After Rilke

Critics PageApril 2016

Someday, when will I lose you?
Will you be able to sleep without me?
Will you hear me whispering in your dream?
Like a star-anise growing next to you?

My words are your eyelids
Do your breasts listen? Will your
love listen like a melissa kissing
my eyelids with your mouth?

We both close and leave
We’re both one but are each other’s
Like a garden that can kiss
Like the kiss that comes before more kisses

BERNADETTE MAYER is a poet based in New York. Her collections of poetry include Midwinter Day (1982, 1999), A Bernadette Mayer Reader (1992), The Desire of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994), Another Smashed Pinecone (1998), and Poetry State Forest (2008). Mayer edited the journal 0 TO 9 with artist Vito Acconci and established United Artists press with the poet Lewis Warsh. Mayer has taught at the New School for Social Research and The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015.