Daughter of None The edge of my lip is a mouth and they, the swallowed few: a jumper, a thumper, a man eating supper. And I, the daughter that was entombed by rose-petaled lips, came screaming, and beaming, and teething upon the thighs of my mother, and one left undiscovered: a lover – for which I, the daughter of some, carry strapped on my back the bed I heavy hearted against. And I, the daughter of none smiles into frowns: tipsytopsys, turns over and under, and down. Graves become hats, caves become laps, and I, a hole to be filled. A girl of many, a daughter of some: lay a kiss on my lips to swell all these bellies with batter and babies. Yours will be a promise of tomorrow, heard like a forgotten word upon the tongue, that I, daughter of none, has undone. defenestration there is no way out of the mind lest we are thrown from it – dangle down like rapunzels or drool. i watch for what my windows breed – the fluid grocery bag, occasional gulls, a million flies (as if i’d died) and rain, so much rain i could drown up here. okay, my windows are eyes, . i have brained the apartment – shreds on the walls, i plastered mementos to replace memory. there is a way out of the wind – when we close the eyes and demand an image of fields unmoving in a dustbowl heat. the windows flex in storm, i sleep thinking of my skin filled with glass shards – of small ones finding my heart. no, my eyes are windows and constantly drawn shades discourage the passersby from seeing my arrangements. a way out of the mind? there are ways: shot like a bullet, hung here upside down and dizzy, the world below my eyes – my ankle slipping through sweaty fingers of time. here where i fall, is this not heaven? oh, was this not a window shut, a door opened? Autumn Recluse It is autumn though I’ve seen so little of it. I spend some afternoons looking for patterns around the apartment: in the mirror, my skin, my palms. The mad women roam repetitive. I dust my shoes daily, wash unworn outfits, leave traces of company (mainly dirty cups) and exhaust long hours cleaning up. I’m in evening gown red and vacuum cleaner accessories. Perfect linoleum with atom blossoms patterned everywhere. And the dishtowels – it’s blood, but so beautiful. I think it is autumn though I’ve seen so little of its long shadows and long coats. I spend evenings on the threshold of idea, of what to do with this woman in my skin, since it is autumn, and I’ve seen so little of the dying. The Heirloom Story has it it is a point of reference, an anchor for my pendulous kin. It is a vessel that we fill; a century of battle I can no longer touch. It is a vessel that we empty. Some fill it with crazy, with names of unknown folks from the country that is shaped like a boy standing on a rock pointing a fearful finger at the arctic. Story has it an old aunt kept it hidden under her skirts from the Russians. No markings but cracks, a chasm full of bodies I could follow my veins to, and all speaking at once as family does, singing a song to die to. All heard at once but like history, in mementos and snippets, or the sound of water rushing to fill a vacancy. Bedlam in the Narrow Shower She doesn’t go to church, but in traffic she rolls down her window and pauses to listen to the tree shadows steepling with the church tower on asphalt. She parted with her mother’s old crucifix, the one fondled and beseeched, but holds her breath when the church bells echo through Appalachia. Alone in her pieced-together home on the hill, in the too-bright humming lights of the bathroom, the shower full blast on her neck, drops hit the basin tile and explode in brief blue umbrellas. She says this is when God speaks, in the absence of shadows, when the walls converge in fluorescence. Each crack in grout a magnified chaos, a gorge of earthen textures, a disaster. Every surface is The Mouth, a complete plane of suction - inhaling, exhaling, repulsive. He said, misery loves company, she heard it as clear as day, the word of God in her church, the cathedral of falling water, and she the priestess with cupped hands, gratefully receiving her misfortune. detachable me I can’t tell anymore if you are walking toward or away still subway and street curvature draws you with my hazy lazy eye, a sketch of shoulders and jawbone browned with hazel freckles come summer everything weighs more until the humid limp you looked so good on paper I keep walking past the place you stopped intent on blindness being merely the sweat in my eyes * I’m bent over looking through my knees the cat reversed, his checkered linoleum reflection righted beyond him the room is below my stalactite possessions the escher-stair boxes of books ready to sell, ready to spill the paintings propped against the ceilingfloor all the smiles frown, all the heavens hell I have no part in this except for the rushing of blood the gravity of my cheeks and hair the cat twining about my legs above my head and so below * the great redrimmed eyeballs of my failing gerbers frighten me terribly, madness would be so welcome now hanging up my hatter thoughts midsentence and simply plucking each sore petal, deconstructing how the body dies, beautifully drooping summer is coming like a sadist with a torch to scorch, blister, peel what is my skin? the color of a peach, the rind so I move in tight circles searching for the pit The Defeatist Speaks of Endings You are a maybe bordering on probably not. You offer me something beautiful a map of meticulous origami? a fist flowering into a hand? and I refuse you. * Love. It is my anger at language, of words, of having to be read from endless angles; of the spaces between them; of the countless ways of knowing you You think your gift is a sentence, beautifully composed and effortless; a puzzle bound by rules; a death sentence of comprehension. I think your warm outstretched hand is a map so faded it is a hand once again. The Architecture of Days The only evidence of today is the evolution of this wrinkle, my progression in an unhurried fashion. When I go outside, it’s to see the world grow over me: my finger to the bark of a tree, long roping ivy climbing my porch pillar legs. I’ll put my foot in streams of water to interrupt the flow, as if distracting time will alter history or include me in it. When I go inside, it is to conceal myself in the underneath of yesterday, where I spread past datelines into timelines, the known days. Though I try not to think of it, tomorrow thinks of me quite often – like it experienced a