A POETRY COLLECTION
A WHIFF OF CHAOS
in a caesura between now and then
we cling to the time
when looking back was sweet
a dream of open space
of nights fragrant with feathers
and a carapace of stars
instead
we've a series of snapshots soaked in vinegar and honey
the failed revolution and days gone to scrub
the car's lost in longterm parking
our pockets flapping inside out
there's dust to water down
sheets to air
and the mirror no longer casts its spell
but
so far the sky's still there
sunlight climbs from the latest dark
as the new day hovers like surprise
and before we lie in the stone throat of sleep
we breathe the scent of buds nippling from branches
of ripe mornings random as vines
or listen to the terse comments of rain,
the exquisite business of birds
and marvel at the luster of lightning bugs
or a thread of spittle sparkling in a cat's yawn
it's the best that we can do
not much
unless
it's everything
A FUTURE THAT RESEMBLES NOW
In a continuum of clean sheets
and white nights
I sleep with my watch
secure on my wrist
and balance on
the year's narrow edge.
I know some small things:
the first frost sweetens,
the second kills.
In my secret world, light
shines like dandelions
gone to seed in a moonscape
and a single tree
draws me to the ferny
underbelly of woods.
As birds wing
in old departures,
I'm ambushed by petals,
leaf mold, earth crust
and a shock of sky.
In a future that resembles now
I learn to pat death
like a dog, it's growing
so familiar. When I pick flowers,
they root in my palm, tendrils
lace through fingers.
Long after they fade
I'm wrapped in their silk
as I rest in the tall grass
absolutely still
like a stone warmed by the sun
denting the earth.
NOT YET VISIBLE
My father balances on scaffolding
high above our games.
Each time he spits a nail
and drives it in
a wall goes up.
Room dividers rise
from hopscotch squares
the whole house framed on stilts.
He climbs the ladder
waves from every window
until I catch his signal
return it and find myself
waving from our top floor
at his bent frame growing smaller
as he moves along receding avenues.
I look out
signaling my sons
who for a moment
recognize me, signal back
then shift into a new position
straining to see something
not yet visible.
AFTER THE FAILED REVOLUTION, 1905
After the hunger march to the tsar's palace
begging for bread,
after the slaughter,
father sleeps in dialectical paradise and mother
packs the samovar, the china, the ruby glass,
the children.
Her face carries its tribe
just below the skin and
somewhere they are spinning the thread
measuring its length and breadth,
poised
with the terrible shears.
She restores the hair on her head,
gold teeth in broad smiles
and dreams of a land locked in amber.
Desire curled in her fist,
she sails for America
silent with all the others.
No wheel of miracles
just the hand which is, the eye which is
and the long nerve of history.
Breathless and sunblind, mother
tunnels through bitter earth
into salt of heaven.
She builds a fire to warm her children
and the flame is bright,
the shadows dim.
Learning English from the book
of exiles, she mouths words,
tonguing, polishing
until they grow liquid. Then
she nibbles on chicken wings,
gnawing bones clean.
Her thoughts tug at their moorings:
the half-light of childhood,
daybreaks bursting like seeds,
a forest of old tongues telling stories,
winds rattling obituaries,
and the past spreading its stain.
She whispers names out of time
until the new world arrives
fresh with heat and light.
Flesh tones of memory fade
as she stores the children
under her heart. Alone and growing
wiser, mother undresses the dark
and sleeps with moonlight
resting in her palms.
SPROUTING ORNAMENTS
she made a party
for everyone we knew
and those we never knew
drank new wine
ate fruit
out of season
and sat on the ground
the smell of damp
rising rich between her knees
and remembered
everything we'd done
or imagined
told stories of a woman
who wore her flesh
like armor
of a child who
swallowed its reflection
in the mirror
of a man
whose clothes
smelled like travel
we talked
to the sound
of baroque violins
walked into rooms
our heads
sprouting ornaments
and later
went back to doing
what she always did
THE CLEANSING
In Siberia, during the wedding, the bride was required to wash the feet of the
groom and drink the water. Only in this way was she considered worthy to be
taken as a wife.
Kneeling at his feet,
mouth pursed,
shoulders sloped,
she lifts his right foot,
then his left,
soaping between the toes,
scooping dirt from under nails,
doing what must be done,
scrubbing in unleavened silence.
Pale glue of tears clinging to lashes,
she licks her lips tasting the instant
when she was none other than herself
sitting in the kitchen
curtains drawn,
floor swept,
dipping into the curve and coil of wife,
practicing
until she got it right.
