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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. ANCIENT WITH WAITING
by Jennifer M. Pierson submitted to the
Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
of The American University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts
in
Creative Writing Chair: Henry Taylor
Kermit Moyer
Myra^ Sklarew
Dean of 'the College of Arts and Sciences
p _ ? ______
1996 The American University 77S0 Washington, D.C. 2 0016
CHS AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1381554
Copyright 1996 by Pierson, Jennifer M. All rights reserved.
UMI Microform 1381554 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. @ COPYRIGHT by
JENNIFER M. PIERSON 1996
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DEDICATION
Thank you Stuart for your loving faith and Emily for your patience while growing up.
This book is dedicated to my sisters Leslie and Joan because I do not know their stories.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ANCIENT WITH WAITING BY JENNIFER M. PIERSON ABSTRACT
We are each part of Spirit: the First Light and stars,
gases, flame, the rocks and ooze that formed, in one unbroken chain of remembering, our physical selves. I
once gave a strand of my hair to a psychic to help her
"see" my history. She described a dinosaur with thick
spectacles reading from an old book. I am reading the
story of language that I may use its root to heal our
pained distance from Spirit. I am ancient with waiting for reunion. My poems are not easy; reading them, your eyes may weary. Yet they bear the numinous presence that
stood beside me when I was three, my mother's hands
gripping my throat. They bear angels who "take their sacrament. . .from the bold sigh of a man left in a corner
to die but who is still alive." "Trees of prolonged healing.... that call us to their arms."
ii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
"What Makes Me Invisible" was printed in The Party Train, an
anthology of American Prose Poets by New Rivers Press, 1996.
"Ship of Fools, Velasquez's Dwarves" can be found in Poems
That Thump In The Dark. Issue 4, Winter 1994. "To Be Norwegian" is forthcoming from COTTON GIN. "Watching" was printed in CPU Review in April 1994. "A Modern Day David In
a Cafe" was printed in Issue 2, March 1995 of OYSTER BOY REVIEW. "Faith" was published by Red Tail Press in its
anthology, More Than Animals. 1994. "Letters From The
Evaporated City" is forthcoming from OYSTER BOY REVIEW. "The
Unobserved" will be published by The MacGuffin in 1997. "Hijo De Puta" was printed in CPU Review in 1994. THE GEORGETOWN
REVIEW published "The Hallelujah Band" in its Fall 1995
edition. "The Territory Of Dreams" (formerly "What Is The
Territory...") won Second Place in the 1993 annual competition from HALF TONES TO JUBILEE. Finally, "The Important Things"
first appeared in VOICES, vol 4, 1993. It can also be found
in the 1995 anthology of Washington area poets entitled Hungry As We Are.
iii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OP CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii THE INSIDE BOX Penance...... 2 What Makes Me Invisible...... 3 The Weight She Carries...... 5 Hidden Shelter...... 7 The Inside Box...... 8 Off Columbus Circle...... 9 The Nest...... 10 In The End I Was Always Yours...... 11 Lesson...... 13 True Air...... 15 Eat The Body...... 16 Weights...... 17 Ship of Fools, Velasquez' s Dwarves...... 19 Jeannine's First Time Out...... 21 Doing It In The Kitchen...... 23 Too Late...... 24 When You First Watched My Lips Move...... 25 Before You Go ...... 26 FAITH To Be Norwegian...... 29 In A Java Cave...... 31 Beast...... 32 Watching...... 33 A Modern Day David...... 34 Recuerdo...... 36 Faith...... 37 Of Myra, A Small Permission...... 38
iv
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Letters From The Evaporated City...... 3 9 Found In The Clearing...... 41 The Unobserved...... 42 Leaving U s ...... 44 Tree Of Prolonged Healing...... 45 To Shoulder Hunger...... 49 GLYPHS OF BONE Angels Of Self-Abandon...... 51 Wings...... 52 Somos Guerreros...... 53 Like Cloth...... 54 The Witch Above La Joya...... 55 Hi jo De Puta...... 56 Anastasia...... 57 Anyone You Know...... 58 The Cover Within...... 59 Filling Hollow Space...... 61 The Intention Of Memory...... 63 THE IMPORTANT THINGS Teacup Of My Mother's Self...... 65 Healing...... 66 Was I Ancient With Waiting?...... 68 Directions for a Woman Wanted...... 72 Sleepwalker...... 73 The Hallelujah Band...... 74 Lifted Over...... 76 At Last, Come...... 77 Fully Eaten...... 78 Between U s ...... 79 The Territory Of Dreams...... 80 Distance...... 84 The Important Things...... 85 Leaves...... 87
v
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE INSIDE BOX
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PENANCE
Inedible stone in my shoe. Small white gravel, poured along the bottoms of two penny loafers before school. Down the hall, my short feet hobble. Save me from the sins of my six years. Jesus lies upon the cross. I offer him a cup of water. My feet will never bleed. Each night I replace stones with new ones. Pray for comfort from the Father. No one knows what hides inside me.
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WHAT MAKES ME INVISIBLE
I sit on the hard chair at the Mayflower Coffee Shop, my feet dangling, waiting, my head almost level with the
table top, mother elegantly smoking, inhale and releasing
her Pall Malls. I sip hot cocoa, bubbles of whipped cream
on my spoon, dripping and wipe my chin, my dress tied in
the back with a perfect bow, my plain hair clean.
I know what's next, the boyfriend I'll meet, he'll sit by
my mother, always they come later, a box as big as a
t.v. in his arms. And he'll kiss her, she'll move her
cheek to the side, and he'll join us, look to see that I
like this, a good little girl, quiet, not begging.
The boyfriends are always bug-eyed and young, or old and
used like the one with pennies glued to his tie, his
sisters calling him their Baby Brother. And the box will
set on the floor like a bomb, its weight heavy on me, am I supposed to ask? guess? what I already know.
And I wait forever, mother not looking, only at the window, it's snowing or raining, I wish we could go, my
cocoa's almost cold.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Then he arrives, Mark or Michael, his dark hair, his jacket dark, he's nervous, hides the obvious. Sits down
and he smiles, pats my head as mother elbows him, eyes me
with her teeth fixed. Michael the Guardian Angel, Mark the Apostle, he slides the box over, I say slowly,
"Thanks," hate how life stops.
