Scheherazade at Dawn 

The garden cat saunters through the brush 

having captured the dark-eyed junco. Birdsong 

continues, leaf-scent drifts in. I cherish

these mornings. Mornings like afternoons

when I get to carry the world’s sadness— 

a little coin—everywhere I go, turning 

the piece over and over, concealed 

in my pocket, just to hold it a moment

longer (a coin is easily lost) before 

it must be spent—a treat, a gift, transportation. 

Recently I’ve been attempting to channel

the voice of Scheherazade at dawn

for a poem; what it was she said to the King. 

I keep asking myself how she did it but 

I don’t know if I mean: share a bed with a man 

like that, or find a love for him somewhere, or 

manage each night to unfold vital

fiction from within vital, potent fiction. 

Like the King I too can’t seem to discern 

how much of love is performance. How much 

of gesture is ephemera. How much is real

flesh, Real. I too, dislike it:

this question of Self and Other—reconciling.

Last night I almost broke the vow of chastity

I didn’t make, straddling this girl in her twin bed, 

sharing cautious, level kisses. My failure was not

knowing if it was her mouth too closed or mine

too open. Too eager to consume? & if passion

is as perishing as the world? In class

the professor speaks of the deliciousness in taking 

on persona; shifting out of oneself and into 

another consciousness—tangible, separate. 

When the poet professor calls my name 

I say "Does this please your high pleasure?" Her gaze

is unbreaking, serene, fatal. (My desire acts

as another means of passing judgment, of 

fortifying the jetty that keeps a distance, keeps

a fantasy traversing the mind’s wide water.) 

This was Shahriyar’s dilemma: give the woman 

the occasion to betray or remember that initial,

smooth, impossible figure—remember Night, 

when every detail exists, expires, is created not

again but ongoing, inconstant. To write

a poem you must write another. You must

learn you take all your past lovers to bed

with you. "Friend, Beloved, Source 

of my Being, help me turn toward 

You…" & how I’ll never quit worshiping the vast red 

stains on the bed linens; on my vacant, low heart.