Sappho in Newark

Light of your
Morning: the smell of
Disorder:
Now we learn
to fall, bottle-top falling,
the realms of despair.

Ione fled:
The rivers dry, the
Taste of blood
No longer
wept, no longer steeped in wast-
ed time. Did you see

the nightfall
of our lost loves, moons
swept by the
razor’s edge?
Drink, sing, ache, howl, invent, vi-
olate the very ground

you stand on.
We were merry, we were
Tides lost in
Wide weary
Passion. The stomach growls its
Dirge, its last slow air.