This world is peopled with swimmers, their feet
splashing, attracting sharks, white lines where
their old swimsuits sat too snug, hugging orange
and neon pool toys to float with--
But this world is peppered with divers, and
diving bells, and descending into that
dark blue they cup their hands around
the faces of the fallen, uncommonly without fear.
With Divers
My Skin and Freckles
Kenya, my sister, was always the
strong one. She dressed as a soldier for Halloween
with her hair in snappy black braids. I dressed as
an apple, floppy felt rompers in red.
A tiger chasing
a badger scribbled in crayon
on my homework.
A tiger sprawled
on a rock with arms
like noodles.
I hardly dare knock on your door;
my fingers tremble and I push my hands
into my hair, red floppy curls into my eyes;
I admire your snappy black eyes; I pour milk
over cereal and the colour reminds me of my
skin and freckles.
Navel Oranges, Neighbours
I brave your name in the mornings,
jumping into the primers and the windowsills
with my own unwarranted point of view.
This house has secret passageways, luxurious
and earthy behind curtains of myrrh-dark silk,
and my eyelashes are corn-tassels.
In the summer, weevils and raccoons tussled
in the cornfields, and your skin melted in the sun.
In the barn, your wrist where it was not tanned
slipped from it's flannel cocoon like a cob of corn
from leaves. Or perhaps you were peeled free,
dancing with the dust where the barnwood
cracked and betrayed your ankles.
And now, we drink orange juice in the morning,
laughing as we mutilate the tree in the backyard.
Our eyes spin together like records, wreckers with our
untanned wrists braced against the juicer.
The neighbours peer in at our impertinent talk,
and flowers called weeds crinkle up at the
edges of the steps: lady's thumb, violets, butter-and-eggs,
lazily laughing at the neighbours with us,
waiting in the shade for navel oranges to fall.
Myself and the Queen of Sheba
Yogurt in your tongue tips off the edge
of the teeth, sweet like the sun here.
Hknuhau Beach sun-blind. Wave to Jocelyn and Celia
in the sea, to Shadda on the rocks sunning himself.
This is a list of things I have liked:
Myself, the Queen of Sheba,
Torino tomatoes dried in the sun.
The eye of a fish I once saw dead on the beach,
intact and glaring at everyone who passed.
This is a list of things that pleased me,
whether for their sweetness like
sugar around the rim of a glass,
or their tang like a mouth made of orange
inside it, bobbing and floating,
or like the drink itself because it quenched
or refreshed me.
You are inside me, bobbing and floating,
intact but only in this instance dancing
with your albatross lips creased and folded
from a hundred laughs. Only in this instance do I
dictate and nuance this correctly, shaking the lights
to replenish the electricity, shaking my hair
on and off the nape of my neck. Inkwells
all over the country sidle up to me,
bobbing and floating with
the Queen of Sheba.
wasps & elephants
Black sweater, yellow shirt, black dress, grey tights--
I unwrap myself carefully to my skin, fold each thing
up on the chair at the end of my bed. My skin, my skin is
an elephant's skin, dark in the river where the mud slips off.
Crease after crease people and persuasions, pinecones and
pomegranates collect in my skin, buckle around my hips,
weevil into my shoulders, trickle golden off my mouth.
Cobras crawl in through the drains on this side of my world,
and on that they shiver in glass boxes. All around them, we
stand and stare with guns. In the dark I shiver from the residue;
under my covers I pluck at my wrists with fingers rich as caviar.
Crease after crease my elephant's skin fills with the lather of love
and the labour of wrongdoing, delicate steps in sandals of antimatter
and antimatter posed in delicate sandals on the steps-- it only
slides away when
I sleep.
Tylenol Face
Our shoes are circuses,
teetering and teething on our feet
gold and red. The lions and sheep
cluster in trios, quartets, and I hum,
slide my shoulders like the bow of a
viola. Oh, David, where is your
sling, stone slaying me between the eyes?
Your Tylenol face appalls me.
He stands at the edge of the shimmery crowd,
nervous like the edge of a wave, and in his hands,
he cradles a pomegranate. I wink a quick look
at his face, the Guatemalan dark skin, bee-sting hair,
cloudy eyes. David's eyes are cloudy, cloudy with
theology, cynicism awkwardly applied, archaeology.
Cygnet swans huddle scornfully behind him but
don't dare disturb.
The blankets and sheets are bride-white. I sleep with your face
dissolving in my mouth.
the first isabel
The first Isabel was dark, with more individual eyebrow hairs
than you could've thought possible, each thick as thread
woven into her skin. And she never plucked them either.
She had common phrases picked up from God knows where,
pretentious remarks that bounced gorgeously over the room,
demi-cliches that, somehow, you couldn't help
being comforted by.
The first Isabel introduced you to the second Isabel, who was
like a film negative of the first Isabel. You could swear she
still had her baby teeth, all blonde hair and elbows. You took her
walking in the public gardens, past cherry trees, black-and-white photographs,
boys eating cotton candy in knee shorts, popular fountains and
buskers with headbands. Later, though, you had to confess that
that was a waste of time-- the second Isabel had
almost nothing to say.
