there’s a wider kind of haiku

there’s a wider kind of haiku

that only the two of us

can fit inside: equal

on top and bottom, but expanded

where we overlap in the middle,

like an inverse venn diagram poem.

when you had an unexpected

negative opinion of “mr. jealousy” —

the dvd I lent you way back

in the first week of our relationship,

when seeing chris eigeman in “last days of disco”

made me think of this little known

noah baumbach film he’s also in —

well I didn’t bristle, did I,

because your points were good ones

and, moreover, I found myself once again

marveling at and grateful for

your pithy, kindly-put, different perspective

on things whose essence I’d assumed,

foolishly, I already knew thoroughly.

“you turn it and then you turn it again”

I wrote in my reply to your first

out-of-the-blue email to me,

applying an old teacher’s adage

to my thoughts on your anthologized poem,

and now we two dance the twist as one.