I sip more cocoa, not want to be greedy, stare at the gold and white paper, the big ribbons. "Open it, sweetie." Mother's red lips part, her hand covers his
arm, they whisper, make me invisible. The other tables are noisy, the box is high.
My fingers rip the ribbons off, paper tears, its face stares at me, its blonde hair curled like Shirley
Temple's, the one with the blue dress, velvet. The way
I dress on Easter Sunday: straw hat with lavender flowers, black mary janes and white socks.
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THE WEIGHT SHE CARRIES
There are bodies standing in my mother's closet. When I
enter her room I hear them chatter. When I open the closet door they hang like dresses, though they are men
and women stuffed in dark clothes. They continue their
talking through the wall between our rooms, keep me up all night. My mother never mentions them. When she goes
outside, some stay behind. Others settle on her like
overcoats, hats or even shoes. They fit her body badly
(she's a tiny woman.) I follow her out into the street but stay far to the side. She doesn't notice me. She walks quickly to the subway even with the weight she
carries. The bodies she wears weep loudly as she rises
up the stairs, as she enters the train. Their cheeks become soupy, their mouths exposed wounds. What I see of
a coarse leg ending in a high-buttoned shoe kicks at my
mother's breast, demanding its milk. My mother closes her coat tightly, gazes out the window. A thick-set man
with an ugly torso cradles her shoulders. He begins to
howl, then mutters in another language. The tiny woman she wears like a set of pearls picks up the sound of the muttering man. They sing together with a rhythm that
rocks the train. My mother's feet shift slightly as she sways, grips the pole. The mottled body that wraps my
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mother's face like a veil pulls at its eyes till my
mother looks like a clown playing for laughter.
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HIDDEN SHELTER
Dark water,
so blue at its center, a bowl of balm for childwounds
from my mother. I sit on granite
partway under water, my feet kicking up and up in streamers. This red suit
tugs my chubby belly. Stocky newborn toads pounce off that farther rock to my in-rounded shoulders. Nearby, a family of frogs so tender.
I handle this lone mini-toad with its yellow speckles. Gobble yellow in my palms. Walk round these sharp
boulders. Where the lake widens, I plop to secret depths. Work my way through blue to light. Now the lake creeps along in awkward slivers, some fingers narrow as marsh. My feet wiggle in mush. A water moccasin ribbons from its hidden shelter.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE INSIDE BOX
The size and weight of one pod full of peas, pressed between my grandmother's bosom and my upturned hand. Sorrow my grandmother marries to lavender in a darkened locket. Its scent leaches through gold, turns to oils in her skin. Thin, fallow remembrances she places in my palm.
"Eat this."
I eat slabs of pumpernickel bread spread with sweet white butter and lumps of raspberry jam. All around us the room is kept removed from the light. Glass cases hold back her locked past.
"Eat this."
Delicately I eat the insides of a box of tin, marigolds etched into my reflection.
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OFF COLUMBUS CIRCLE
In our apartment rodents grey-guard the stairs and roaches rim the sugar bowl in the kitchen. Dark- dwellers, they shun the light of company and care. In these seven planked rooms, set out like box cars droning their way to nowhere, a fat-bellied Buddha sits in a corner--a dark Christ transmitting luck with each child- palmed rub I offer. Now I run the gauntlet from steps to street corner with nothing furtive to chase me.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE NEST
On purpose, I jam my foot into the nest, getting what I've come for. Yellow jackets fly out and at my legs. Tears come. I run to the nest of big kids by the lake. Stung, I am strong. No one will call me "baby" again.
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IN THE END I WAS ALWAYS YOURS
The summer I was 11-going-on-12 and I was about to go
into junior high and I got a little taller but not as
tall as my best friend Betty who grew 6 inches in 2 months and was now 5 feet 5-and-1/2-inches tall which is
taller that I would ever be and I went to Florida with
your sister and her husband and got bitten by mosquitoes in the Everglades and was forced to wear slabs of
Calamine lotion all day and night against my thickening
legs was the summer you said you were going to marry Alfred with the pennies glued to his tie and the sisters
who said he was still a baby at 62 and not yet ready for
a gold digger like you.
And I came back from that summer with my first period
which I hid from you though I'm not sure why and prayed
to Jesus and Holy Mary to take it away till I was 14 and big enough and wise enough not to cry when you called me whore and slut because you thought I was ready now to be
like you just the way you are.
And you were so anxious to have me back home that you
cried and you pushed me to the bed and showed me all the gifts you'd bought which you'd laid out like a trousseau
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. because I'd left you and you were scared that I liked
your sister better than I like you.
And I knew you had no money to buy those things and I was
thinking what you must have done to get them as I leaned
over that bangle bracelet with its seven plastic balls in
bright colors like candies.
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LESSONS
It's really about sex what I do--this act of insertion-- opening of the mouth like the one between my legs, the raw part of me rubbing the sinful places of a man. Insertion, mouth wide open, every day. But there is no lover.
It's about this moment when my mother's eyes begin to pucker and my body squirms under covers as her flashlight blares at my face, midnight or two in the morning. She shakes me with accusations and it's always sex that she is screaming. When she screams it in my ear, the shadow of her hand looms against the wall and my throat begins its tightening reply.
Nothing safe or clean can penetrate me now. She always goes away, but I learn the lesson well.
Now, after school, I am alone in the grey of our kitchen and this time before my mother returns is forever. Books bundled under my arm tumble onto the table and the paper bag I've carried stands up tall. I close the blinds till a coolness relieves the air of our cramped apartment. The radio plays a Beatles' song, then The Monkees come on. I like voices to visit from a distance and boiling water in a pot. The Chef on the box sings his jingle to me. His white cap, and the red and green and white of the label, are a personal invitation.
There are three kinds of "Complete Spaghetti Dinners" to choose from. Today I bought the one with meat sauce, no mushrooms.
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I am not hungry. I am not hungry but I want so much to cry. I carry a second pot from the cupboard to heat the sauce, then throw spaghetti into the bigger one. There's a packet of Parmesan cheese to toss over the top and it all fits inside a giant bowl.
Serves three to four. Takes ten minutes to swallow.
I time myself.