In October, when you met the third Isabel, several things made sense
suddenly, like the colour of leather, dog's leashes in the park, by
Lake Ontario on a day as gray as the water. The third Isabel had shoes
of brown leather, and she sat on a bench extracting a stone, and she
caught you staring and flashed you a smile just the shape and colour of
a slice of auburn apple, and ignored you again. "Goodbye,"
you said to yourself. "Goodbye, third and final Isabel."
Weimar: the Onion Market
for Omar
In the afternoon, time sifts over the street
like sugar, catching in your hair so red like foxes.
It settles on my collarbone, spilling down my dress
as I breath; spilling down my chest as I laugh.
It is not your face that enthralls me as we
wander through the market and weave baskets and notions;
it is your placement in relation to the world.
It is your voice, with the baby-needles of German threaded through it,
the way it rumbles like a friendly lion. It is
your quiet deference, your arms as you hold doors and
your shoulders as they turn to let people pass.
The air is full of cranberry-fragrance, nuts crumble
and fruits bruise underfoot. Speckled, the smells
of meat and music move jauntily through the crowd.
It is not your body I am drawn by (I am antiquated)
but where you take it; the sun spun off a historical spindle
pushes itself into your mouth, lemon-flavoured cotton.
Repertoire #2
another time, I won't
permit you to surprise me.
I have my own pair of feet,
and my hands are pretty and small
and white beside yours. China birds,
straw men fluffing over in fields, a
black eye tweaked in my direction; I
have come undone easily before, grown
untwined under a blanket of snow. I've been
chipped in a corner of this house
where the green paint of the front hall
slips orders to the dusty brown baseboards,
in a corner where the laundry detergent's smell
hunts me like a rabbit, imperfect here in this corner
where the spiny legs of the table hide me. Tomorrow
I won't let you surprise me anymore, daring and suspect.
Justice is a prickly cactus in the window,
getting brown, and dead (though just as harmful)
without care.
Poems About Austin
Mr. Morrocco reads me stories
after dark, switching voices with characters
while the evening ticks away like cofee
getting stale. He is a grandfather clock,
or sometimes pumpernickel bread. I am
a tiny frill of pink eyelet lace, like
a sea shrimp, six years old.
Outgrowing this fancy, I move to Montana.
In the summer, we barbeque hamburgers adultly,
wearing sundresses and white leather sandals,
scratching our names with our keys into
the national park picnic tables.
Reading poems about Austin.
Poems about Houston, China Grove,
poems about Chocolate Bayou.
Years ago, I used to think
my friend Mr. Tomato Sonaros
would be the one to collect me
after I finished school. Later
I found out he was imaginary, too.
Untitled
Cherry-tongued drake, currant bushes
shake as you weave through them.
My hair is currant bushes. Also, time is.
You weave through my hair all
orange and cedar, smelling of
spices, Oolong, mirade. If you turn tiny,
microscopic, you can catch on the barbs of the
individual hairs like everyday fingers on silk.
You weave through time like a sea-dragon.
You back, sides, are sleek and dark like weeds in lakes.
The colour of strong tea. The colour of muddy water.
The colour of cellophane amber. The colour of my eyes.
The windows of this house are cracked, every pane.
Slivers of cedar stain my skin.
Lonely in the City
It's not like
we'll be lonely in this city.
Not when you're so much like
the ham in a sandwich; not when
it rains milk every saturday, or,
if it's sunny, the sidewalks melt
like candy bars. It's not like we'll be
lonely.
(I shake my head whenever
someone mentions your names;
they confuse me. I tap my fingers
nervously on the seat of this bench).
I'm not so lonely-- I mean,
when you seem to be made of
french-fry looks darting across
diners from over your beard,
when you're so much like
humanity-coloured milkshakes or
mustard-headed streetside
hotdogs I hardly have time.
Tales of the Broken Social Scene: 7/4 Shoreline
After dusk, we dragged couches down to the beach.
The fire was smoky and the sand was wet. It was too cold, too late in the year
but we stayed out most of the night.
Our conversations were like accordions,
stretching, elongating, singing, folding into themselves, and
everything moved at half-speed. Late-night seagulls
flicked up against the cold red sunset.
Haina, fingers steepled against her little pointed face told us,
"If you try to steal the beat, the beat will steal you."
James sat on the sand, back against the couch, feet bare and white,
jeans damp, watching the tide and warning us, "It's coming; it's
coming in now." Ian Curtis told me quietly that it was time,
and he wanted to get away from lies that he lived, to love what he lost.
I counted stars, told stories.
Before we went home at dawn, I helped to
push the couches out to sea.
My Dear, On Sundays
I
expect I am learning too quickly.
My fingers arrange themselves like
chocolate flowers against the wood of the
door; my eyelashes are sweet and tiny, I
print playbills on the skin of my neck.
My dear, on Sundays I am
clean and new, tear-gold coins
bit between my teeth; I am
a dappled mare, guided
by the reins of theory held
in your knuckly hands.
You take me to visit a guru,
pushing my hair out of my eyes
and directing me to curtsey. He says
I am beyond hope,
and when you stride to the window,
he whispers to me,
“Are you sure of
why you're here, my child?”