The night before, she dreamt of spring shoots
pushing purple tongues through earth's skin,
of babies swimming toward her
slippery as tadpoles
her unskilled hands can't capture.
And in the morning, she awakes
to pinpricks of sun,
birds blading against the horizon.
This is her wedding day,
air thick with accordion notes,
swirling skirts, embroidered shirts,
the smell of borscht and vodka.
He sits like a boulder in the sun.
His voice makes him taller.
When he bends a listening face toward her,
she unknots a smile, sips the air
takes one last look over her shoulder
at childhood so remote
it belings to someone else
Nothing left.
Not a ribbon.
Not a thimble.
And lifts the basin to her lips.
UNTIL LIGHT GROWS OLD
Last night we slept between two winds
under a ripe moon
on the other side of nowhere until
thin skeins of dawn reveal
a white room, a mirror,
round like the mouth of a child.
Outside the morning window,
summer's yellow pollen
whirls below a white-washed sky.
In the scald of afternoon, we learn
the dead man's float and one of us
tries flight. The first whiff
of autumn is the smell of cut wood
under a rough palm, fruit ripening
into scent, and everything is
musk, silk, wordless smiles.
As air turns to spice, we savor
apricot desire until light grows
old and the weather vane grinds
slowly on its swivel. It's the dead
season where emptiness grows
feet and there's only
one demon in the attic
one death in the town ---and ah
we still mourns Pavlova,
her touch of calculus and honey,
a breathless moment in our lives.
Her death so light,
we held it in the palm
of our hands.
we're one hour lost
and one day thinner
alone in the middle of America
THE DROWNING
it's that time of year
and all that's left
a cool remembering
again he's drowning
and the Red River takes him in
mother rooted to the bank
her voice floating over water
we're waiting supper for you
bread and milk lie
heavy on the table
where sisters stand
strange to one another
it's that time of year
nudging memories of
water with its wet shine
his face streaked with summer
and the house where
no one survives love
with darkness opening
like a white door
2
summer nights we'd sit on the back veranda
planing down the hours with small talk
stories flowed in a spill of old pleasures
sweet and tart and light on the tongue
the air was fresh the weather excellent
the room radiant with the dead
WINDUP GRAMOPHONE
Music hides in the spaces between tracks
until the wooden stylus strokes the spiral
threading sound through the air.
We sway in gat-toothed wonder at
Cab Calloway's hi-di-his and ho-di-hos,
swoon to Galli Curci's velvet and velour
"The Last Rose of Summer",
marvel at Caruso's muscular "Celeste Aida".
When a scratch holds the needle
in the groove, it churns and churns
the same broken sound
trying to get it right
until a hand releases it
in a sharp geometry of motion.
Moments on the verge,
shellac records gleam,
crank handles poise midair
and needles rest in cups for the ready.
Music seductive as silk
spills a little island around us.
Its scent sticks to fingers, lips,
and eye lids: tunes
old in the known ways
like basil and lemon unguent on the mouth.
Juicy underbellies of love songs
melt on the tongue like Paradise plums,
our mouths and faces open to
what's lost and what's left.
We float on notes above the staff
to a whirl of Strauss waltzes,
Souza marches brassy and insistent,
lullabies rocking in the night's arms.
Crooners in vaseline-slicked pompadours
tongue us, the air's dense with red hot mamas
grinding out the blues, Dixieland struts past.
Tunes tapdance on the ceiling
YA-DA-DO-DA-DITI-BOP.
Gershwin sings with love inside the octave
as we dance together cheek to cheek
until the rhythmic scrape on the label
like a bass note
drifts free.
NIGHT'S OTHER COUNTRY
Before the great winds come and the white noise
of night, we'll cut loose from clocks and
stand in fields spread out to nowhere singing mantras.
Before the quiet waits in garments of goodbye,
we'll bridge the silence of guitars
and float sound to its center.
Before hours burn to ash, we'll wrap ourselves
in wind, in raw strips of light,
our bodies wild as vines.
Before land's end, we'll swim in all the rivers
of the sky, and drown in sunlight,
inhaling love as sweet as candlewick.
Before our final season, let it be summer
resonant with wings, vermouth of old sunrises,
mountains growing slowly in the rain
the light around us ripe and round
and if it dies out, let it be extravagant,
a marvel of darkness in night's other country.
REPOSITIONING THE MATTRESS
We pivot around each other
not even our shadows collide.
Dust lifts and settles like the first
snow as we shift through
margins of air and islands of time.
Flipping it over, each wrist
with its bracelet of flesh,
each finger shaped by its bone, we're
upending the days,
exploring the spaces between.
