Wednesday, October 2, 2013

September Poetry, Week 4


Day 22


Le Ciel

It could be my ceiling
not the roof of my room, heights
of dreaming, where I go at night
to watch myself, keep track
of each errant heartbeat, 
the breath that stops
goes again.

If it were my ceiling, this blue
dome over me, I’d spend every penny 
on feathers to wear: bright 
green, purple, red
ones that light up in the sun.
I’d clothe myself in wings
like a cape that spreads open
to reveal my nakedness to you.

If I were to rise above the trees, trail
my wings in their music, I’d know 
how to wake you 
with a melody so clear
you’d never forget me. If I could 
I’d reach that ceiling, 
thin veil of breath where you and I 
are, not so far from death.




Day 23


Life in the Posthumous Bookstore

They come after hours
to finish reading
books they left open
on bedside tables, next
to easy chairs, in their cars 
before they veered
off the road into that ditch. 
Boxes of books donated
by their aggrieved loved ones
end up here; read the bookplates
like an obit, a history
of reading. Boxes on boxes
waiting. Waiting for eventide.

Deft handling trouble at first, learn 
the ropes of prestidigitation. Soon 
(and after all, they’ve got time)
it becomes a mind matter, 
slight turn of the wrist
over the page: presto, chango —
there’s that next chapter. 

This is life 
in the posthumous bookstore
where no spines are broken, 
no corners bent, no notes scribbled
in the margins, where life after life
is lived from closing time to sunup.



Day 24



Guilt Scrapped

What’s left
on every plate
in America they say
could feed all
the hungry kids
Everywhere.

I push my lima beans
around with my fork
feel the lurch
in my throat; 
They taste bad,
I complain

I don’t know 
these far away kids 
in Everywhere.

Eat your beans,
be grateful.
Still I cannot 
choke them down
reject complain. 

Scraps scraped
off my plate 
into the bin.
The TV on
in the next room
A child
with flies on his eyes
looks at my plate
empty as his own belly.

I cry 
I won’t get dessert.
I didn’t clean my plate.





Day 25


L’Etranger 

He places the calla lily next to my coffee,
says, J’ai passé une nuit blanche 
à penser. J’ai envie d’amour.

This stranger, this swagger of a man
warms my hand with his, breathes
into my neck before I can pull away,
before I can say he’s made a mistake.

Pardonez-moi. Excuse me. I try in vain
to recall some French phrase, a way
to say I am not the woman he thinks,
not the lover who kept him up all night.

Still I find my own breath rising 
and for a long moment I am
that woman, the one who goes
with this man, the woman who loves

calla lilies (oh, but I do!), lets a man take her
wherever he will take her. I am steady
and sensible. But his cologne, his fingers
on my arm; the way his hair falls.

I should say my name,
say I am here to meet a friend who’s late.
What I do instead is bring the flower 
to my lips. Moi aussi. Moi aussi. 





Day 26


What I miss

is your breathing, the quiet it breaks
when you are in the house. A soft sound
no one hears but me. I miss the way
your chest rises to meet my hand
when we are sleeping together
in this warm nest we’ve made. 

I miss the quiet rumble that comes, 
welcomed like a storm after a too hot day 
has burnt us to exhausted. Awaken
early, leave like a thief, and it comes to me —
a silence only I would notice. Three 
decades of breaths haunting me, I know 
when your breath has left me alone. 

Someday I will miss these petals of air forever. 
For now, let me celebrate their return 
with evening. Let me kiss you and feel them 
on my lips, let me wrap myself in them, 
bathe in the tide of them. Let me laugh
with the day’s stories you breathe
as we dine on the love we’ve made. Finally, 
as day dies off and night comes,
I celebrate again the magic silence 
of your breathing beside me in the dark.




Day 27



Portraits

In a lab at the FBI, tiny portraits
of killers, rapists, terrorists, 
missing loved ones, portraits
in swirled black on white.
Miniatures that will not make it
to the walls of a gallery, to a photo
album treasured by family, friends.
They say no two are alike, 
so I think I should look carefully 
at my twin daughters’ fingers
to try out the theory. If they are true
identicals, would their fingerprints be so? 
Each whorl should be, each ridge 
should be — the same. Their DNA is.
So what of the cut one got chopping 
carrots for stew? What of the burn 
from touching that hot pan? What if 
no accidents befell their twin fingertips? 
Would these portraits be the same, these prints 
a match, exact? I ask you: where’s the proof?





Day 28


In the Ashes

After the wind died
and the soot cleared the air
and the firefighters all went home,
we sift through the remains
of our dream and find one perfect diamond.
There, by what was our bed, it shines. 
I sit on my grandmother’s wedding chest, 
charred but still whole, hold the gem 
in my palm, and wonder how it survived. 
Was it hardness, the cut, or some hidden magic
of angels? I try to recall
what piece of jewelry I may have left
on the night table. No matter. Whatever
else was lost, I have this to start over,
to set in a ring that will sparkle, remind
me that even heartache can burn away
heartache. If I turn my wrist this way and that,
I will see the fire that burned, the fire 
that lit the way to something more beautiful
than a house, a bed, or even a diamond.





Day 29


Painful Art

There is pain in art; the needle
not a soft hair brush dipped
in pigment, a truth, you offer 
yourself as canvas. 

Ancients painted walls of caves, 
scraped impressions 
stories into their skins 
with rocks dipped in char.

You want to be them somehow.
A small heart on the wrist, 
a bee and crown 
decorating the shoulder. 

You take it, 
tears welling up,
every muscle on edge
as the artist pains you into art.





Day 30


In the Atrium

On x-ray, you show
up in a chamber of my heart.
My doctor puzzles
over this, admits 
there is a shadow there, 
says firmly no man enters
a woman’s actual heart. 
We need further tests. 

I say
you’ve been the muscle,
the strum of each beat for years. 
Look closely I urge. 
There, in the atrium. Him.

Not a shadow, not a defect 
in the film or in my physiology, 
there you are as real as you holding me
as my heart beats its way 
to the stars each night, real as me 
in this sterile office,
my doctor rejecting miracles. 

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