I shake my head.
I am seldom sure.
Deportment for Sadie
“I am always
thin and proper,
collecting henpecked men
in a little cup that I keep
in my pocket.
My friends are mandolins and gondoliers;
they lead me by my forearms
where my freckles arrange themselves
into a design like a kitchen set;
pumpkins and onions,
apple and radishes in a cornucopia.
They lift my hair from my neck to reveal
where its chocolate strands wander off
bewilderedly into skin.
My guardians are an uncle with a
greengrocer's visor, an aunt of great stature
and their two full grown sons.
They say, “Sadie, where did that
bruise come from?” I hardly know.
I skin my knees when I walk
too fast, bruise my shins, knock over
china plates and juice that stains, so I
stand quite still, pretending the world is
a convent I will be sent from
if I do not behave.”
COMMON AND GARDEN DRAGONS
Your grandmother tells you that
the common and garden dragons are
nothing to fear; feed them tea and a bit of meat-
bacon, or perhaps ham- on a stick, and they become
quite tame. It is the wild green dragon and the
great blue dragon that are dangerous.
And you dream of swashbuckling,
heroics; I dreamed once I was Wendy
Darling, swimming in murky blue beneath
a pirate ship. Your eyes grow vivid and
your teeth fight hideous cities through
invisible lantern light; you have
rescued me on several occasions.
Summers pass, in which
we tame two or three garden dragons;
one was a little pink-eyed female and she
mistook your thumb for a bit of meat, on a
stick. You yelled and bled, and another
yellow scuttling dragon flamed a little
in the herb bed. I dreamed I flew through
a murky blue sky above the lagoon on
Never Never Island; to bandage your hand
would make me shiver.
st. francis square
I am made of paper; I dissolve in the rain, disappear in the wind, wait for you to write on me. I meet you in St. Francis Square; we are like a pair of mulberries in our cardigans, but the difference is this: I am a mulberry of mohair and laughter, fluttering with my two-dimensional eyes, and you are a mulberry of musky earth, purple and hard to discern. You freeze in the winter, compact in the rain, wait for me to grow in you.
mixed grain
dear, darling; you're
cold and calling,
sifting like honeycomb grain
through my telephone.
the antennae comb the sky,
my feet on the shingles;
a singular sight in this
upright town.
cracked wheat in my palms,
soft oats and brown rice--
dear, your eyes are so nice when they
look at me. rye, round barley
oh my darling your mouth is so
strong when you
laugh at me. millet, maize,
enormous days my golden my
darling my love mixed-grain.
just anger
My eyebrows, the muscles of my mouth, and my cinnamon hair, are partitions of the wind, which comes in from the lake all polluted and cold. November, and industrial brothers, click under my feet on the shore.
Behind me, the city is eating trees, pulling with stoplight teeth at the tea-red leaves. They shred and flutter onto the sickly grass and after I think for a while, I lie down in them.
At times like this, I am sometimes met by a just anger; it lies down beside me, dark eyes the colour of figs and skin that smells of pepper and fir. It wears it's shirt the way a house wears black paint, but it cuddles me against it's chest like a nest. My breath is shallow and spiced with India.
standing offer/birthday saints
I could offer you
a plate of pancakes or a riverboat,
to jump ship or the purchase of several
pounds' worth of finally finished;
lamb's ears soft and green,
phrases in a basket, all lobster-
and salt-coloured; I could offer you
a cup of ocean, a handful of islets,
a kiss on the back of your neck;
a tribe of pencil-thin men
with long moustaches and
sandy hair to
be your friends and offer
curt advice.
I could offer you curds of cheese,
clotted cream, impertinent remarks;
I could offer you a
sudden burst of solid insight
the colour of canals and orange rinds;
I could sing you to sleep
filmgrain songs and my head
on your lap; I could risk losing you
to a girl made of brown sugar, I could
welcome you home to a wasps' nest.
I could let you love my hair,
I could love your biscuit teeth,
I could be the colour of grapes and black beans,
I could be obscure, and unflattering,
and yours;
standing saints,
birthday offer.
eggplant/aubergine
don't stand there like that,
watching me so hard;
forgive me; i'm your little criminal,
forsaking my family, dissenting,
prickly as pears.
fondness and residual hurt
in a fruit basket on your table
are a constant reminder to me,
constantly reminding me that
I must not love you, I must not
love you, your eggplant eyes
your aubergine smile.
And so at night I sit on the rooftop,
mouth full of breezes and intinerant
grapedark voices. I hear yours if I sit very still,
hovering over my shoulder,
with your aubergine eyes,
your eggplant smile,
whispering, “forgive me,
I'm your favourite
criminal.”
toothpaste/coffee house
crazy child; your mother
hardly knows what to think
with your ghandi impersonations
in the bathroom mirror
and I'll be your girl for that.
in the churn house where the butter
is turned to charcoal, butterwork bricks,
and grapevine barrels awash with wine,
crazy child my friend craig
you build a tower and a turret
take me to a restaurant that burns
oil lamps, green and purple, red and friendly,
friendly fires. take me to the barn
in the side room where the
jams and pickles are stored and
tell me a story, only a story, an
innocent story of children in the straw
on the floor,
take me to a coffee house and
sing a song of chocolate brittle and
dark peanuts
I'll be your girl then.
mama's bag-of-needles circus
Do you know it was your
wicker knees that first fascinated me?