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TRUE AIR
But what is peace to the child fallen in a field and alone, aimed in the direction of wind, here and there scattered, and her knees marred by absence? Fatherless and motherless, she clings to the open wings of an oak. Rises, like a desperate thrush to a crumb, to the sun that warms her sleeve. Even a child must learn to breathe faint for lack of true air, air that is drawn tight in the chapel she is driven t o . Child, on the narrow reaches of a bench hunches in dimmer light. Brightness at the altar. Lean in. Here is made the mark. Piercing of the heart and forehead in supplication. Child to the dark, bend to the fallen.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. EAT THE BODY
A bead of jam upon the table, its perfect oval imitating blood we draw from Christ's inoculation. Blood, mother said, would spell danger.
Tasting the blood of lost sisters on my finger. Tasting their jelly. Intaking cords of shame mother cut from her belly.
Tasting this flesh I devour. Body of Our Lord, holy crucifixion.
Drink this wine, it is His blood. Fill me with the wounds of others.
Raise me from the dead that I may lick this hunger, linger where men in leather jackets, twenty years too young and women lie grey haired and learned.
In this lust for strangers, touch of body, jam, yearning is repentance.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. WEIGHTS
Above her his body-
heavy. She small
as he'd imagined. Bones
thin as pampas grass bending.
The soft puff of his chest
compresses her
comfortably.
She is not like
others he's leaned upon. Men, broad as he, his
size, his cock hardening against theirs.
He doesn't want to move with force through her body.
She pulls him, shows him inside. Her hand
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cups the spoon
of his pelvis.
He gathers her hair with his eyes.
She holds his heaviness.
When he pirouettes
she lifts him high.
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SHIP OF FOOLS, VELASQUEZ'S DWARVES
Craving the touch and sound of the unheeled vacant and their grace, the marginal hidden lost unwashed who come upon us, their demons and icons, thief, whore, cripple, sublime fool. Their messengers and amulets, soothsayers, their remains. Sorrow, the dust of their bones. All the outcast who carry our burden, desires. Their vessels: ignoble, hammering at our reason. These:
the changeling woman who reveals a cock between her thighs; the one who gives her body to soldiers, is beaten with stones of Mary Magdalene ,- the obese neighbor who slips her burden beneath her lover as she cries; the obsessive ponytailed grey-bearded man who lifts abandoned limbs, carries them home for eternal fires; the tormented leaf and oak, worn-down tree, the crooked hidden hollow where the homeless lie; the gap-toothed drunken man; the stark and fallen who stalk us in a slackened haze; the outstretched palm, the open wound; the one befriended, seen as useful, well-intentioned, noble; the mongrel dog and the limp-legged man who scares us with his eyes; the sexless alcoholic, the pained and the unintended anorectic; the martyr, depressed nun, the ruined soul; the lost ones, forgotten, their banners, too: the ones who died before their time and their place of death--the curve of stone and the exploded bomb;
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the heretic burial, mourners at the cathedral; the dead, returned to us in dreams.
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JEANNINE'S FIRST TIME OUT
Jeannine thinks she should go to Santa Fe to a desert or a dry mountain and ponder or maybe India when the weather gets better. She wants to ride a motorcycle on a dirt road in the dark ride fast and never get caught. She likes looking brave. Jeannine wears leather to practice the walk and swigs bottles of hot air. She wants to take a lover in the neon of a cheap motel. Jeannine's been seventeen miles south of Yosemite where the curtains were crushed velvet so was the spread. She needs a hobby. She paints her nails assorted colors every ten days. She's read all of Dostoyevsky and Dickens and Joyce Carol Oates. Jeannine thinks literature's a joke but life isn't so funny. She hasn't cracked gum for ages. Sometimes she wears a veil and carries a long trail of rosaries. She likes convents because they're clean. Jeannine doesn't care much about her mother which is being kind of bitter. Her critics haven't had time to say too many bad things about her. Everyone thinks she' s sweet but she's no looker. Jeannine's two front teeth are big like a beaver's and she's never been Miss America not even Miss Ozark County. Jeannine reads people's faces which is for her a well- developed skill. She's sharp enough to notice everyone wants her. She's sullen when she doesn't get her way. Her disposition is clear. She likes big dogs. Jeannine's a real scream but her religion is undefined. She's getting old and there's nothing left to say about it.
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She thinks Minneapolis St. Paul would be wonderful or maybe even Buffalo. Jeannine loves lakes and tattoos and wrought iron fences.
Currently she's stuck on Avenue A below SoHo. She secretly wants to hear Carmina Burana on her broken stereo. Jeannine's no artist but she can draw. She was wounded twice in Vietnam and suffers from post traumatic stress disorder.
Jeannine was a doctor once in Philadelphia. She made big bucks but wanted more time to be alone. Last night Jeannine was caught in drag by a friend who didn't know. Jeannine's a regular baby doll and she's out to get a name.
She committed suicide in '71 but the disguise saved her from a lot of trouble.
The picture on the table shows she hasn't changed since she was three years old.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DOING IT IN THE KITCHEN
Leaning on the window, my mother fucks me when she shifts places with the faceless man.
She rips thighs, exposes
ligament and blood.
The man sucks my nipple hard.
My mother scalds me when the man shoves his tongue within. Later, we eat raisins, burnt toast slabbed with honey, her golden come.
In the corner she is crying, legs flared like a praying mantis leaps. Walls wane, less and less room to huddle when my mother lunges for my waist, dips me in a tango. Her spine pivots, caresses
when I stick my hand below.
There is no resistance, just her resilient jaw forcing its way through cheek and eyes.
We make love while he lies dead at our feet.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TOO LATE
Try not to replicate that madness, the silent howl of her face, those eyes transparent and her vacant heart. Say grace instead. Cloak yourself. Be at rest, do not let the madness adore you.
It does adore you, precious. Loves to tear its teeth through your opening arms.
Madness, madness in both your lives and children have already come.
Too late. The mothering fool laughs at you.
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WHEN YOU FIRST WATCHED MY LIPS MOVE, COULD YOU SEE ME PRAISE YOU?
Those hard-worked eyes of yours are the eyes you carried when you were two years old, intent on tracing words you couldn't hear. You'd spend hours walking down a street full of leaves, away from me. Bend to see what made them twirl. Stand in the middle of the playground, yanking hard on someone else's tricycle till they'd run away crying, your hair a fuzzy halo, eyes set no matter what the other parent said. Now, sounds in your life rush in, you dance your body out on a Balanchine stage till it's worn.
Your brightest moments come when I am absent.
