"Chances"

The train conductor looks too good for this job.
You’re wearing a summer dress, an inviting smile.
Maine, he says, taking your ticket and license. That’s far.
You agree, and begin to ask the needless questions, about how
they tack on the cars in D.C., if it’s awful
to always be moving, always seeing and saying the same things.
He wants to know how cheap the lobster is up north,
if the girls at your school are really like they say.

Anyone will tell you that this is foolish—
to cast a lure to see if anything will tug back; to try
to fill yourself on glimmers of a stranger. But maybe
romance, or even love, can only last as long as the distance between two cities.
Maybe this that flickers between us, this rare, uncertain flame, is more
than what we can carry on trips to and from our addresses.

You pull into D.C., and he gathers his things.
Take care of 82541 for me now, he says, saluting.
You wonder how long till you can try this again—make something
hover above reality, just for a moment, like a diver knotting herself in the air
before hitting the pool. Maybe you’re close
as Baltimore, the pinpricks of light over the water.
Maybe you’re far as Home.

"Bible-Eater" 

she turns now to luke or john or whoever can fill her
best, tastes a finger to flip to her desire’s
end, & lets fly the furious shreds, a woman
rambling on the red line. then it’s matthew 27
as she runs her hand along save thyself, &, thou that
destroyest the temple, licks the edges of the pages
to see what she’ll bleed, trembles as her teeth
alight onto what is holy & what is so, so good,
rips into the acid-free flesh, inhales the glue-bound
spine, the thread she can unravel with one whip
of the tongue, unseams the whole unearthly thing
until morsels flutter out into the dank, tunnel air,
& she is rapture, & she is pure, succulent communion,
hallowed in the name of hunger.