I watched you across a gathering of mutual
friends and a meal whose smell reminded me
of flour weevils, sweet potatoes, and an Indian grandmother.
I've kept that a secret through some
heavy temptations; even through you
telling me you were first enthralled with how
I looked like a lady at a masquerade ball,
in purple, and how I
smelled like black pepper.
Little and loverish, while the cedar-split fences
tilted and decayed, we grew smaller and more into each other
until we were truly unhealthy and had to be
bathed in lukewarm salt-water for months to be cured.
We live in a world of high standards, my dear,
set up along the classroom windowsills like
pots of paints and pots of clay and pots of
old rubber. And pots of pills.
And in the pots of pills, there are severe little
round grandfathers like the one who
widowed me
for liking his grape-wine eyes once,
and I've been grateful to my mother ever since
that I never had to see you old.
I imagine you're still that boy I knew at twenty,
feeding me Ritz crackers on the
back stairs while I
pluck with wondering fingers
at the black maze of your beard.
Sometimes in winter
my grandchildren ask me to tell them our story,
and I always begin, “There once was a boy
called Edmund Clapham,” so that if they eventually
think to look for you, they'll find only some stranger.
And when the house is lonely at night, I imagine
that Edmund Clapham is a magician my grandchildren
will find who will send me back in time. I'll be twenty
with my rope-braid of auburn down my back
wearing that lemon-green dress I used to have that
made you think of walking spring.
Foolish fantasies, but I'm almost seventy now,
and I have to bathe my feet in salt-water most nights,
excuse me.
who i am is
miloš strolled past the docked boats, winking at me over his shoulder like a white, spotted terrier with one ear missing. i waved at him and went back into the bookstore so as not to watch him disappearing around the corner. cobblestones and old men on native bicycles- red ones- clattered around me, the traffic and physical narrative of the town. the red roofs and sparrows scavenging around cast-iron chairs; i was not alone and i was not unhappy. but there was one yellow flower whose name i couldn't pronounce that miloš had conjured for me and i was cross at him for leaving me.
when i was walking on the bridge, earlier that day, he had seen me from across the square, and shouted "dive!" to indicate he was calling. i laughed at him, and climbed up on the railing as if to obey, so that he got nervous and ran over to me and pulled me down.
we spent the morning walking, stopping whenever we pleased, and talking. well, that is, he talked mostly, of things that mattered to him, and i listened in scraps. "and you will know it is right because the colours and the smells will be like cinema or funeral," he said, moving his hands like swingsets in the air, obliterating gestures. his face creased into a smile when he saw i wasn't listening. "this might not make sense to you, but it is really important." he erased my worries with hurried motions of his hands. the buttons of his mud-brown cardigan sat low on his chest, over a cherry-coloured shirt, and there were little pills of wool all over his back. his voice blended in with the sound and fury of the street around us and i examined the stubbly hairs drawing two points down the back of his neck, the fraying at the back of his jeans, our shadows moving carelessly down the sidewalk.
a bit later, when i was listening again: "mastering these motions, however, takes years of practice." he twisted his hands through the air, my own amateur magician, pulling little silver kuna from under my hair, a bouquet of yellow flowers which disappeared into a flutter of confetti. "oh," i said, "but those were so pretty." "yes," he said. "but nice things disappear too. like this morning." and he said, "i have to go now." and i didn't mind too much, but then he said, "ne nestati; volim te," and disappeared like a magic flower without translating.
if he comes back i will not be so quick to be saved from the bridge.
eliot fish-stars
On the beach, with the cold grain sand
moonwet on our shins and shift soft under
our feet, Eliot-- dreaming of something frozen,
something pale-- fish-stars, layered flesh
all pink on the grey sand.
The revolution heroes died last night, all of them
up to their necks in fist-deep mud while the sky
drizzled bullets, tea leaves, machiavellian principles
and they died, they died, they died.
Oh Lurching People! by the sea you drag
moral shackles and immoral wounds, flayed open
where the salt water stings. But by the sea I wait
with Eliot, for a crowd of jellyfish-coloured souls,
Marco Polo and E.B. White.
romaine babushka
frills of green leaves, I believe that I've seen you
creams, cheeses, and teeth breathing in eighteen days ago
down in the market all orange and gold. I believe that I've
seen you. do you remember? I wait and waver
washing walls and woodwork with my wonderland eyes
and you meet me here, orange creams and cheeses
oh, do you remember? your eyes are agate and I
cannot be sure.
