In a New York highrise A man is arrested for Keeping a pet Bengal tiger

I see the coal eyes of the tiger Eyeing the cops, his low growls Over the blaring sirens

The invisible metaphor Is full realized here, One man’s dente with The beast in cramped quarters

Rustle of fiery fur, and underneath, Tight muscular sinews snug Against his body as the tiger Feeds from the same table

Meat from the man’s hand, Running his coarse tongue against The palm itself: the meniscus

Of trust and control before the cops Burst in, and handcuff his wrists To sever him from the jaws’ invisible grip

Buying a discarded volume of poetry Is like buying an old house with Its echoes of past conversations

But if you happen to buy one That was assigned to a class Like the yellowing volume

I have open here, with syllables Counted (luckily in pencil) out At each line, rhymes underlined,

And notes written in the margins Where meaning proved elusive, You are forced to stand witness

To the interrogation of the poet, And by the virtue of fait accompli, Forced to answer for your sympathetic Glance, which may fall across the page.

for Ai

A man and a woman engage In conversation, and the woman Keeps saying that she wants to

Take residence in Dante’s inferno Right now, for living has become A scalding hell where everyone Keeps demanding their own suck Of her marrow, a grim summa Of love, or what passes for love.

Her sad eyes become sadder still As they come to rest at the base Of his bent spine with his separate Pain that remains untouched by Hers’ as she leans towards him Across the unscaled space that he Prays for his hands and mouth

To breach, for sometimes nothing, Nothing can console as a blanket Of different skin covering the body All through the night, joined like Two adjacent longitudes over which The innocent sky spins and spins.