THE MAD GIRL CAN'T
DANCE

as she'd like
back arched in a
perfect arabesque.
It's as if she bent
over backwards once
too often. She can't
turn out at angles
she might if
lovers lay on her
long enough, didn't
just touch down,
someone waltzing as
if whatever they
touched was a hot potato
that would scorch.
She can't stay up
as long as she'd
choose, even
wrapping toes in
gauze and novocaine,
she feels more than
she can use

THE MAD GIRL DOESN'T WRITE
THE 17 LETTERS A DAY SHE DID
WHEN SHE FELT SO CRAZY

sweating each time
the phone rang or
didn't. She'd move
toward it the way
she slithered
to the scale, stood
on the edge of it
holding the window
sill to not see what
she didn't want to,
using words for a
gun or rope she
hoped to corral
lips and hips in
with, floating on
the blue like an
Ophelia with water
wings where you
can't see. Or Lady
Lazarus good at
coming back to
terrify and charm, on
a tight rope over
white water using
what uses her 

THE MAD GIRL'S DECEMBER

snow clots, suffocating as
Japonica. She remembers
some places in Brooklyn
a plane crashed into,
the record deaths.
The black outs on
State Street in the
room of heavy pastels.
What the heart can
not use right will
poison she tells the
man who reminds her of
Peter O Toole as a
band around her head gets
tighter, a wedding ring
tearing flesh, gnawing
the bone even after
divorce. The black
leaves in her are sucked
to darkness, the SOS 
written in them with
onyx, chips teeth
and is gone

THE MAD GIRL THINKS OF OTHER DECEMBERS

salmon sun, nights
the snow turning straw
berry where her father
fell on his face. Every
one worked late Christmas
Eve and the college
spires stuck black
crosses into it, snow
to glitter past the
Congregational Church
where Life photographers
were pressed for a perfect
New England shot. White
piling to eight feet, a moat
around the lavender rooms
in the town where she
couldn't breathe as the
black cat went crazy