In my dreams you say that loneliness
has caused your teeth to diminish over time, to become thin and
bent

You pry open your lips with both hands and
I place my head in your mouth to investigate.

Your pink softness like chewing gum.
Your bones, weightless and crumbling.

If someone were to walk in the room at that moment

(Which they do, they always do:
Your mother or my lover or some boy I once knew)

They would think to see a circus, freakish and sad:
A ringmaster with her elderly tiger,

only
I never had any power over you.

I.
Here is how it is with you:
Every day I wonder what is missing.

Cracks in the sidewalk. I avoid them, wouldn’t
want to break her back,
smaller things, still
I would not say to you.

You are lovely and white-teethed
and whenever I am around you I feel slovenly,
misplaced
like a garage sale item in a department store.

Sometimes you call, although we have little
to talk about.

We both wish it wasn’t this way. We tell others
we are close.

So here it is. Let me tell you.

Bright-tailed and bushy-eyed we
wandered into the circus
as performers this time! —

Fluttering our acrylic eyelashes at the audience, swirling
candy hula-hoops around our hips, lighting everything

on fire

and flashing smiles that could kill.

Your raven hairline accentuated with sequins and
legs in matte lavender tights, we
are certainly an odd pair

an odd affair

Five eyes, three legs, a blue elephant,
an emu and a llama, King Tut risen from the dead

(I asked you once how you did that
You said it was as much an illusion as anything else,
and proceeded to water the flowers)

a procession of snakes, a unicorn, and of course the love of your life
standing faithfully by your side

I spin on my one leg en pointe like a top
and the audience bursts into feverish applause

You are walking the tightrope
She is holding your hand.

Can we go to China and make it our very own America
I wrote to you the other day
Snow is falling on the great wall and
I would like very much to wear my soviet hat;

you could don a jacket the color of sailboats
and in this fashion we would let the wind

take us —

I will take pictures of us from the top
(ascending the collapsing staircase)
(descending the collapsing staircase)

And later they will remind us of how

we thought the whole world was
(I mean basically) an accordion:

tectonic plates fanned and squeezing beneath us
mountains going up and down
trees going up and down
girls going up and down

like a ribcage, breathing

like buttons, keys, tools for manipulating air

I will stand on top of the wall with my red mittens
you will catch hot air balloons with your arms.