Doomed to Love a One-Eyed Sketch Artist

POETRY

i found her sketching 
strangers by a fountain
green with slime; 
one green eye altering all.

i gave her my heart, 
she gave me crabs.
we were very happy together.

she was tender, in her way.

even after a night of 
selling her body, we’d invent— 
in the stench of our poverty—
new geometry of the flesh.

i told her i loved her,
once.

she stabbed me in the neck 
with an olive fork, and

i still regret, in that fugue of
blinding pain and anger,
calling her cyclops.
she left with the summer,

and it was cold forever.