VCR

1.

But our eyes dim as we look out and away.

A scene whorls in front of us. We only accept

deception before a curtain fall. Who really likes it?

If only there were kind, constant actions running

through all our choices, past and present: silences

after we argued, a door pressed between us, 

too unintelligible dreams, morning play-acting

beyond the threat of any more difficult loss. 

All attention wants transformation. 

The first time we met - you would remind me -

in a group semicircle at work as my voice

carried above our colleagues’ chatter: I want to hear

what she has to say. I couldn’t picture it then, but

this was one of the roles you thought of for me.

2. 

Meanwhile, my life’s main occupation seems 

to be chasing laughs. One after the other.  

My mother played rented video cassettes

while she’d cook. We’d huddle on the floor

around the box set with standup specials 

or TV show anthologies long since off the air.
Seizures spilling out of friends and family, eerie
creaking sounds of restraint or stomach fits,
sore cheeks, spit takes, the unexpected collapse. 

As a young man, I’d pity friends flushed 

over glorious eyes or a girl’s particularly jumpy 

walk. I’d like to think I only ever fell for those 

who let themselves go to this vulnerable place

entirely. That, perhaps, we got there together.  

3.

We determined one night, early on, 

to stay awake until morning by watching

your tragic teenage romances. 

Upright in bed, leaning on one another

against the headboard. Laptop screen

on your knees. That blue saccharine light
spellbinding over your face. Both of us
hunched nearer the weakening speakers. 

I’d rise over the pillow and see your 

impossibly genuine smile. All the nature 

in you glowing as your cool cheek 

fell atop my shoulder from time to time. 

O dreaming mind under your influence,

those initial fires that must kindle into love. 

4.

Your family’s kitchen still issuing an Italian scent, 

candles lit, and the lighting fixed for lovers

finally at day’s end. Blanketed on the couch while

your parents quietly gab in the wings. Your breath

so near me. Autumnal feet squirm under my legs. 

I didn’t trust we could, but you would cup my chin

and pull me to your lips like a connoisseur

of fine wine. Traditional watching of Saturday Night

after a well-prepared dinner party. A new tradition

of trust. Or, in your father’s garden, walking through

bamboo shoots with evening’s dewfall, smirking

to one another, an idea strikes us to make love

here when everyone is away. Another idea, too, 

to share a life together when no one else is looking.

5.

Men in my family refuse to speak but 

in movie quotes and my friends forecast

over their drug tables too long to form 

any other opinion. I remember your father’s

secret limoncello and hearts of artichoke. 

The Civil Wars playing in the living room. 

Your family friend, the model who stood for

Columbia pictures, torch overhead, Grecian
robes, and a pedestal rising through clouds. 

You knew her by her underarms. Lady Liberty. 

I wish the same strange wondrous things
happened when you spent stretches of time
with my friends and family, but we reroot
from one wild place and grow in another. 

6.

The point in any relationship where you must

verify those obscure tales and foundational myths

with evidence. Yes, I was that child and these

photographs give a more coherent account.  

Documents. Drives through town narrating
certain whereabouts. Nevermind recent history,
I can see how the plot spans thus far. I wanted
the beginning and you gave happily. Victories, 

first choral dances, birthday parties. Spread
on the floor, you pulled movie after home-movie
from the long shelves. I am audience to 

a life’s endless audition. A character I see 

reappearing in you over and over again, I would

cast to star in a production entirely my own. 

7.
The truest self I saw was when we were alone.

Your laugh or moan’s resonance echoed down
and through my body, also. An animal freedom,
then. Primitive. Poorly pixelated square of early
cell phones, and you and your college friends
roar and stomp on the ground and collapse atop
one another like whopping savages. I didn’t
know the game, but you bent and bit the air
like a dinosaur. Velociraptor or T-Rex?
This is freedom at play. We are naked beneath
the covers, nipping at each other, nose to nose,
your eyes aflame in primitive joy, and there
is no arresting time. Who hears your roars now?
I hope that sound has not yet gone extinct.

8.

You said, I think of you when I touch myself.

I said, alright. And I didn’t admit it, then. 

You said, friends ask why I would break up

with the person who wrote these poems. 

I wouldn’t admit that either. Without exactly
wanting it, nowadays, we replay and review
the case. We have no real right to despise
the past or ourselves in it. We must find more
charitable ways or else always go to sleep
suspecting the worst. I re-read old messages,
you begging me to drive from town to town
to find you and me begging for one more word.
Listen close enough, you hear the well-worn
spools of the past rewind and cue up again.