surprise and expects many more of them to follow. For Dante, Who Traveled Far to Get Here Once more the stars fixed beneath our feet like diamond earrings caught in wet cement, excessive flashes of daring light. * Coffee and cigarettes and thinking of poor you. All that spun, spun round you first, earth second. Did every door appear as a doorway? I’m thinking of poor you, fist against teeth. * I would call you a thinker had you not buried yourself alive within your thoughts. You built this and asked silence to speak. Your heart caught in the thicket of your throat. It beats, beats, Beatrice. * I would look for my own bag of skin, my own slanted shape softened in the body heat of the giant who stands as the center of a top spun round itself. * The ride was lame, Dante, what we call a dark-ride, but yours is so boring. Hell is only a quick dip, a sharp turn, and one mechanical-armed specter. The cackle is all static. Alleys of Coney Island hear furtive whispers, Dante, is that you? Every doorway is a gaping mouth. * Prophets are blind: they speak like poets, not knowing what they say. My mother told me how she dreamt of her own death. Nothing violent, she said, only finishing the life of breathing, deflating. I think of poor you, letting all collapse upon itself. * In Philadelphia, in the frigid February cold, the street is long and wide and leads straight to the museum. I spied around a thick band of elm and trash bags a statue under frost. You are the way in, Dante. Rodin sculpted you nude. Every door I see is a doorway. All the words I read are yours. All the burning at my feet, it’s yours. * Poor you, contemplating doom for love, mutating the idea into a city of pain. I see you on the streets now, my streets: revolving in place like a tourist. You’re remarking at the heights of our buildings, not spires to god but stalks of steel to talk to every man on earth, and you gape like a doorway at the sight of women with the sun at their earlobes, the moon in their tongues, your heart beats, beats, as once more you see the stars. feeting glimpses you look so funny in the grass in those strappy stilettos a crane, with no certainty, knob knee joint deep in the mud all in the swaying, jerking reeds * he held the door with his foot and fell in love with her exposed ankles I could see it in his soles * your toes they are so happy in the magnolia shade glittering like little fortune coins waving Hello! under a few inches of too blue water * oh, Mr. Pigeon Toe, your waddle is impressive and I wonder if your legs each want to kiss under the looming moon of your belly * the movers and the shakers wear their pedestals like princesses and I marvel at this small man following the billowing skirts he is merely a stone in shoe and she is glinting barefoot in late afternoon trapezing sun * he stomps arch arch arch she walks heel ball toe he loafers, oxfords, moccasins she peeptoes, pumps, slingbacks and I ambulate between them only gliding on wingtips beautiful day in jerusalem! it’s a beautiful day in jerusalem. a little girl is holding pomegranates to her shift like budding breasts and a slew of boys are groping picking at the flesh surrounding seeds squeezing until the red juice steals down her belly and around knotty knees to pool between her dirty toes and above from the balconies of two-level shacks the women are beating dust from sheets and woven rugs they’re singing in howls and simultaneously spitting olive pits into buckets bing! and chewing the split meat like cattle so methodically ding! there are rabbis walking past the crowd of boys the strings streaming out of their wool pants hands behind their backs and knowing nodding looks the boys break up and there she stands abused her muslin shift stained red and her fists in place of the fruit squeezing from her thumb-and-forefinger nipple the remaining drops of juice and she howls Four Bouquets old wives would call this temptation rain when even a soiled heart can be scoured under april sheets old men would sink into the still-ice ocean because from everywhere the lilies come to stink so sweet * the only entrance to Our Lady of the Highway is from the breakdown lane then up a twining switchback and past the billboard: Do you know where you’re going? – God wherever it goes first I must wade through the kudzu vines and tongues of forsythia through the beds of leper blooms fallen, limp at my toes * even before the crocus yawned or magnolia took the razor from her boot there were men unbuilding with cigar stump smoke billowing like an architect’s halo squashing houses like knots of mating carpenter bees yet they won’t paint over the sign: The End is Nere Here * God is growing in my mouth why I planted it there I cannot say except maybe I wanted so badly to say something that is as terrifying as a bulb that never shot but that now will not die Poems from the Train 1. I want to fold into the man sitting beside me on the train. We should wrap ourselves into one, I’d like to turn and say, the way my father’s mother folded dough against the block, the way she folded me in arms, into her joy. I should surround you with me, I’d like him to turn and say, the way these tracks stretch into sleeping towns, the way clouds pile on clouds. 2. love is never an essential and words I stack in the dusty cracks of my knuckles cannot throw shadows against gripping hope that there is no blowing back wishes or snatching them from thieving winds 3. redhearted women hold babies to their breast, their breast to the chest of their bluehearted men and kiss sweeping eyes – fold sweating desires into winter coat pockets 4. I do not believe the reflections in the window – the faces locked in blur, harrowing colors of an echoed sun. not me, either – not the only one looking in and looking back, not me, either. samsara sonata i. umbrella vulture wings in midair hook concrete antecedent gumshoe dna subway stair you are the meant to be meant to be right there when I’m right here ii. strange the note on lamppost lost and looking for me the estranged and missing strange the note i saw you twice tonight staple through eye I love you iii. i am the girl who lives inside a poem thinks with the bottom of my mind breaks my heart for everyone falls in love down metronome cantata inamorata sonata gotta lotta terra cotta my flouramour adore does not implore me anymore he roots rootings where i go ignored iv. city ascends up subway stairs toward avenues that end at the beaten heart where earth is a bed for dying |
