OK, I'm reading mostly from this book, which is my new
and selected.
But I have to print everything in 16 point type,
so here we go.
"Kiss."
"One evening, I kissed outside a bookstore
a gentle man I did not know, kissed this man
twisted in a car, parked.
I did not love him.
Kissed long and deep a man I did not love with everything
I had, because I missed a man I once loved.
Because I missed the man I would one day love so hard
my longing would spread across the sky,
backlit red wide and deep.
My own loneliness I kissed.
I kissed my mother's loneliness, my father's,
the loneliness of all our ancestors
the loneliness of moss, of cacti, the spiky loneliness
of the lizards, of rattlers, the loneliness of birch bark,
of black spruce, the solitary sweeper teetering
over the eddy, the swirling loneliness of green aurora,
the loneliness of starshine on new snow,
the loneliness of dark gray leaning to black,
of stormclouds full of lightning.
That loneliness I kissed."