beloved, I was driving down

Girard    the trolley tracks’

steel harmonics    humming

it was dark and

in a poorly heated room

north of Pine a lover waited to

dismantle me    Yo-Yo Ma was

playing the Cello Suites

again    they echoed in the

rib cages of  the

squats on 54th    my thighs

lace-encased    glissando of

black stockings    the Suites

begin with what the instrument

can do    cunning hook

and eye of the garter belt

progress to    what it cannot

beloved in the piebald

park between the cemetery and

the dollar store    the monkey bars

sang with cold    Bach makes us

hold one note in mind so

we can hear several as though

at once    here on Eid you held

my hand    other people’s

families converged and

the    dark tremolo of

goat smoke rose    sweat pressed

the sundress to the small of

my back    beloved I listened

to you wishing your mother

on the phone    a sweet breaking

of the fast    it’s a trick of the

baroque beloved    those old

notes the mind keeps trying

to hold onto    before I left

the house my son who is almost

seventeen    played me a song

he wrote called

Doctor Misery    your baby

left you    he sang    beloved

in the illuminated laundromat

on 47th the clothes rotated

to the cello’s churn    to a

police siren’s wolf tone    my own

body was once

so pure    only one person

touched it and only

on Fridays    so pure it spun

water and fiber into gold

music    Ma says    is not one

thing    look beloved

inside my uterus a gear-

box inside the ridges

of my sex a mountain

range    beloved when

you left it was another

December    you folded

your many-colored

scarves    sealed your

books into boxes    now

in a blank room in another

city you are writing an

academic paper on

perfection    you chop

carrots into bright coins

dusk’s adagio on snow outside

you touch the dancer’s hip

point    lift that long

bowed note from her

mouth    you told me

beloved there are two

kinds of perfection: order

and seeing things as they

are    the cello constructs

a galaxy of neutron

stars from the flicker of

light in each row house

on Resurrection Blvd

the well-ordered scene in the

crumbling Victorian where

my lover    slides a hand under

my skirt     undoes my

bindings    in the body

cavity    it is the emptiness

that makes air

reverberate    it is the

emptiness that sings