Cate Lycurgus

What I Mean Now, When I Say Ever Since

after is never guaranteed:  take every chance

to scrunch, tight, the hair at his nape of neck.

To fret your fingers, to press them across

stark knobs of her back. This might be

the final morning to slake the faint star tattooed

into his softest crease of crotch, before proximity’s

gone. It’s light, so criss-cross these city blocks,

to the side where you stride inside it. Pocket a square

of breakfast chocolate to summon her daily

goodbye-taste when you race away two ways, out

of sync—turn it syncopation, please—trace

each other’s worn-out puns, regular as dirty

foam, streaking its stretch of beach. Covet

strolling an arms’ length from one who makes you

revise each day more & more toward good.

Edit the car not-starting; the woman he calls

dear heart in earshot; all school debt; a double-

mastectomy; the first child who would not

come; the second who came but won’t speak.

A nectarine is plum & peach: stone fruits crossed

to unparalleled meat—if I could mean one thing

I mean:  don’t wait to sink the teeth. We cannot

pass on any song for dancing, nor radio

static to swerve the truck through a hilled

bleed of poppies, with no lock on tomorrow &

how hackly serpentine fractures. So many ways

to break, be broken. Even tonight I swear it’s bold

to hope for ever more ravishing days—the body,

its want—to continue beyond—this one, than this

one, than this

As Eraser

At the corners I was coming

apart. Others had hardly

started to notice, how one minute I was

alongside; the next, peeling

off. Not for no reason, with how dark

our horizon had become &

at the margins, smut. I tried to set

history right, but soon fell un-

composed. #2, off-script, lack-luster,

my every gesture a smear. Who 

doesn’t take on some residue

of what she aims to undo? Not

get carried away? You up-end

thinking you can refuse to make

a mark, but here’s the rub: complete

vanish is magic is harder than not

being than never having been at all

—with prints left every place

I ever laid me down to sleep: 

in concrete on a childhood stoop,

or half-moon divets as I fled,

heels leaving what I would/not

say—for milk teeth knock in mamma’s

tin & my bite surfaced

from beneath. Pink, the new page breaks

each morning—so if raw, if you

cannot take anymore or brush

yourself off; if swept away, if

sweep is the only motion left

for you to make, make it, dis-

solve something, be opposite of

mistake

Same Year

It may always be this way:

the end appears, sudden. From

fernfrond, out of viscous light

you never thought you would

outstrip, where choked

madrones shed themselves

unto a greening dark. Which cannot

hide the mix of live

& auburn leaves on each redwood’s

limbs—we want to believe

nothing hangs on: the old leaf drops

from the table, crumbs fall & we can

pass fresh cream, reach

the sweetener easily

across the span of who we were,

who we hope to be—but never

wake as all new people,

just do not, one day. & always

in the same old wood: duplicate noon,

after-, moon, dozens find you

right where you started on this out

& back trail now become a loop, a ring

thickening round the heart-

wood, dead, so if you are

this lap, if you have no new

resolve, Love—breathe because

of fog

Michael Ives