Only Clear Things

A man with a hammer.
The place where a key used to be.
You were, my love, you were.

Only clear things.
Only water and vodka and chardonnay,
everything in glass.
In order to prove mountains
there must be a valley.

I opened another bottle.
You spoke of Anne Sexton
and Virginia Woolf, about how
women who write are women who drown.
All your problems look like nails.

Poems are people, too,
with mothers and fathers.
Your uneven sonnets lay weeping
on the concrete outside the bar.


You were my love you were