I am a multicoloured gypsy skull,
wrapped like a gift in a paper shawl,
swinging fingers where you walk my way.
ringing like minima until you go away
I am a silk-green Indian cat
swaying away when you come past.
myriad mirage I miss you I stack up
inside of myself, matroshka mushroom
and mandarins, music and sitars--
love is a lychee, a lyric, a lunar explosion
desire is dancing, dharma, deciduous doorways and
cedar tea! my mouth breathes, your chest breathes
cedar tea with the deep sweet in your ears and teeth.
my mother is over the leeks and zucchini
my father is talking out by the far water
my heart is an apple all sweet and pink flesh
desire is dancing all cedar and tea. shells and bracelets
twinkle in the market, sprinkle my feet with sand and
sparkle and all my skin shivers, delivered and given
all wrapped in Indian fabric for you.
the view from my balcony is stalls and
lantern-shades and the view from my balcony
is you.
blush-yellow
Sixteen years old and up to her teeth in blush-yellow romance;
the tyranny has got ahold of her and we can only apologize.
I know how it goes, when I was sixteen and in love myself,
he could have said, 'obey me,' and I would have obeyed, not
knowing the that food of romance is disobedience. Not knowing
that the food of tyranny is circles of pink grapefruit time.
My eyes are heroic in their attempts not to coexist with yours
and you can only make our apologies to her for our
deliriously bad example; you can only hang your head when I
flirt my fingers through their air and the strings of orange confetti
to where you wait quietly in a chair to where I stand asthmatically
in the center of the floor. Chestfall after chestfall our heartbeats,
arrhythmic and scared, echo down the sun aslant in the front halls
of our bodies.
Seeth and chain braids of salmon-ribbon into ties for me; tie them
around my rib cage and trail them from my ankles and wrists. Tell her
we apologize for our failure to communicate with each other and tell her
the food of love is dark and well-polished like a life-red apple and not
blush-yellow like this pecan fruit. Let us pray for tall friends to hide behind.
Intermission/Medical Impossibilities
I will only speak to you with other's words, from now
until this exile is over. I'm always sending myself into exile,
tying up my wrists and curling up in a straw-filled crate
with a destination stamped on it
in perhaps a green dress that dances when I walk.
What Denomination are you, and of what Political Persuasion?
and my only answer is a sort of lost sound like what the wind
says when there are no people on the sideroad, only a bit of paper.
So they try once more, with What is your Occupation and your--
but I interrupt: Stop! Stop! Don't you see I have none?
And I break eggs and cinnamon and a cup of sugar
into a bowl and the crust rises golden and crisp for me and
you to sleep on until we arrive at wherever it is I've sent us.
ginger december
If you look at me sideways in the still green light
and if the pulse in my arms quickens, what then?
I know you to be several states away, smiling through
the snowstorms as I braid lemongrass riboon
and brush sweetbutter and sage on winter bread.
You're far away; if I see you watch me with ginger eyes,
I still won't dare to be in love with them, your
december-letter eyes. The snow is tinted with
green, pricking at my bare neck, keeping you away.
And I start letters to you in reply: "Dear Seth," and
I crumple it, throw it away; "Dear Seth," and I crumple it,
start over. And before long, I'm coiled in my answers
to questions you didn't ask, juicing limes for ink
and feeling the cold windows are
disagreeable.
The clock stings like flies in a citron garden;
I have several rib cages, and pinpoints of light on my neck
and from my shins to just above my knees. Unexpected
urgency beads in my eyes, a garden of green onions,
dill, and your skinny ankles and
by the 1974-light of several lamps, against the
nettley afghan my mother knit. I twist it in the ginger-green
ribbon the colour of your eyes, wish you well
over the telephone.
All This Talk Of Time
Where my mouth should be is a velvet
poppy, full-skirted and rich; mute and
inanimate. The lights bob across the room
in the shape of men and women. there is
a golden gauze across my eyes.
Memories of evenings skate over me,
tiny ice-blades over scarred dance-floors
and escaped cushions (They were heaped on
the couch all around me, but their silk bodies
now rest on the grit and floor-polish).
Empirical evidence of my guilt, cream
and bitter ankle-lace pool on the hall table,
where the mirror is cracked from an Oriental
goblet. There is weird Obsidian music pulling
against my shoulder, ruffling the flower that rests
where my mouth should be.
reunion saints
You say, "When I knew you then, I said it'd be like
an abyss or an architecture; there would be silences,
but oh! they'd be noisy!" And I liked that, when I
knew you then.
--
My balcony housed bumblebees;
they came for my morning glories
and you teased them with your
architectural pens & eyeglasses,
ridiculous Spanish mules and gaudy
paint colours you teased me with your
panacea tongue, purple teeth.
--
Call me twenty, but I'm eighteen,
flingin' off words on your lint-carpet,
into the cigarette-butt planters, and
over your shoulder; staining the grey
fabric all down your back. I write
words all down your back.
And I say, "When I knew you
then, I liked you for your sharp
penmanship and the quirks
collected around your mouth.
And you said when we met again
we'd be twenty,as gaudy and
architectural as ever, but
I'm eighteen, and our silences are
grey with stranger-noise.
marmalade air
it's obvious, like chocolate,
it's a raspberry hot-eyed afternoon teacake
choking you when you talk of
the sour cream boys I call friend
like I ought to call them cornbread enemies;
it's obvious like chocolate that you
disapprove.
but it's necessary, like custard,
for me to be here, apple-dear
I am the slice green cucumber I miss you
but it's necessary, like melon and meringue
that I be sometimes here and sometimes
in the land of ginger crackers and cinnamon tea.
but meet me downtown in the marmalade air
and I have a secret I will tell you.
