we sweat through our shirts on the front porch. night is pollen-thick, yellow silt slicking our skin. sitting on the second step, i fear my bare feet may stick to the cement. & when k. wipes his forehead, his finger glistens, in the moonlight, is the only thing shimmering. t. has a headache, remains silent save a single dry-mouthed so sleepy, man. they leave an hour after midnight, leave in the same state as they arrived. some time last week, i began missing them. they way, when together, nothing shifts. the air’s disturbed none my our movement through it. my mind remains dim-lit as before, though we may talk twenty million minutes. & its not a state of calm so much as an absence. of time passing the same as if i were alone with the key difference being not alone.

I don't write to you because I only know how to be intimate. In fact, all i can do, whatever the circumstance, is be intimate: that's why I'm even more silent.

--Clarice Lispector

Strange Roads Before Light
Frank Stanford

At midnight I am alone
And my love is with someone else.
The moon is like a woman in a red dress
Standing on the beach.

I listened all evening.

All I heard was a one-legged boy
Looking for his coon dog.
He was looking at the moon, too.
It was like a plate with no supper.

And a route salesman in a saloon
Was looking at the moon.
It was a clock with twelve numbers,
But he had no arms to hold her.

And the child who was supposed to be
Practicing the piano
Was looking at the moon.
He was already thinking of a woman.
He wanted to sleep beside her,
Not with her. Odd, but not bad,
He thought the moon spilt the key to her room.

The woman blowing smoke in the dark,
Her fingers looking for the ashtray,
She thought the moon
Was a piece of stationery
In a drawer she would not open.
She would have written there was no moon,
That I am screwing somebody else,
Trying to remember your telephone number.