Poetry

1.

I have a longing to burst open a globe, to see the insides

because what’s in there but blue liquid

anyway. Running down into heels of our shoes--makes the socks

stick. Or miles of plastic?

Or one hundred lost love songs sent to an overseas stranger.

I want to burst the tiny globe in your mouth. Roll it between your lips and mine.

I would open my teeth to it. Suck on it like a jawbreaker, dance with your Russian tongue.

Lick your closed eyelids, make them sticky with whatever glues the

continents to the sea.

Write so many things on your face with the Ukrainian ink.
Place names: Moldova, Kiev, St. Petersburg, Bemidji, Minneapolis.

2.

We could take the globe outside to every town’s ice rink,
listen to our string instruments under wool caps while

sharing the orb, back and forth trading it between the silver

blades of our feet.

Keeping divided the territories between you and I.

3.

I want to swallow the globe.

Wait for it to take root, vines planting me wherever I may be

then, a deep-seated star on the old maps. Old globes.

A capital.

4.

Maybe I’d call for you like a bird calls goodbye.

You would come and I’d kiss you. I’d un-swallow cleanly our

proof of place. Existence of east and west. Our northern states.

I’d place it in your hands and watch you crush it

beneath boot soles like a little black beetle.

I doubt there would be much blood, just a little sticker

made in the U.S.A., in the transatlantic between, in

all the places you are not.