PIAZZA DEI CAVALLI MARINI

Let the setter fetch the pine cone mid–fountain
let my toes drop into a cool pool to lure me
to stay and stay in the Villa Borghese and not go down
into the burning trafficked sea.

If this morning the ecstasy of Theresa
lasted only five minutes before the porter
began tamping out the candles and ordered,
All out, so be it; so did mine. Easier

To imagine the boy angel with his arrow flinched
withdrawing into a horny smirk-–his wings, stone feathers-–
as if he were about to re–attack-–or pinch-–
her in a swoon that had already transported her––forever

with stone–closed lids––as I, by these thrashing horses, homed
both legs into the cold sun of here, now, Rome.

—from Heart Work (Sheep Meadow Press, 1995), 
copyright © 1995 by Sharon Dolin. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1-878818-42-2
96 pages;$12.95
The Sheep Meadow Press

LOVERS

Brillantined hair in yoke-colored light
fathomed to a dizzy blur we reach
            and reach round for-
getting beginnings imply endings
we are suddenly all middle molten
kinesis spiked with a surety that doesn’t
bother knowing its name if ecstasy
were a color this would be its bulls-
eye the place in the fire where glass
learns form from formlessness

and what are we but delight
coining each other’s eyes
            a whirling
tunnel of startling
            entrances spun from light

—from Serious Pink (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003), 
copyright © 2003 by Sharon Dolin. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 0-9713332-6-2
72 pages; $15.00
Marsh Hawk Press

THE PROBLEM OF DESERTION

occurs when time feels like space
and the dead are stuck
on shore
                        while we
                        the living kneeling in our form-
                                                fitted canoes
                                                paddle on the lake
                                                            into years past trees
                                                            whole rivers of lily pads and reeds

and all they do
                         like the loon’s echoing call on the farthest shore
                                                                                                           
is recede
recede.

—from Realm of the Possible (Four Way Books, 2004), 
copyright © 2004 by Sharon Dolin. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1-884800-57-2
86 pages; $14.95
Four Way Books

GHAZAL WITHOUT THE MAN

You started out gangly, wrangling without the man.
Now you can't remember angling without the man.

Winter of frozen cherries matted in his beard,
Spring buds in hair tangling without the man.

Go. Drive a car,  the weather wanders you.
Life's a zoo, stroke pangolin without the man.

Flux redux, can't undo. No mournful piccolos.
Such stuff as we are: Philandering without the man?

In Berkeley women loved women, men themselves.
Hard to play it straight, gamboling without the man.

Books inscribed, kisses under sheets––lost things landslide.
Oh, turn not morose, memories dangling without the man.

What if, after all is bled and flung, it won't add up?
Don't be so sure you can handle it without the man.

Sleepwalking roofs––you never were that sort.
Picked up, the pieces mangling without the man.

Got floaters in the eyes, water on the knees.
Getting older––still newfangling without the man.

Adrift yet moored, unfocused––is this how it'll end:
Your name's spelled mandolin without the man.

—from Burn and Dodge (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008). 
"Ghazal without the Man" is from Burn and Dodge, by Sharon
Dolin, © 2008. All rights are controlled by the University of
Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission
of the University of Pittsburgh Press.