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BEFORE YOU GO
Days and you are neither
grown to womanhood nor clinging to my shoulder, legs
around my hip, eyes squinting in a busy sun-bright park.
Small wonder things are so uncontained. We
are out of order. I cannot
retrieve that sweetness
for your sake, make your heart over.
Now
so far out of bounds,
we come
to this sudden confessional. Inside, the priest is solemn, knows
no penance to right us.
Alone we make this sacrament, an intimate gesture: from between my thighs, I pour you out.
Night and our blood fills this chalice.
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We drink to take in happiness before we go.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FAITH
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TO BE NORWEGIAN
He drinks a cup of olive oil
every day for a year. Grows accustomed to a diet of fat.
Inside his muscles, globules
coat his bones.
He watches for signs of that hunger before he goes.
My eyes are blinded by four days of heavy snows.
I climb Mt. Everest
with sherpas and prayer flags.
Sherpas lag behind.
He weighs his pack, works his sledge and skis till they're slender as needles. Spring comes.
He walks into a world
of ice alone, gold inside his body. Some days his eyes freeze.
I am first to reach the summit. Frostbite only matters
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. when I return.
It's an old dream.
In fact,
I've never climbed a mountain.
If I could swallow
olive oil for a year, I'd be Norwegian.
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Hung upside down
by bony-furred feet,
their wings locked
in beehive formation, pud after pud of thunk-bodied
beast chants a high pitched drone, Buddhist monks intoning
OM with multitonal vocal cords,
prayer flags flopping
in a Nepalese wind.
On Java, dancers paint themselves ink black with mosaics, then hang from walls--
bats hanging in a cave.
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BEAST
All the women in my body move their eyes so slyly. Cast arms outward like beasts catch wind. Toss hair up and back, so rich with signalling.
And the way they stand full-balanced, or walk with babies in bellies like flowers, sly.
I see wildness seeking water, the beast in dry heat who rubs cool earth, twitter of sparrow in a crack of siding called "nest."
Hear the union of beast with soul, alone in the night wood?
That is woman in my body. Savage, wise. She is the source of sustenance, ease to entice.
Old, I am all woman in my body, eternally rich with children.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. WATCHING
I watch a small woman with bowed shoulders walk across the room an old khaki cap muffles her wizened face
there is Chinatown in her turquoise rayon shirt
and china-somewhere in her small shuffling feet
seated alone she is too old and tender for these young others
as she caresses her knees her hands are the delicate reminder
that I once walked a gobi-desert ancient generations ago calling to her my wife
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A MODERN DAY DAVID IN A CAFE
heat unwinds my mood as I curl my leg around me
and lean into you with that ancient desire
your words fall from a far off somewhere
onto the shadowed lids of my eyes
the twist of grey hair at the base of your neck
prepares me for an inevitable age
are you that wise?
I come here often you bring your absence to bury the passion of my reason
in some foreign cafe of the mind I am longing for Angkor Wat or Everest
the city of old Jerusalem at my back
you think my attention is yours to marry with your magnet eyes
your twirl of fingers across the edges of that sweet brown cake touches the sandy back of my throat
I know its sugar I see you wanting other women gab and gather you do not care
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I mark my moments like Bathsheba waiting
tomorrow I will knit the moon a cover of beetles
and walk into heat bearing an amulet of your eyes
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RECUERDO
Carlos Reynosa stood patiently throughout the long service and festival which followed. He listened to the
gay music with no visible passion, shook hands with each
one of the many mourners. Near midnight, the Enchando
dancers were worn from dancing on the coffin of Dona
Octavia. She had been the Governor's wife in the old
days, he'd been dead himself now for many years, and she was to be remembered with great ceremony and frivolity.
For weeks after her death, Carlos no longer took to aqua
vitae, but lay in his darkened chambers recalling the
soft blackness of her satin undergarments and tobacco
stains on her teeth. It had been a matter of honor and breeding, giving in to her slackened nipples until the day she died. She needed that assurance. No longer were
there matadors to bow to her radiant beauty, nor conquests from which to draw jewels. Dona Octavia had
succumbed to the memory of a Mexico no one else could
recall. And Carlos was always her dutiful son.
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FAITH
He was a small child and an obedient one. Cows were his
enemies, but he had no other friends. Every morning he
would rise before the flowers opened, dip his boots in mud and clear the troughs. He walked with eyes downward
into the cracked stalls, scraping a long shovel in the
wet cement hollow. The air around him boasted of great
flies and a mix of grasses framed the smell of everything the child wore or ate. His palms were caked with an
inevitable powder. He thought of cows. Father was not a
kind man. He did not remember the loneliness of being a
son. To Father, cows were the ticket to heaven and God
had made them in His own image. His wife knew and
obeyed. Each year another one came, but they never stayed. Only this one son could find no other place to
be. And he had begun to recognize that cowness was a healing.
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OF MYRA, A SMALL PERMISSION AND A FUTURE SIGN
...then she sings in a glottal tone
to the movement of dry orange heat weaving through the window. Sings to me in a willow breath a song
of sweetnesses, her hair thinning,
shining through gilded light.
Unknowing, she intones, "Not to Agra
do you go, but to Boyd." We travel, steeped in tea-green hills of India. Upon a map of old royal land we stand, her hands unfolding, waving
saris in the wind.
Lost, we lurch to long-consuming sun.
With her singing in the air, there can be no rain.
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LETTERS FROM THE EVAPORATED CITY
DAY 17 We wait. Trees are dying. There is no one left to wipe away tears but we keep on crying. Days are never the same, we have lost so much with the weather. Naomi kept the Virgin, stone pillar with child. Over and over I hear her sighing. Saw her fall to the ground and she did not move for a long time. Can't remember the reason. Absence. Something we've had is gone. Breathing is much harder now.
DAY 53 Please collect the pockets when you arrive. Money has become useless. We use it for fires but only smoke appears. We can't stay warm. The surface is harsh. We worry. Especially at night. The last bird was weeks ago. Can't tell who's left.
DAY 492 Some of us ran away, we were hit so hard. A few came back. No response. There has been an incessant singing. It is high and almost sweet. It troubles my ears. I waited but then my eyes failed. A long time passed before I could see again. I can't see well. I am old. I wasn't old before, was I? No. I thought not.
