High and Bright and Fine and Ice

When the motorboat man asked me to love him

I whispered precipice

the word for the no-more-boyfriend feeling

because precipice contains ice (practically twice)

because I wanted teetering—

What? he said

Yes

His ears from the engines—so hard of hearing—his hands always

so hot

Mid our first winter—I’d clung so long to the dock

he had to crowbar my fingers off

Each digit cracked so cleanly

Would you say they break like icicles? I asked sweetly

I knew I was nothing! But if I could sustain one song—

I is, I is, I is I is I is

I could be: ice

Sex on the bathroom’s cold marble counter was best

I whispered statuette, monument

What? he, sculpting my legs, said

Yes

The child? I named her Cecily

It sounded like iced lily

For pure, I said pristine

At the ocean, I said brine

Isle for vacation; for flowers, edelweiss

But when I said (only of late, late!) I choose ice

Brittle pearls broke behind my syllables

Did he hear me?

Again, twice, thrice:

For my love

we would need to live

in a great pyramid

We would need to sleep

beneath the continental shelf

with Antarctic crust blanketing us

The only driveway to any kind of house

is an iceberg-ridden Northwest Passage

When I whispered universe

you were to translate it as

one bright line

one bright rime

Source: Madame X (Canarium Books, 2012)