Henrietta Goodman

Magnetite

 

Who wants to admit it’s mostly heat

we’re after, blind and blameless

as missiles? It’s nothing special

to be a body bending toward another

body like a plant toward light,

to be dumb as butterflies magnetized,

overlapping on a filigreed leaf—

to be ruled like that, pinned

from the beginning.

Henrietta Goodman

Destrudo

 

We stopped on the bridge to watch

the rush of spring runoff divide

around pilings, blue as a vein.

Like psychic vertigo, that sense

that the mind might suddenly split,

and one half push the other out

over the water—the body drawn down

by the force of fear and un-wished

temptation, the railing so low,

even the wind could do it. I stood

in your arms, your chin on my shoulder,

the sky perfectly ripe. Behind us,

the red sun teetered like a car

on the edge of a cliff, then dropped.

I forgive you for saying you’d catch me;

I would have said it too.