DAY 530 The place beyond this is no longer known. We fear the dark. It has too many voices. The light that leaches through doesn't help, it's like us. It's all grey. We laugh. I wish you could see the way we are when you aren't watching.
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DAY 1,188 The way we used to dance, I remember that. Remember dancing? Compressed bodies. There is no music now. You used to wear green ridiculous ties. That way you had of chewing on bread, I can see that. But the air changes everything. Jorgen says it's how we think. I wish you would come to stay.
DAY 3,002 Now, it is all business. Trees arrived last week. Oh, Naomi's made it through. There are boxes of five-and- twenty-dollar bills hidden under the scrim. Be careful. It is cold here but that is how it's been. No fires yet. No shadows. We lost all of that. This isn't something new. It's something older. We can't remember but we carry on. Some recall the old songs. Anyway, who's left to say it's wrong? We see the end. The stage is set. When we practice our pirouettes, a halo of sobbing rises from below.
Don't forget the light.
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We come upon a foursquare house of leftover wood, greyed
by a cut in the forest
made decades before, then
abandoned. Lilac bushes growing leggy all around. Near the sealed window, we tumble onto collapsed steps. Inside, colors like canned discards from a shed: barn red,
child's dresser green. And the smell
of garbage gone dry. Behind one cracked door, a mattress picked at by field mice curls into the corner. Insect bodies mound over broken floorboards.
Dusk settles. We move in boxes of books, clothes
to the hollowed-out closet. Done, we stand below this ceiling hole, our wings full against the wall.
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In the dust that rises to the light
of a battered window,
in corners behind the altar where men bow over hosts piled on a paten,
in the space beneath the bed where a child's felt slippers lie down together, from the back of a car
where an infant cries with hunger
and the driver never answers, angels wonder.
From the banishment of fear
by the slap of a hand, from the bold sigh of a man left in a corner to be buried but who is still alive, in the nightlong closet
where sorrow melts into a woman who does what she cannot avoid, angels take their sacrament.
In the sack of false stones discovered
near the stump of a tree, with the stinger of a bee who waits in a cup at the edge of a river, from the moment
the hand tightens on the throat of a paralyzed brother and the old ones
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with ridiculous laughter claim there is no
resurrection, angels pummel the air with their wings.
Swarms of angels surround the shell of the world
with their chanting. Between their haven
and what we know there is a brilliant
glow. It covers the inside of the egg they lean upon. There is a very large window
which opens only one way. It is the language we use when we are empty.
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LEAVING US
Something is leaving us, draining from our sallow skins. Some mountain breathing, the handmaking of candles from bees'caves in these low woods, votives we carry to the village priest at Easter. Some bending of the knees to humble ourselves before this icon, Christ glinting, gleaming gold against stone, His wounds bleeding, that mystery of resurrection, accepted, and this protection of bearded men, accepted. The sound of our language is leaving us, Slavic thickness, guttural, raw. And these songs sung in our houses, but here there are no houses, we do not sing. Spirits are leaving us through these trees. We are short as trolls, shrunken, odd. Gypsies have carried us too far away. Our souls are confused. We know what the land calls labor. We know to shut doors against the cold, heal broken hearts with tea leaves steeped behind a mirror. We are leaving behind the signals goats give before we milk them. Leaving dried cheese that hangs in cloths in the corner. Spirits are leaving from our wide feet, Mongol eyes, clods of this dirt that carry earthen foods, this garlic that wards off evil. In this foreign ground we are leaving an old sorrow: sentimental, silly. There is this reaching for the once-good which is going away, sins that confession heals, coming up empty. What are we giving way to? We wander in air too full. We cry out, "Ionko!" "Ana!" Heads that are turning are so old. We are leaving on the tires of American cars. We are running from bridges that break in the midst of heavy rains. Grandfathers die in the mining of coal. There are no miners left with the old names. There are no towns that speak the original tongue. When we call the priest says they have all gone.
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TREE OF PROLONGED HEALING 1 . Larkspur, Willow, Linden, Maple. Tree that eats my name. Food of trees, sweet tongue of fiber. Tree that stands to call me to its limbs. Tree of knowing, tree of need. I am longing to be away with trees, brushed by eastward-leaning winds of Hudson River Beech that clutch clear air.
Oh Birch of white bark, Weeping Apple in a lost friend's foreyard, Lombardy Poplar on the monastery road, tree of recollection. Celibate tree that embraces me. Tree that is itself silence. Call me to you, tree that I obey.
Tree of my grandmother. Alder. Pine. Forested mountain tree of Slovenia. Ancestors' tree. Mitochondrial tree of me. Children's tree. Children of my children. Cellular gesture of tree. Name me. 2 . Bread falls to the floor. My grandfather's father lifts it to his mouth, kisses its dark pillow, presses bread to his forehead, chest, crosses shoulders with this piece of bread. "Bless us, Father."
In the Slovene mountains my mother builds a fire. It is not yet dawn. This bent woman is my mother's
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mother's mother. Tree of me, same fiber. Blesses this house with sooted palms. She carries seeds that root in another land. 3 . To see trees would have made them pound their feet to feel the balance of rock under shoe. The boxcar windows are shut with planks. Dark. They cannot see to disembark. Uprooted trees of grandmother and grandfather. "Ionko!" "Ana!" Their roots are calling me. Oh tree of my roof, protect me as I walk this earth.
4 . In a block of timber houses with no clear water, there are no trees. Inside the mine it is dusty. On the barren hill my grandmother stretches linens across a splintered board. Here in Scranton, Wilkes Barre, Jessup, Pennsylvania there are no trees. "Ana!" "Ana!"
Who calls me to my grandmother's name? Who makes this cross of maple? There are no trees to name these bodies. "Ana, come to your supper. There is bread upon the table." 5. My mother's father's body stands in a line shoveling coal from a Jessup mine. Blackness from the body of anthracite soil fills his body. Grandfather in a new land, he is called away by trees. Trees are calling his name. Calling me to their arms. "Ionko!" "Ionko!"
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In this country he has no name. Trees do not know the name to call him.
"Ionko!" "Ionko!"
He is not here. Who remains to answer the trees? 6 . The night the rains swelled the roots of trees spread themselves from the culm banks' barrenness. Elms. Grave mighty Oaks lifted by a wind.
Trees call the wind to marry them. Trees crack thin timbers of an arched bridge over rising cold waters. Calling my grandfather's name. Calling Ionko to his grave.
