From The Vow/Music of the Big Top
I’m dust. Pick me up.
Go ahead:
I’m not poison
nor truffle,
just pricked to good use.
If you open I’ll flop
to the right place:
grape to your mouth, there,
it’s placed, guest
under your tongue, I’ve
said it, you’re said: Pneuma.
Fog,
lift me up. I’m a child set down here,
lost and hankering. I’m a lion equally lost.
My roar is radar. You bounce it back.
Sound,
where are you? You’re cotton
to my fields, bones
in the bag; the ghost
absorbing hymns and curses alike,
flown into your pores
and sounded back as silence.
So why write this?
Real people are burning,
there’s hands over mouths,
smothered cries, then smothering
of the answering cry, severing
of the witnessing ear:
an endless reverberation
of the never-heard.
I’m silence inside it,
there’s a noise rising up
as dust from the circus, where
elephants tramp the ground
not from love but bald duty; bright mirrors
have fallen, they’re twinkling down here,
reverse stars, tumbled graces: resolving itself
into you, bright fog, muffled
bell: you’re my furry cloak,
all my lost
animals returned, swirling at my feet
and resolving
into form beyond form: transparent
one, I see now what lights you from behind,
you never meant to cover it
only to walk the hills with me
and plead for a bit of pity
before the heat pulled us
in separate ways: Go now,
I understand you
better, am sorry
I pulled the forgetting cloak
so tightly
I could only enjoy
the feathers drifting around my legs:
Go, the damage done,
the plumed thing shot from the sky,
go soothe the wound the sun makes
and I’ll equally
move, an arrow of opposition,
hot where it’s cool,
soothing where it burns:
an everlasting seeking-out-the-hurt-place
fool.
No Boat
I am
left, bereft, without a boat;
no line will reach me. What then
does space push forward for?
Where are my hands? What yields?
Whose girl am I?
What doll will you toss in the bushes? Whose
ashes reign?
Is there a furrow
where we can lay the grief down?
And it will rise up:
Coiled, it will gain strength.
Then the grammar will tie in, join with the shining.
It is a knowing, a storied container
where our knowledge lies safe.
As culture unwinds, so does its grammar.
Now let us not speak of such, for our task
is to sing the new rising.
Sing of sheets of pain lifting off and dissolving.
Sing of the sun’s nearness and the pupil’s willingness
to bend to its task. Sing
how the garden vibrates in surprise as new green stalks the light.
Sing the quiver of dirt, overturned gladly in this moment.
Let the cat’s cold nose
nudge the small flowers open.
Let all now find its quiescence. Let every edge
be marbled with delight.
A Wasteland
A twang of orange
a deep well of coffee, tuning the brain,
making possible all texts.
I stroll
the deck, alert to the sounds
grass makes as it snaps
from the tread of eagles’ feet.
I can now
seek out the space
right after the afternoon air has been combed,
plaits spread out by the proud mother we are.
Look, we say, time, time, and
time, tufted, colored of hay,
lifted and fallen back
down the back of a girl
who will carry it with her as she
walks into a field.
Braids bouncing not heavy and not light
with her tread, which is that of
a no-longer-young girl bearing our moment
forward into time. If we don’t know
how she will survive it, it is because
we don’t know our own hands.
There is no shape for what we have done,
how, together, we have molded
the firm air into a wasteland.
She Speaks
So. You’re arguing with me about time. I had to turn the volume down just to hear your honking. Which seems to prove your point. Just in the microsecond where the silver dial twirled, you were triumphant. As if talking about time made it real. I say, take your talk and your time, and roll it all down a big hill.
Meanwhile, I’ll retire. Yes, it’s me again, so bring out the brocade pillows and the green silk gown. Wine at midnight; jewels from admirers, so way back they’ve blended into one pair of brimming eyes. Very well. You can have your myth. I’m grown beyond it, but parade the good things once in a while to make peace with appearances. Not to keep them up; they will rise and glitter on their own. No: because I dropped this ball in this alley, and dogs will run free. If there is no ball and no bait, they would have to find one. I have been hired to do something, and I intend to give the sweet heaving world its money’s worth.
There is no more dew on the branches outside. I have rinsed my mouth.
You thought I was gone? Tossed aside? Ha! I take industrial waste daily, flush out my system with oil slicks, wear the lights from the derricks as my jewels, line my eyes with strip-mined coal—I’m not fussy. If this frightens you, well, go sit in some lavender and sip some decaffeinated tea. I’m busy, and intoxicated with all you thought was lost. I’m no snob. Shopping at Target will do.
And the music? Seeping out of the black earth, conjured out of the gutter of every reeking city. When it’s truly heard, you’re free of the highstrung sky, free of the blackened toe. I’m soaring in between: surfeited.
The Beehives of the North Sky
What would you do inside of me?
There is an empty place that fills with liquid.
There is a room that turns its head
when you walk in. I want to sing to you
in a voice made from that room.
I want to enter you like entering sleep.
The water closes over our heads
and the windows are graceful
with our everyday imprecations.
A feathered rain, a crooked elbow,
an aching branch, a jar of water
and a swarm of roses:
I don’t know who we are,
but we’re blooming
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