In Through the Window, a cycle of love poems, overheard piano music catalyzes a reverie of longing. As the poems track the arc of feeling, with a will of their own and an accuracy as fine as dry point, they embody passion's tug-of-war between risk and repression.


From Through the Window

i.
Piano music drifts
through the window
and stops. Someone's
composing--a man
with luxuriant Persian hair,
eyes like unmatched stones
set as a close pair.
Leaning on my elbow,
like Rembrandt's Saskia
at her upper story window,
I'll whisper
to no one--not
even him--this reverie.

iv.
It's like I'm nineteen
or sixteen: falling in love,
or drowning in the riptide-pull
of hormones, I'm not sure which.
Like then, interminably confused.
But now I know to read Sappho
and know my passion's nothing
unprecedented, only unbearable,
always, this longing.
Dumbfounded, ecstatic,
my heart beats breakneck
to hear its torment
so exquisitely laid out.

viii.
First these poems implore
I write them, pester,
won't stop at no.
Then they betray me,
braying my secrets
to all comers.
It's like planting a rose
for the thorns.