Who remains to answer the trees?
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7. I remain.
Oh, Tree of prolonged healing, Blue Spruce, darkest Douglas Fir, Hazelwand that showers grace upon us, Redwood standing above the altar of our replication. Evergreen, Lebanon water of my soothing Cedar, bless this holy fiber. Aspen, Aspen that quivers in the blood-wind of our Saviour.
We are not the children of God. We are trembling, breaking into leaves. Spread our remembered colors till we have blushed the coming and the leaving of our selves.
Oh, grandfather Lignum Vitae! In your arms we are enfolded. The root, the root which grounds our seed to this early shore covers us in this womb of trees. We kiss the food of our longing. Lean into your beckoning wind.
"An a !" "Ionko!" " Emma!"
No name that is the name of us all! Call us to your limbs. We answer Trees.
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TO SHOULDER HUNGER
The Angel lisps through teeth laced into an edge of the Himalayas. Says that he is bound to earthy things: granite, basalt, feldspar, slate and the trace elements. Even that black anthracitic coal he ate from in pockets of Pennsylvania, Croatia and the mines of South Africa. Yes, he's chewed stalactites pulled from the tongue of underocean caves. Chewed till there were earthquakes and waves along the Japanese vein. But he's come to beg for more silicate to shoulder his hunger. Insufficient to taste the tip and ether of Everest. K2 makes no difference. He's landed heavy. Yearns for the heaviness of radioactive uranium. Just bring him water. Marry him to a stuffed cabbage and some lumped mashed potatoes. Drag him to Bosnia. Whisper into his chiseled ear that weight is a delicate state of mind.
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ANGELS OF SELF-ABANDON
To be diminished into divine love by a maelstrom of fatigue where, at rest, angels speak of an outcast poverty of the soul, how they yearn to breathe despair, breathe of the wild surrender of the body. Oh, they may adore spare grace in the wrecked ribs of the starved, count bone above bone with such deliciousness. Answer the majestic call into inexhaustible pain. Angels would lick the lather of tubercular phlegm, brace scars upon flesh if they were fleshed, carry red-wound amulets, victoriously humbled. Lovers of self-abandon, cordoned in a gimbal to the stern of heaven, they fixate on decimation. But who among carriers of the body would bear saintly weight when ground falls under the lapsed dome and we are uprighted into holiness?
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Armadio Pinta rubs his eyes, looking for a clearing in the jungle of his tent. He rubs, looks, rubs again. It is inescapable. Small, but it does not go away. A bright thing, almost with wings, flips noisily in the wind like paper. A thin dress, bits of lace still white, though it should be filthy. Armadio thinks she was not so small. Not just a child like his daughter Floriana.
Mad with its thinness, he runs outside, stares as the flap of his tent opens behind him. There underneath the stone of his cooking! There, beside the tree where he pisses!
In the distance moving. A small white thing, echo from the jungle, shivering.
Even dead, she shivers.
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SOMOS GUERREROS I
After weeks of training in the jungles of Honduras, the soldiers of the Atlacatl prepare to celebrate. They gather carcasses of rotting animals from the road leading to the ridges of La Chuya y Minote, anything they can find. Dogs, vultures, rats. A large pot is placed in a hollow near the stream where they have cleansed themselves. Into the pot go bones of birds and strays, flesh dissolving into a bloody stew filled with the strength of ten thousand Aztec warriors. Each man sucks his portion from the communal bowl as it passes among the band of fighting brothers. For many hours, they sing full-throated into a darkening sky.
On this night, Christ bends his head low, being certain to mark every word.
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LIKE CLOTH
Crawling through thick brush on her knees, her one-year-old roped to her back, Andrea Marquez skirts bullets and bayonets, aching her way up the sides of the mountain, then running, her baby girl pounding at the edges of her spine, the baby making lolling sounds of thirst or hunger in her ear.
Andrea turns and pulls the rope around and down. Her child, full-weighted, leans to her breast, its baby head now recognizably pushed in by bullets. A syrup of child-blood clothes Andrea's body.
(In 1981, hundreds of men, women and children were massacred by National Forces at El Mozote and La Joya, small mountain villages in El Salvador.)
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In the light of moon or in no light a woman moves along the ridges of the mountain. Her hair like coal trails her body. Her body silver.
Always, she runs to the stream. Reaches in with long white fingers. Grabs a fish and strips it of its skin.
She eats flesh, liquid dripping down her full lips.
On full moon nights she eats five or more. And then the screaming rises.
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HIJO DE PUTA
In the northeast corner of the sacristy of La Iglesia de Santa Catarina del Mozote, under bits of worn, reddish earth and rubble, a tiny brightness emerges. The orange legs of a plastic horse stick up proudly as if he is ready to run.
Perhaps a cousin living illegally in Arlington, Virginia bought this pony for her cousin's son in El Mozote.
My own son collects warriors and their weapons.
From around its brown saddle I rub dirt away. Placing the toy in my pocket, I then lift the skull of a child from this darker earth.
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Burrowed under tansy and broken into glyphs of bone to be deciphered, what she's become is scattered. Bits of shoulder, a pelvic wing. A man digs through dry earth to dank. Reaches in, sifts the swatch of her unworn womb. Quiet, she stays a good girl, having lost the mouth she used to shout back with. No legs left to run from the calling of her name. Two feet down, a giggle resounds in his opened palm. Somehow, she's found cords to connect her throat.
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An ordinary pinning: iron nails pounded with the usual number of blows. On a strong day it takes three apiece, forced through flesh and bone. My work done, this man hangs on the scaffold. Sweat drains in my eyes as a black sky crosses over. Others cry it's a sign, but I pay no bother. Trouble never follows me home. I am anyone you know. Have hammer and nails, always ready for work. Did three today. Feel a good tired now. Alone, the sweetest moment's when I sink my teeth into dry bread. And it is dark and I am ready for bed.
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Go. Gather weapons. Protect the inside. Slash the face of a mountain. With a chisel, beat rock to form cloth. Wear it hidden.
Use adamant, impenetrable stone. Gouge sheets of it. Wind an adamantine cape round bruised shoulders. Protect yourself.
From mica, grate scales. Form a spine. Have it lug heavy, honest weight.
Shake hampered arms till slate melds. Legs turn obsidian.
