Desires are interchangeable. Take thirst—
A primal craving, surely; yet I pass
Your door en route, and wanting in the worst
Way just to quench my arid tongue, I cross
The threshold, and drink you, instead, for hours.
Take hunger: this sensation at my core
Is plain and physical—and yet your powers
Of interplay will fill me till no more
Can enter, nor is wanted. And take greed—
My taste for fine possessions, which I keep
Like treasures, has been traded for a need
Of everything that’s yours. And then, take sleep—
   I’ve found in waking all that rest requires:
   These dreams of you, these surfeited desires.
 

from The Formalist, Volume 12, no. 1, 2001
Copyright © 2001 D. R. Goodman All rights reserved
Reprinted with permission.
 
 

Dark Matter

 "The past is forever with me, and I remember it all."
  — Nien Ching, Life and Death in Shanghai

One wonders how she rises—how we rise—
under the weight of it. Or bear the cost
of wholeness, as its burden multiplies
on end—to let no memory be lost,
no loss betrayed, no pain swiftly erased.
A wonder, how each leaden block of life
can be absorbed without a solid trace
into the human form. Ruin and grief
collapse inside us like great failing stars,
dark matter, dense and undetectable,
an inward spinning of the universe
that holds us at our core—still capable,
still moving on, skirting a dark that bends
and warps all light, on which all light depends.
 

from Cumberland Poetry Review, Vol. XXII, No.2
Copyright © 2003 D. R. Goodman All rights reserved
Reprinted with permission.