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Michael Dennison




GRAND PIANO


If I could connect this telephone line
To the grand piano I could sit
Watching those white and black keys
All day and night. You would sound
LIke a sonata by Scriabin if you called:
First a whisper of slick hammers
Then a lioness running on steel wires.
This aesthete would thrill to the sheen
It would give to light. Instead I have
To watch for mail. You write that your cat
is fine. You want to talk about Italo Calvino
But your new man doesn't. But then
You like that about him too, how
He would rather change your oil or build
A deck or watch golf than hear you slam
Out metaphors, - you, all the time, shapely.


¤ ¤ ¤


PITTSBURGH RIVIERA


I can believe anything for two minutes.
Like a bad swimmer struggling in the undertow
I hear voices miles distant in the water.
I even think I can identify you in the child
In your old photographs. Green shoots push up through snow.

I remember that February sitting in the dark
With you, parked on the bluff looking down
Into the river ice. You left the engine
Running for the heater but turned off
The Chevy's lights. When I said simply
What I don't want to know I don't ask
You went quiet, thought about your other
Lover, dropped me on to the dangerous ice.
The Monongahela was a mirror so frozen
Its glass shown with only that scythe
Of moon as the calendar slipped into Lent.

The last ten years have brought me to the great
Carnival towns. Ten years to admit
I prefer New Orleans and Venice to Pittsburgh.
In the sestiere of San Marco
Women of Venice paint tears on the porcelain
Of white skin. They sway like wheat.
In Rome the winter is over, and approach
Of Lent seems easy from the top
Of one of the seven hills, my heart on fire,
As airplanes rise up above funereal pines, their
Flashing lights green, purple, and gold.
Behind our masks we shed old skin, and when
We sleep we remember our dreams. Desire
Is the force that pulls up our hands
Against gravity and folds them into another's,
Wings tired of flight but too thrilled to fall slack.


¤ ¤ ¤


TRAVEL LIST


I could read your lips on my mouth.
I taste the back of your eyes
Brown from an afternoon in sun,
Nervous in sleep as air in lightning.
If I stare hard in darkness I see
Where your eyes have been:
Where a moon exalts in the mirror
Of your dresser. In the periphery
Of your dreams something moves
And you jump back to skin.
There I stalk and find your hands
Under your head, smell your perfume,
Feel the weight on the dreams
You sleep before you pack and go.

You do not omit necessities.
You fold my hands up with your stockings,
Roll my fear into your gloves,
Drop my mouth into your mirror.

Contributor's Note