Weave a crown of rush sticks, cropped out, waxen. Carve shoes of maple to wave in meadow. Within, layer feather from the heron, gull. Protect the womb.
Collect peony eyes. Watch what comes. Sew a mouth full of bees. Tell no lies.
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Gather entire fields of marigold. Frame the ears. Listen to what has not been told.
For the chest scavenge bone. Protect the heart. Protect within.
Once done, wear the rumble: Out walks this monstrous wonder round and round and round this shaken world.
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We lie between the room where this slippery generation has begun
and the one with such heaviness.
Overcome by breathing
at birth, grief roams
down around our legs. The newborn child
suckles then cries.
Joy eases by filling hollow space
inside bones. Absence settles in our arms and rounds our shoulders.
There is silence. There is this
fatal loneliness between our thighs.
We look away
from the window. What tries to leave, we clutch at with our teeth.
Grief begins to build its canister of muscle, ligament and what we recall.
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Flesh falls. We rise then from our body.
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Overlooking water lilies on a viridian pond that does not waver I mean to lie down in water. Over a veil of water I would row as a child a serpentine path to spare grace within fronds then stop. When I leaned to lift the bulb of butter-lily, my canoe would rock. Pulling up the lily's caudex pulled me down to the water's womb. I longed to breathe under the blanket of spiralling leaves, to rest in darkness. What hides in blank transparencies? The deity's missive. To be a pad of lilies afloat upon a pond. To be carried by thickness of stems into grace. To be a woman on a bridge overlooking calm.
I mean to merge with lilies.
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Oh, thin cup of sin, shy in your cupboard. Removed, you spread your soothing liquid treason down the charred heart of my throat.
I come to swallow weakness without contrition. Desire what was not then sound.
Inside the kettle which fills this cup lie these old leaves of forgiveness.
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We sleep in one body, consecrated
by lilies. A thicket falling
from the sky covers sorrow
in a surplice of lilies.
From under your curved-up plum-colored penis, my thighs, a clutch
of full-blown lilies is raised.
We lay trumpet-leaves along the mother-wound of my throat.
Her fingers release their grip.
With a swarm of lilies
in our hands, we call "Momma, momma, momma,"
from the attic where you are five.
Angels caress our eyes to sleepfulness.
Baptized now in a nectar of lilies, we ooze. Beneath the hollow slip of shoulder, lily buds
rise, increase in size
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of lilies.
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WAS I ANCIENT WITH WAITING?
did I sleep in heaven like an infant angel awaiting its human birth was I ancient with waiting
did you call me to you when you were ready and
did I answer did you need me to fill your womb up with future
did I need you to be my creator and
did we both need a father had you missed your father all your life
do you miss him still
did you choose a wise man for us both and tell me
was he difficult to find
did you try out options on a corner
or walk into a bar just knowing
do you remember
did I stir then in my infant sleep
dream his voice calling
did he see the outline of my longing and
was I the one he really wanted
did he whisper in your ear tell me what he said
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were they magic words
was he your magician
did you choose him for the color of my eyes
tango in your black dress and heels
watch his hips swag in dark flannel
did that make you crazy
was he subtle
did he ask the price did you rent a room for an hour was it sleazy
were there windows
did he tear your clothes with his teeth
break the hook at the base of your neck was that part of the hunger
did he roll your nipple with greed
suck it dry
did it hurt
did you cry did you ask for more
did you want him mother want him so badly you could die
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or was it money for a winter coat it being January
and you shivering
did you steal the smell inside his palms
touch his thigh taste his early come
did he eat you to the bone
press your hands until you sighed
did you tie your legs around his waist did you know his name when he entered
did sweat fall from his body
could he see your softened belly count the number of babies by the ridges on your spine
could he count them all
did you ache as he came did you ever come
did you do it again
could you feel the moment of conception as so many women say they can
or too late recall aborted ones and pray for a miracle
did you lunge fingers down your throat stop eating so I wouldn't show
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did nine months go by quickly did you cry because it was your birthday did you callme from within the endless cloud
and ask that I never leave you
did you make me promise to be a boy because girls are unlucky and you were unlucky
did I hesitate even then beg the gods to return me to angelic rest
did they ever listen
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Do not deflower the soul of this woman yet. Drape her in mother's milk-warm embrace.
Let her walk with high heels but not on thin ice.
Cover her cheeks with a knowing grace. Say what leaves is not really death.
Be majestic in your unfolding. Open her slowly, no need to resist.
Have her topple from a foolish enchantment. Skin her knees. Grow rusty, self-assuring scabs. She can ease them off in a tub of warm water.
When she marches with confident stride through an alternate city, let her bury her sighs.
Extend the line. Turn her eyes from green to navy, her lips red.
Lick the underneath of her. Save her heart. Expose her face to that other light.
Bulk out her waist. Unfurl her fingers to grope, then linger. Have sex with her.
Canvass her inside desire. Make it last.
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A woman stands on a lawn, chest-high in stars. She leaves no shadow on the walls of her house as halos surround her. Long arms of the Big and the Little Dipper carry her down the path of snow to the lolling river. At the edges of inching ice the envelope of the Universe addresses itself to this sleeping woman. Easily she drifts into water. She is swimming at the exact center of the Milky Way when swans lean their angulating necks into her. A thousand swans float above the night's hidden light. The woman rises from the river shedding her gown of comets. Full skirts of swan bloom and fold their fans. They encounter unnamed heavens as she cradles swans. With the joyous singing of swans, galaxies turn their never-ending spiral. A very long sleep covers the woman with wings. Light eats at her body. Snows fall like sudden moonbeams. Nothing left for her slumbering home but shimmer.
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She is trying to get into heaven. Not this one full of angels but the one over there that is full of a sympathetic knowing.
She is crawling into a space the size of a pocket of air. She can almost breathe now under water.
The air lies above a child's mattress that is in the very back dark room of an old and sorrowful city.
It is difficult for her to hear.
She squeezes her shoulder blades, first into the far, then the nearer corner. Her body softens as she edges along the sides.
Now she floats awkwardly from the room. She is somewhere in the clouds when a hand stretches to touch her. The hand is marred by heavy labor. Two of its fingers are broken.
The hand cannot reach her.
There is a line of people standing around the balloon that was once her city. Everyone on the line shuffles along in narrowing circular motions.
