belong, yes,

But more: I wanted.

I wanted.



The sad-eyed Jesus

Upstairs

In the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum:

A laundered Kurt Cobain,

Jim Morrison, alive,

Understanding.

I am not like the other girls;

I know Latin.



I was twelve

And eager to understand

What made my sister so interesting,

Suddenly

Even though she was only two years older

And I was unusually precocious,

If a bit obtuse.



So I opted for early confirmation

The first step, I was sure

In my eventual sublimation.



And in my confirmation class,

Filled with graduate students

And doctors of Theology

And a man who I now realize

Couldn’t have been more than twenty,

But who was much older than twelve



I broke down

Remembering

The night my goldfish died,

Though I prayed to God for a miracle.







To Abelard, Heloise

(unfinished, I think)



To her master,

nay father,

to her husband,

nay brother;

his handmaid,

nay daughter,

his spouse,

nay sister:

to Abelard, Heloise*



Relations, we call them:

These lines run between us.

Tongued.

Diminished.

Spoken.



Spoken as though

There were something

In speaking,

An essence called forth;

A foundation laid

In the wilderness.



In the begininning was the word

A breath over waters.



In the beginning,

This morning

You breathed

And I woke up

Awaiting definition.



* From The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. and intro. by Betty Radice, (New York: Penguin, 1974)