OLD LOVE LETTERS
I too have my stack
hidden in a cranny.
Photos from my time
on the romantic equator.
I don’t seem to ever
get around to throwing it out,
–the longing, I mean,
I mean longing, I mean
longing I mean longing,
–like the appendix,
an organ in the body
which they tell you
you can live without–
how it still burns and hums
on cloudy days.
I am myself you know
held together in the dark
with a brittle rubber-band,
and these old love letters
for me are like
those plane tickets to Brazil
kept by the embezzler
in his bottommost desk drawer,
someplace where,
in an emergency,
when he is tired or frightened
he can bury his face
and inhale.
By the same author
What They Told Me At The Boy’s Club In Gainesville
Right over there, in the public library, that's where Rahul got shot--