Two Poems

Portrait as Bougainvillea Gone Derelict Over Chain Link

If you want to talk about fuchsia engines as proof
beauty lives in a desert, let’s talk about the night a fire
breaks out over a house under construction:
its backlit frame like paper cut silhouettes,
each flame exquisite to the arsonist.
Let perspective decide what extravagance means.
Behind door A lies the wilderness in your own heart.
Behind door B: an explicit dream. Color ignites
when you least expect it. Narrative repeats theme.
Late June, ornamental vines sear a valley metropolis.
You’re always lovelier than you believe.

 
To Johnny Weir on I Love You, I Hate You
XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver


Transgression isn’t hot pink cording
                  down the center of your chest
          as much as the articulated pose, each muscle
frozen in exuberance: the AP photo I love
                  for your green-eyed envy
                          of nothing and no one, elbows
          out, fingers splayed in sheer black gloves,
the instant I think you know each sequence
                  is obsession honed to art, each edge

          a fretwork left on ice. It isn’t the single tassel —
also pink, no apology — or the oil-slick
          corset, but how performance
                  masks the hours. No one listens
          for the sound of blades beneath the music.
The coliseum breathless at the next jump.

It isn’t a boy beginning to dream in Quarryville,
                  a cornfield swarmed in snow,
          but the speed of desire: each clockwise spin,
each gesture a spiked rose. When Di Blasio’s rumba
                  turns, I think of nights I woke
                          in Pittsburgh alone, the avenue
stippled in orange light. I wanted nothing,

          and everything. In that brick, pre-war
apartment, I lived through seasons of no answer.
          The end of grief is the beginning of fire, 
                  as when the last note sunders air.