“Lust is grief that has turned over in bed
to look the other way.”
- Donald Hall

This is how a poet explains
shaving the beard of loss
with a quick screw and a long shrug.
Living on—when nothing grows
except a root that leads to past.
A lonely verse, an empty house
of extra rooms he needs
to fill with laughter and bones.
Dinner for two was the dream.
Dinner for one is the truth.
She’d beckon you to love again,
to oil the wok, to fry wild onions
and chard. She wouldn’t
want you stewing here
like nuts that have no meat.

There is nothing the dead can say
to lift the sinking chin
of what remains on stretching roads
as they point toward rattling ribs.
Her name is etched in every hour,
on all four posters of the bed.
Your heart will always be a cave
and she the torch that fizzled,
snuffed, and dropped from
reaching fingertips.
Palettes stocked with brand new blood
won’t bring your favorite portrait back.
Climax inside foreign thighs,
a second-place certificate.
But she would want you to dance.
Any ballet in the dust to crush
the cherry burning your skin.

JANET BUCK is a six-time Pushcart Nominee. Her poetry has recently appeared in CrossConnect, Poetry Magazine.com, The Montserrat Review, Offcourse, The Pedestal Magazine, Southern Ocean Review, PoetryBay, Tryst, Kenwood Review, The Rose & Thorn, Red River Review, Coelacanth, Facets Magazine, and hundreds of journals worldwide. Buck's work is forthcoming in Zuzu's Petals, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, and Octavo. Janet's second print collection, Tickets to a Closing Play, was the winner of the 2002 Gival Press Poetry Award; the book is scheduled for publication in October, 2003.