Gallery #4
There were no surprises; they decided it would be
easier that way. There were your teeth in your
mouth and there was your tongue resting there
gently against them. There were your bones in
your hands and your blood running thin around
them. There were your steps in the hall with
echoes and pauses. There were the gilt frames
there was a momentary lapse in ideal worlds.
But darling! I have my feet in my shoes but they
run in arches through a street-tunnel; I have my
heart in my ribs but my ribs misbehave regularly.
Foxhole demons and family demands pull you but
darling-- all the bones in your hands are fishhooks,
they're telescopes so catch me, so stand by me like
a fearless sea-captian. I gather in storm-clouds at
your ankles in your boots with all the charm of a
water-blue wind. I pass at your shoulder in your
shirt with all the surprise I can collect.
crosswalk endurance
you were a street he had to crossand he was a blind student
with black hair, son of shadows
with a shadow hand; he knew magic
made of diamond stars, swirls of
black sparkles, while you hid in silk
he felt for your hand.
you were a street he had to cross
and he was a boy with a crooked leg
with cynics in his teeth and straw-coloured
forehead hair. the traffic he dodged never
slowed or turned but he said "life feels like
a remix." the crack of dust and the doom of
disease that his mother knew, it brings you
to your knees on the median.
you were a street he had to cross
and he couldn't think straight anymore;
a slanted blur of orange hand in your eyes
it seemed alright, it seemed alright to him.
because i like storks and you like camera stuff
Today in the backyard:
A bald-faced stork bobs among the long grasses that you missed cutting, and the twine and tin can birdfeeders. Throwing stones at a squirrel through the broken glass, you see him, laugh, and run for your camera. I am at the counter, slicing green onions on an abstract wood cutting board and I am alert and rings of music fall past us. Awkwardly, the stork flies away, and awkwardly, we follow one-by-one.
- - - - - - - - - - - dynasty boys - - - - - - - - - - - -
they were tea lantern faces bobbing in the darkwhere the crickets and creepers banded around
the front porch. each of those six string-headed
dynasty boys held a topiary full of rabbits, each
knew a secret no one else dared to know. three
of them were you, they were you, my own boy.
they had ankle-twisted wrists and match-burned
eyes that flashed across the 11pm like fine bones,
and a fervor on their tongues which a middle-aged
Viennese man translated into their laughter at me.
three times the tongue, Ming china, and four scar-
tables, and I don't much mind you laughing at me,
my own dynasty boy, my own quick-lipped mocker.
if you're full of rabbits and tea lanterns spilling over,
then rest on the moon, sleep on a raft, you're my own.
the front porch. each of those six string-headed
dynasty boys held a topiary full of rabbits, each
knew a secret no one else dared to know. three
of them were you, they were you, my own boy.
they had ankle-twisted wrists and match-burned
eyes that flashed across the 11pm like fine bones,
and a fervor on their tongues which a middle-aged
Viennese man translated into their laughter at me.
three times the tongue, Ming china, and four scar-
tables, and I don't much mind you laughing at me,
my own dynasty boy, my own quick-lipped mocker.
if you're full of rabbits and tea lanterns spilling over,
then rest on the moon, sleep on a raft, you're my own.
isaac asimov eyes
The weary lines in your
mouth, forehead, skull
dug deep into my mouth,
face, regrets, boring holes
I didn't dare fill in. We have
little left but our tearing coughs
tugging fishhooks over our throats,
and our delirious pewter bones.
And I miss you, your isaac-asimov eyes,
your thick 1956 tongue reading books
with stories of boys called Robert and
nuclear mysteries. The chops, my frying pans
and saucepans I was given on our wedding day,
I miss your jazz records from the bookshelf
and your feet beside me in the bed.
Flowerpots shatter as you slam the door,
Steamshovels and sidewalk tiles dragging
your furious ankles; oh love,
erase your face and come back to me quietly!
lila demi-wood
It's what you can see when you close your eyes:
bottles of cigarette wine suspended in dust on basement shelves,
begging pardon in a white-eyed dress through the wind,
and the vein-laced tongues inside your eyelids.
It's the thick taste of toothpaste miracles
you can't escape on long summer afternoons,
and I believe your nirvana shakes will
pass after a time.
Suitcase after suitcase scuttling full of
crabs and moonflowers through your hallways,
trains skip the tracks, chains of clover and ballpoints
collect dust in a sun-wet field and you peek over smoked glasses.
My dear, so time runs out... well, what if it does?
Marcel with a turquoise pencil crayon
In 1946, we ducked under an orange
spangled tent curtain, over the bare
grass-dust. Smells of dark tobacco and
tinny phonograph songs. Marcel as a
sharp-whiskered fox; when he caught
a wisp of me, he held me like an Indian
snake-basket. I write him ink-alcohol
notes of goodbye, d'origine montreal,
cinnamon bread-dough. at midnight,
in the main tent glittering like hard stars,
Madame DuPont sang soaring sentimental,
dressed in clothing from the continent, while
we try out sinning in a vacuum.
