The wind blows hard among the pines
Toward the beginning
of an endless past.
Listen: you’ve heard everything.

Takahashi, “Wind Among the Pines”

Canberra, Australia

Outside my hotel window here
in Canberra, so far from home,
wind moaning through the pines,
orgiastic memories
haunt me
like an amputee
trapped in the attic
of her body,
who dreams of walking
on her own two legs.

I have my ear
pressed to the wall
listening for cries of passion
from a bed next door
the soft padding of feet
across the floor.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, 2003, Pudding House Press chapbook series

That skywalker in the orange hardhat
has blond hair. It’s lying
damp on the nape of his neck.
His ebony back glints in the sun.
Runnels of sweat run down his sides.
Only his armpits hint of a lighter shade
of skin. He is a hula dancer
with a skirt of hammers, tapes
and other tools of his trade.
His thighs crowd against his cut off
jeans as he nonchalantly turns
his back on the height of
his predicament and mine,
but I’m not done with
this carpenter yet or
this precipice.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, 2003 Pudding House Press chapbook series

I am ink-deep in my bookkeeper, he
stands at my office door, accounts in hand
but the numbers will never compute
nor revenue cover the expense
of coveting his innocent blue eyes.

The spread of my imagination
undresses him here on the desk, a bed
of indecipherable desire to let go,
buttocks on wood. What would happen next?

My staff in outer rooms rifling through papers
would be less surprised to see a whale walk
in, his scissor teeth chewing through
all of our transparencies and behind him
a Souza of secretaries waving their dictations
of oughts, musts and shoulds.

As for me, D-based, I say, spread the sheets,
turn the tables, rebel, excel, paradox.
I won’t get caught while the janitor mows
the short hairs on the lawn, he will not see
me covered with this extravagant lust

for a bookkeeper whose lack
of experience will cause us all certain
trouble. But I am set to ring like
an old cash register. What does it matter
that it doesn’t tally? In this hour
of fire, I will hold on to the edge
of the desk, waiting for a knock at the door,
the firm grasp of my auditor.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, 2003 Pudding House Press chapbook series