from bones and the skin I wear
that’s like your skin, and the skin
of every tree in this place.
I wear these hands like jewels
or stars, dress them in winter
to save them from the cold,
let them fly free in summer
to greet the birds who are relatives too.
Nid8ba, so you can feel me coming
from the breeze they make.
When I arrive, you will take these hands
in your hands and we will feel good.
When I leave, you will clasp them
again so we will not feel sad.
more. They are a history of family
and friends, touch that keeps us
together — never undone, never quite separate.
Day 9
Greed
our faults, yawk them against
the sky and shore. Greed
on full display as they fight
for every bit of food, and more.
wheel in to grab the spoils
of picnics, abandoned garbage,
all the same to them, beaks
sharp against sharing.
bins locked, guarded
against the homeless who need
a few bits of what didn’t sell,
what they couldn’t buy.
Move along. We can’t risk
you suing us
if it makes you sick.
Day 10
Dark & Salt
He knew me, the way spies know
each other, stalking the corners, exposing
cover stories decided in dark bedrooms,
or the murky edges of village lanes.
He knew what to do with dark.
I knew him as ocean knows shore,
forever moving toward him, then away.
I am sea glass, tumbled to perfect color
by the tumult of being together.
I knew what to do with salt.
What we didn’t know: how bedrooms
hold secrets; how the sea is filled with tears.
Day 11
is another, and later another
burning translated into something
like grief. I tell you the ashes
never cool, disappear,
even when the wind has blown
and scattered them far from here
where everything ignited. A spark
always ready to conflagrate, a coal
lighting me with what we started —
like a film in a movie house,
curling, catching, crackling; our movie,
dangerous, it burns, rewinds, burns again,
burns away everything but you,
the fire of your mouth, a room key
glowing in the ashes. We thought it was safe
on our yellow brick road, until the sparks caught
the hands of the scarecrow, his mouth.
Day 12
Bordereau
and hardly anything on the list
is what you’d give up out of hand: chocolate,
coffee, Proseco, the man you love’s slick jive.
There they are listed for you, a bordereau,
documented reasons to be wary,
to go the other way. Especially the man
and his tongue, convincing though it may be
on your own tongue. What about that?
Okay, so coffee could be omitted every other day,
chocolate too. A small glass of proseco
at weddings. But what about him saying nothing
will ever be the same without you,
you’ll always be his beloved. What about his hands
on your thighs and hips, his mouth all over you?
What about it, girl? Can you let that go?
Day 13
your room on Friday the 13th,
when wreckage
is all that’s possible, screams
as your underwear pops
from under the bed, leaving
how you wear a thong, how your bras
have lipstick inside the cups, how
nightshade grows in furrows
on your face. An auspicious day?
waving her fingers
in the direction of the moon
which chooses to wane in a corner
of a window where you propped up a mirror
for checking your makeup, the same
mirror that fell and brought years
of bad luck, as if you needed to be told
on its way. On its way, seven years
of black cats and ladders with tippy paint cans,
underwear in glove compartments
of boyfriends’ cars, boyfriends
you trusted until the wreckage of the 13th.
the covers all day, let the moon wane,
the cats scream outside the window
you nailed shut against just this kind
of thing? Remodel, model again
with three books of spells on your head.
Day 14
The T
of an approaching train, loved
by this city, place
of Revolution, survival.
If only my ancestors
had seen it coming, losses
so great they’d get sung
for your grandchildren
to the thump of drums
echoing down these tracks
where sparks, electric fireflies,
zing into the darkness
light the way from the cave
where we gather
below the madness. Kissed
by the breath of the city,
listening to its heartbeat,
getting off at just the right stop.
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