--
reclaim us, reclaim us from our
drum-circle dances and tuneless
piano captors. Marcel with his
quiet francophone voice, making
faces at my accent while the
phonebooths collapse and a lady
on a unicycles wobbles past, I
receive a danger & save me whole.
--
Marcel with a turquoise pencil crayon,
I wish on the back of his neck-
leather notebooks and gazing balls
build him monuments. And he builds me
micro-Victrolas, so we fall back to dancing,
to tuneless, tiny waltzes.
cardinal rule
ugly and disbelieving friends stare you down, but
I believe in you when you talk, and look at you--
wavering-- under the cover of my green eyes.
tricks of the light, my dear, tricks of the light:
you know things that aren't real but cannot
edit them out from the sunweed tangle of
what you mean to believe. but I believe in you.
and your eyes are blue, and silhouettes against the
dark sky, and thick with jungle-root deities.
I think of you as Velocity, murderous pale-white arms
spinning webs of colour and science with
laughing mouths like oatmeal with cinnamon.
and so I break my cardinal rule, and talk to you.
I trace a line on the dark-tinged pavement,
in blue chalk soot on your eyes. can I call you
names I shouldn't? can you believe the way
a crackling silence shoots you through your ribs?
tricks of the light, my dear, tricks of the light,
but I believe in them.
count me
if you can count, count me: deliver my hands (two)
from the scarlet tracings of late autumn, deliver my
mouth (one) from English grammar rules and then
my wingtip brushes (four) will paint you picture
of my cousins (eight) on seaside in dubrovnik.
if you can count, count me: the travesty and mirage
swiveling under my eyes (three) and you remember
bad seeds of my past: nick cave and bjork and a room
with wood paneling where the piano once was. and me,
my thoughts chink apart like bronze drawer knobs (six),
and you, your mouth stays open when you're close to me.
deliver my hands (two) from the scarlet frays of my scarf,
deliver my mouth (one) from the highwaylines rules of
English grammar. my grandmother (one), my aunt mirjana
(the rich one), and tonko (one) give me love that i send you
from under the red rooftops (several hundred). can you taste
coffee and spice when i write? you are supposed to. count
me. i spent the whole day in the old town and now i am here.
p.s. it says that "trubadur" is "hard jazz caffe". ha.
cake and summer
ginger green newts skipping over your
facial features and feet; meek kitten-
whiskered worker-bees and droning
high-eyed snails at the foot of your tree.
wise owls and cro-magnon men buy
illiteracy in shell-pink currency and
bamboo lovers curl sharp ribbons
over the dusky grass. it is july; time
doctored by hoaxmen and mafia ticks
off like old profligates and the tyre
tracks skip over the faces on the road.
I lick my lips to taste the dust gusting
off the road you left by. "darling," I say
"your backward tongue and your feats
of daring captivate me and I do believe
I am all contented to lie in the sun beside
your jean-jacket shed shell." I sleep; I know
you'll come back for it before summer ends.
wall candles
it's the way you look backwards at me
shot across the chest with light
and pieces of mirage; it's that way
that thunders so quietly
shot across the chest with light
and pieces of mirage; it's that way
that thunders so quietly
9:52 PM under my ears
that makes me go hollow and round
there is a piece that
passes like a river
and i love to teach you swimming.
i will be happy
forever
to sit in this passenger seat
and share the quiet jests of your smiles in jeans.
and share the quiet jests of your smiles in jeans.
i like to smile at you over your shoulder,
and wax drips down from the wall candles.
paul & i call socially on one another on nothing street
the lanky fingers of him, like a cat;
i long to trickle and dance through
park benches in mid-november
and in his hands i see myself dancing.
his wide white face is like a snow
goblin. i whisper, a wind in the
himalayan mountains. he is an
unimpeachable snowman. i laugh.
untimely secrets, left under armchairs
where the dusty wood meets the green plush,
and on doorsteps where the grimy street
meets the cobwebs growing up. can i lose you?
his slow mouth thinks up a smile while
children and dust-rabbits play in the
carpet of his winding mind. he gives me
self-containment in a box with string in
the nicest way a friend knows how.
third version / polaroid vision
Nuuro – Softer Things
you are an extended metaphor, your fingers
stretched out like bathing-suit elastics. the
sun lines on our 11-year-old skin make me
feel warm and golden while the world clicks
past like a cold japanese monorail. you are
an extended metaphor; the skipping records
and tangled cassette tapes i give you in a basket,
which are very interesting and they have that
distinctive taste of dust and your parents. you
are an extended metaphor; powdering drywall,
cracked mortar and one drink collecting rain on
it's pale liquid sides. you're not alone. i know
we're not alone in this. collect me, then. gather
me up in a dented emerald tin you used to use
to hold guitar picks. hum and hmmm where are
we now? you are an extended metaphor and i
am all wrapped up in gold ribbon and pink gum
crispy pink paper that says i love you like mayflies.
victor composes a wishful thought
the tragic emissions of deteriorating atoms
lurch into a heap at the end of your bed:
catch us! they cry. o catch us and push
us back to our usual form. and you sit where
the mattress slopes and where the video-game beeps
and faded cotton sheets crumple off into space,
and you write your teething capitals in a black notebook.