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A tiny baby falls from the sky. It lands on the mattress she left behind. The baby rolls over onto its side then cuddles up into the corner.
She laughs when the pocket of air opens to let in an entire marching band. There are only women in the band and they are all wearing silver uniforms.
Their lips are very red.
The band plays patriotic songs like it's the Fourth of July. She genuflects, then folds her hands in prayer.
This saves them all a lot of time.
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It is to the whoosh of moth wings we go, easing over our final burden. Lay thick lumps of baggage down the sides of this silty road, then shuffle along in single file. Some of us refuse to walk alone: we carry lovers in our arms. When moths lift us cleanly by the shoulders we float like filament off a dandelion.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. AT LAST, COME
Death escapes the cracked tile, buttressed window to the west, desolation carpeting and the slick creaking of a woman's starved-out kitchen. The bent woman clings to the metal tines of her solitude bed, leaks dried-out tears onto grey covers, smiling later, her toothless grin. There is no sin left in the upper reaches of shelves removed from light and the prolonged passing of time. No mouse, no myth, no greater variation of love to kiss. Just this reconciliation of such loneliness with, "at last, come, bring me home."
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Playing at loss with snow falling and the absence of color. No with color prismed into white. No darling sun to gather shades of verdant into yellow that exceed the reds of another season. This is what we are when fully eaten: Snow. Colorful.
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There is space so wide it cannot be crossed, then this - coming together in the near-dark, steeped in smells, arms clasped, pushing a shadow as sun folds to grey.
Thin as filament, this space.
Wind hisses up the window. A flush of phosphoric rain grabs the inner light of lightening when it sickles from sky to water.
If we adore, we are owned by this.
Huddled, you fear christening thunder, that childhood madness, death in the crack and shimmer. Drums collapse the far away to here.
We worship the orb between us.
Far in the water, rain lets go.
Wind beckons. The arm of thunder opens to salt and sweetnesses as
Light composes the full grace of the lake.
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THE TERRITORY OF DREAMS
East of here we sat to listen to the sounds of the
martins building their hopes in the tall grey martin-
house on stilts you built for a family before our family
and we wondered at the stillness of the lake in a Maine
sunset as if it harbored hopes for a new life with or
without child.
It was here in your family's house you who came from the richest side of this generation into a family
that wanted no extras but you were the extra your mother
wanted and she told me the very first time we'd met that
you were her baby the one she'd asked for.
And I could see it in your brother's eyes he the eldest the one to inherit whatever he thought his father would
give him that you were the one he didn't need but oh how much indeed I needed you you with the baby curls
and the sweetness for your mother.
And now it is after your parents both have died
that I wonder what legacy we have come to fulfill you with me together as one or is it something isolated
like the portions of the lake in December that lie frozen in sections of crystal isolated as the nights turn colder
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and colder still until suddenly all the lake is one and there are no more martins in the martin-house for they have flown to a warmer place than this the place we love
so well.
It is this question of flowing into one and the same
though different pieces of the same body the one we visit
in dreams the one we harbor in our daydreams and
lovemakings the question of where you came from to be here now and where was I before this union and so I guess
we should talk of my past of where I arrived into this world or how we arrived together at that same place six
years ago when neither of us was looking were we? of how
we knew it would be that you were her baby the one she asked for and I, I was the child no one could place
with confidence because I am not like the others not
quite like those we know too well.
But now differences are less pronounced almost absent
and we are fading together meshing as one photograph
imposed upon another and next year when they find us snuggled in our harbor in our own martin-house they will not be able to tell us apart not much.
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We should say I guess that I came from a different territory a map that was difficult to navigate by if one were on land or in water that my mother was not mom that
she never finished her own childhood that she tried in
vain to get what she needed once it was too late that I
was born for no better reason than that it was her own
birthday and she stands by ceremony that I never guessed you would be available to me or even my very own other part the part of my soul that left me before we were born
the part of you too that I am and now we are the same.
East of here we sat to listen to the sounds of the
martins when time had passed a greater time than we can remember and the lake still called us and we remained childless but the martin-house was filled with the songs
and mouths of gaping martins and the lake trembled
beneath us in the dark winter walks that we take now that
we are older and there is less reason to call us away
from this place and I remember that your mother and your father have long gone from here and their bones echo in you at night in their bed here in Maine when I curl into you and realize that I am the legacy of my parents too
though I have never known them as if we are born with seeds of who we have become and we are the bloom of an
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for others who still sit here and weep for the sound of
a martin returning to her grey house in spring.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DISTANCE
Elongate the "oh" of the sound of your calling, the embrace that transcends space. I need to know you're near.
We are distances.
Turn your urgent, umber ear to my crying. Remove your teeth, my sweet one. Ease from your ruined skin. Unfurl those feet and plant them.
Between us, this distant light grinds our bodies down to the sound of first, human calling.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE IMPORTANT THINGS
she wants to name a child Cosmo or Delilah or Eustice
something grand and memorable she wants a son taller than she a football-playing
son a blonde son she wants to be a star in the evening sky
Venus the one that everyone sees she wants to get married just for the memory of it
have a bouquet of long white roses to throw and a ten thousand dollar gown
she wants to lust after someone dark and greasy someone wrong for her definitely wrong
she wants to kiss a stranger a man
or a woman kiss them hard
then walk away into a crowded street a parade and become someone's dream
she wants long curly red hair and big boobs and perfect nails she wants women to envy her no to hate her
she wants to drive a powder blue Porsche
down to the very edges of the Grand Canyon alone she wants to be Jacques Cousteau and she wants to roam the Alps without skis
she wants to live in a cave in India for forty years and talk until the sun rises with the Dalai Lama or
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. someone dead magical and dead she wants a guru and she wants God
she wants God to visit her in her cave
give her special secret messages she wants to die suddenly be buried at sea
have fish peck at her till she's bone
white and covered with weeds most of all she wants to remember the very moment she is born
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LEAVES
This yard is made of dust but its tree holds the universe of leaves.
Expect loss
two steps before the door.
Caress a mother's finger
that wears a twisted glove.
Find a maple with leaves red as pomegranate,
an oak with long fingers, still-green
elm, full branch of willow winded by the river.
Carry them through the door.
They contain your moments of protection.
Kneel to the floor at moonlight.
Fold your washed-pale palms in prayer. Underneath your pillow, protect the leaves.
Remembering has taken all of these years.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.