“Dropped Pages” is a series of poems that were, for whatever reason, left out of my books. I can never really finish tweaking them or being totally satisfied with the results. This one was left out of Her Red Book
On the Night of the Flood of Ghosts
For M.L.
He says we’re those kind of friends
some day
one of us will be at the other’s funeral
She pulls the death card
scythe and burning vardo
in Texas flooding takes their friend’s home away
and homes in Russia and the streets of Prague
as Nigerian women sit
on the dock at Texaco and threaten
to remove their clothing
from around themselves
everything breaks
She taps the deck
the further we get from heartache
the more we can love the ghost of it
recalling the decree of separation
that left her a Toyota Corolla darkroom
equipment piano and one cat named Quincy
all night They turn over old loves
now with new loves lost
in the tarot deck seeking advice
from kettles and feathers and stones
She says handling the pain of His Heart
despite the cards
Let’s everything around Us grow wild