OK, this next poem--
and forgive, the class who heard it this morning, because I'm
going to read it again--
it references a Norse myth of the demigod Aurvandill
who was carried across the icy wastes in a basket.
And his big toe was sticking out over the course of this journey
and ended up getting frostbitten.
So it was broken off and thrown up into the sky
and became a star.
So more cephalopods.
"Love at 32 Degrees--
One."
"Today I dissected a squid, the late acacia tossing its pollen
across the black of the lab bench.
In a few months, the maples will be bleeding.
That was the thing.
There was no blood, only textures of gills
folded like satin, suction cups like planets in rows.
'Be careful not to cut your finger,' he says,
but I'm thinking of fingertips on my lover's neck last June,
amazing hearts, this branchial heart.
After class, I stole one from the formaldehyde
and watched it bloom in my bathroom
sink between the cubes of ice."
"Two."
"Last night, I threw my lab coat in the fire
and drove all night through the Arizona desert
with a thermos full of silver tequila.
It was the last of what we bought on our way
back from Guadalajara, desert wind
in the mouth, your mother's beat-up Honda,
agaves twisting up from the soil like the limbs of cephalopods.
Outside of Tucson, saguaros so lovely
considering the cold and the fact that you weren't there
to warm me.
Suddenly drunk, I was shouting that I
wanted to see the stars as my ancestors used to see them,
to see the god-awful blue as Aurvandill's frostbitten toe."
"Three."
"Then there is the astronomer's wife
ascending stairs to her bed.
The astronomer gazes out one eye at a time
to a sky that expands even as it falls apart,
like a paper boat dissolving in bilge, furious, fuming stars.
When his migraine builds and lodges its dark anchor
behind the eyes, he fastens the wooden buttons of his jacket
and walks outside with a flashlight
to keep company with the barn owl who stares back
at him with eyes that are no greater or less than a spiral
galaxy.
The snow outside is white and quiet
as a woman's slip against cracked floorboards.
So he walks to the house enflamed by moonlight
and slips into the bed with his wife, her hair and arms
all in disarray like fish confused by waves."
"Four."
"Science, beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetic bone,
every time I make love for love's sake alone,
I betray you."