Absence

On the scales of desire, your absence weighs more
than someone else’s presence, so I say no thanks

to the woman who throws her girdle at my feet...

Meeropol

How simple it seemed that spring, with a quart of green
cactus milk between us, on the ferry from Naxos

to Crete, when the moon was the one clock, and stars
only had gums. And the summer in Barcelona

when the French children actually cried at the sight
of my dreadlocks. I used to think, if we kissed

in every time zone, it would always be the blue hour
in which I loved you. It still is.

~From Meeropol, Jeffrey McDaniel

Air Empathy

On the red-eye from Seattle, a two year-old
in the seat behind me screeches

his little guts out. Instead of dreaming
of stuffing a wad of duct tape

into his mouth, I envy him, how he lets
his pain hang out. I wish I too could drill

a pipeline into the fields of ache, tap
a howl. How long would I need to sob

before the lady beside me dropped
her fashion rag, dipped a palm

into the puddle of me? How many
squeals before another passenger

joined in? Soon the stewardess hunched
over the drink cart, the pilot gushing

into the controls, the entire plane, an arrow
of grief, quivering through the sky.

~Jeffrey McDaniel

The archipelago of kisses

But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss.
Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

~Jeffrey McDaniel, the last lines from The Archipelago of Kisses. Such good lines from such a dreadfully-titled poem.

The Quiet World

In an effort to get people to look

into each other's eyes more,

the government has decided to allot

each person exactly one hundred

and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it

to my ear without saying hello.

In the restaurant I point

at chicken noodle soup. I am

adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long

distance lover and proudly say

I only used fifty-nine today.

I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn't respond, I know

she's used up all her words

so I slowly whisper I love you,

thirty-two and a third times.

After that, we just sit on the line

and listen to each other breathe.

~Jeffrey McDaniel