After the long night and porcelain dreams,
after rivers of sleep, morning
hangs by a thread.
Face to face, we imagine our bodies
stored in hollows,
secret deposits deep in the foam.
The day has no beginnings-
sky goes everywhere at once
in turquoise innocence.
Warmth rises. Sweat gleams
and the echo of our interlocking rhythms
pulse through vacant rooms.
This house is what it is,
each wall stands alone
each window with a sky of its own
and we are reaching backwards, love,
in a seethe of memories
that ache like static from another world.
This old mattress grown heavy with meaning,
lopsided with usage,
slopes into a cave
where we tumble like children
in salt waters of the heart.
GHOST STORIES
since I have learned not to kill them
things have been easier
though I prefer my ghosts
to inhabit the dark
if they come by day
I'll leave all the doors open
i watch them mouthing secrets
smiling as if there were two heavens
I recall simple equations in the heart's circumference
each sum exquisitely fixed in my memory
women in sweet and sudden rages
for fear the future comes when they're not looking
children claustrophobic in their skins
fanning out like fish bones
younglings piercing love's delicate membrane
to taste the fleshy center
friends in the gray solfeggio of autumn
and the ritual smile
in their company the hours pass
until a spill of sun a sweep of shade
and under the ashen stars
my dead are growing old
BENCH SITTERS
Bench sitters on upper Broadway
count passing cars and
pavement cracks spilling over
into empty lots
gone wild.
Store fronts tilt,
weather-scoured
like old customers
leaning on carts in Safeway aisles
waiting for the round-up
back to one-room lives.
Light dies out.
The street steps into darkness.
They stand on sidewalks
drowning
as the past leaks in.
Then, like a slow
coming-out of sleep, they
shuffle back,
cook the same soup bone
down to stock and vapor,
empty the pot
and wait for a surprise.
They didn't plan it this way.
Nothing for the ears.
Nothing for the eyes.
And night tapering off
to a shirt hanging on a nail
and a saucer filled with
all the cold mornings ahead.
SOMEWHERE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY
she spends half the night
caught in sleep's undertow
or on the surface
staring through scars of light
trapped in windows
where sky is half the world and
everything moves with care
past guard dogs and dead bolts
past triggers hidden in the hearts
of strangers and Guernica
just beyond the view
nightprowlers
no safe houses
and a handgun follows her
up the stairs
~
somewhere
in another country
a trunkful of old love letters
burns
a singed hand rests among the ashes
a woman
sleepless among the sleeping
moves from room to room
testing the weather of her breath
she stands in the cold kitchen
each pot in place
and looks through the window
she has no other dress except
the one mother made
walks in serious shoes
and when she's tired
sips scalding tea
joining all those mute
and smiling women
she keeps her heart hidden
in her fist
~
she rummages through the alphabet
for friends
files away the past
checks the stove
turns off the lights
and comes late to mother's funeral
talks to death
like a next-door neighbor
listens to the hours grinding their gears
and counts days detaching themselves like loose buttons
barricades the door
against waters rising
assassins cruising the streets and night
hovering dangerous and close
~
she dreams about the sadness
of doors and windows
limp curtains fading light
and in her dream it is
the brown month of November
the month of sand in streets
cracks in pavements
windblown trash
she dreams
about cold mornings
people rising early
to tend the earth spread out
holding up the sky
she dreams about summer
in the country
long-leaved and green
before winter hurt the flowers
and veined the earth with frost
water weaves its thin thread
through all her dreams
and under a spine of stars
her dead are growing old
~
She imagines waking into another life:
caviar for breakfast
slick black
coating the tongue.
She imagines a hope for the evening:
crystal goblets wine
immaculate table cloth
a fever of flowers in every room.
Sultry scenes unfold like paper flowers
in a water glass as she
readies to go out,
scarved and starry-eyed but
something's always left behind,
her head forgotten in a shower cap
hanging on a hook, her hands
resting on the coffee table.
She finds a safe place
on the slow lane, seat belt
pulled tight, her mouth's
the small shape of worry.
In the corner store
she catwalks down corridors,
pushing her basket
while hidden mirrors
swallow her image. Undecided
on aisle seven, she stands
on one foot while the other sleeps.
The bag boy nods to her and
if she speaks at all, she speaks
in whispers. On the sale counter
she looks for day old bread, cracked eggs
oranges spotted with decay. Sorting through
spoilage, she uncovers the world.
Passersby warn her:
It's old, riddled with soft spots.
She buys it anyway.
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