Charcoal print

(for Karina Klesko)

I lost the blackish-white, the luscious, in a word

& see now under coal eyes

lips scowl (if charcoal lips can!), a neck stretch

She'd try to see me, too—

for she's angular, keen & all that, from hairline to chin

but cruel as a crow's underwing; luscious

& neat as a blind hem

I lost that, too

There must be something, after all the carnage

in a brow's spectral ash,

or smudgy nose, at the least, to connect with

(& save me from her storms)

Can the blackish eyes have ever been right?

They weren't;

I felt the collapse

Sweetish-grey is the near absent nose, her upper lip

that didn't crush entirely,

sparing viewer but didn't let go of me, either

No wonder the many potential poets,

me among them, see her go, too, the sweetish one

with black rose in each eye,

crude pasty brow

Problem is she's written in herself, in blackish-white,

already a role (that of 'loved' or 'not')

you get the minute you look Which I did & then lost And the stout skies, outside my window,

flat-bottomed & heading steadily for water, whenever I looked,

let me know it!

Rigid, adored in charcoal, & letting me know it