Capitalism Is Different With You In It

Before you call to me across the market
offering your sweet company
my longing is primarily
for two handfuls of swiss chard –
your voice makes desire inorganic
checks the choice of my fallible
eye, supplants it with a truer madrigal.

You look at me when I am searching
for spinach, I at you when you are studying
the onions. I dare my gaze
to linger, and when you pay, I feign
slight interest in cabbage, which I never
intended to consider.

Then you come to me, head down, eyes
inquiring into your bag of vegetables.
You say hello, our skulls touch
and I am speechless as the silent sky.
Where we are – this stall of ancient
gift exchange – beyond misery
and happiness, there is neither give nor take.



Plum Tree

We do not chance upon these fruits
through faith; our cardinal commute
is due to their dark gravity.
We admire, of necessity,
the beguiling shadows around
these perfect spheres, and watch them bend
branches, heavy, arching over
the trunk’s frail bark. Observing their
precarious close-colluding
clusters, we also see them hang
as if they were the pristine seed
of an epistemology –
tempting my empty hands to try
to touch such knowledgeable flesh.



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