Two Poems

ICARUS It would've been easy
Once that season
To open my thighs
Like the night-blooming moonflower.
It was summer after all
And Eros had been to my door.

He told me I'd never win.

I had seen your wings,
Bright indigo,
Folded unnaturally as you slept.
The moisture of newness,
Your face washed pale with albumen
Like one of
Michaelangelo's frescoes.
I had breathed the musk of sleep
In your hair
Every morning after.

Icarus,
It was said before you could speak
You were already leaning towards the sun.

Later, it was your beloved
Who counted the scorched feathers
One by one.

FORSYTHIA BEGINS

Now you come
Just as the forsythia begins
To take on a glow
Beneath the April night sky,
And the crocuses start to live
In the past.

Boy, you are clever.
I bet people tell you that all the time.

There is your half-cocked magic,
Perhaps a little slow,
But it makes its point.
Of course your skin
On my skin
Is a broken mirror.
Suspicion.

Too much sugar.
Too much myth.
Boy, you are clever
With a little boy's smile.
I bet women and children
Are swallowed by it
All of the time.

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