her name eludes you, now, but you can remember
the sticky-rain nights last august when it meant
tiger parades and interstudious life forces. the
betwixt-and-between of warm green tidal reds and
the neat texts you meant to kindle for her. her name
emitted from a restless atom-heap makes you wonder
"what other planet features this?" and you should go
exploring them to find out. i promise to miss you.
bygone decades, homemade bread
ina, manuel, i give out names on badges
circular sewing around the edges of your
face and eyes and we play perched on old
sofas and smell the deferential perfume of
an old woman who may have died since i
last remembered to visit her. my dues have
long since been paid to this present decade;
i have vigils and appointments to keep with
bygone decades. albert allard scrawled his name
on the back of a picture-postcard, told me to
"look me up if you're ever in 1986." bruce kensall
watches me from up on the rocky hill, and i
wave at him because i like to greet his beard and
his camera. grizzly bears and fishing birds greet
his lens and i wait under the peeling striped
wallpaper for the smell of spinning wheels and
yellow film. everyday he grows more conscience-
stricken and upset; i kiss him under the statue
of a spanish lover; he stands by the tombstone
with an umbrella, silhouetted against a glaring
sunset and i tell him, "there are no clouds, love;
i made this world and this is no time for it to rain."
on the tea and sugar train the days go by slow; my
newest friend is drying sugar cane in the sun on the
toy mud. robert nininger threw his green jacket up
on the hood of the van and we talked for an hour of
weathered board and gilt frames; the demise of the
monarchy and the lift you feel in a boat on waves. a
child kissed another child and i feel like that, sometimes.
you kiss me and i shiver like a foolish child, and smile.
every day you grow more conscience-stricken and upset,
so i put my hair up and watch you from the window of
a blue train. i play accordion music and flash my teeth
like the flash of a camera in your direction; "i promise,
love, i made this world and this is no time for it to rain."
ages of you/green grow the rushes
i wrote you an underwater note
hand signs and ponderous escaping bubbles
and made faces at you across the pool
while your hair swam on it's own like
wayward green wheat.
he was your half-brother,
smoking cigarettes and
killing himself too young in
several other ways, and he
liked to see your hands move
a little desperately; and he liked
to laugh short laughs at your expense/
concern. now he's half-genuine; new
leather strips tugging their lazy weights
down to the bottom of the pool.
it's hard when he suggest you jump off the cliff
together, and offers to kiss you in midair
and you can already taste the blood
on your lips and feel yourself falling
and the smack of the water.
so i write you a note, obtrusive
feminine hand-signals across the
murky eye of water and i say you
can wake up and i'll be glad to hold
your hand or his or both and take
all the blame.
little spinnerets of interest
"life," i said, beginning a list
of things i would be better
off inventing lies about less.
"life, you as a china cabinet,"
"a quiet francophone lover."
and i always mean to draw
little spinnerets of interest
from your lace-webbed hands
but i didn't expect your reply:
"forgotten postcards, insistence."
my sparring matches are quilted,
barriers built of corrugated cardboard
and chocolate, and soft introspection
pouring like sand into the hourglass
of my mouth. you say my instistence
on your insistence is a lie i made from
sweet-smelling tape songs. i tell you,
"christening mysteries, and vintage
realities; a swift swish of persian rugs
and faith as it comes out from under you."
think better of it
october i remember you cutting me out a paper crown, and
asking if i would care to be queen. we were everyone's best
eccentrics then, sitting in the backyard while the leaves got
brown and dead, humming songs and growing cold. winter
slid like a letter-opener under your skin; i must protest your
feudal annoyances! i remember accepting that paper crown.
time is dissolving in my teacup; familiarity dissipating over
the cracked china teeth. and, dear, it was getting late
even before that first ice storm to start thinking better of us.
happens to us all otherwise
the superstitions said that to stand where we stood
would be sheer madness; bad luck in the back room
and sad days under the cedars that stand so straight
by the sagging porch. the critics gave us credit for our
bravery, but mostly laughed and threw telephone-stones
at us. my feet slid nervously on the gravel but your eyes
flung escapist into the sky. the critics give us credit for
our bravery, but i'm only brave when you're beside me.
the swinging door that separated us, the battered aluminum
reminded me of the difference between our heads; it swings
like dented metal through the air between us. i don't know
what you mean and you don't know why i care and i don't
know why we bother trying this. they say it's bad luck but still--
i'm only brave when i'm beside you, and i like to hold your hand.
irwin g.
aren't your eyelids just terrible; blandishment and
underscores on the thick skin? oh, but don't worry,
i'm still your friend. isn't your jawbone just heavy
and isn't that the very first mix-tape of your toothy
grin? irwin g., i've read your poems overnight and
slipped my small fingers in between the chalky paper,
marking the pages where you left me notes:
-alexandra, your younger sister, purchased this book
on october 7th, 2005, scant hours before your birthday.
-i catch you watching me when you don't mean to be;
i catch little bits of purple glass murdering out of your
lovelorn violet-eyes. i keep them in an apocryphal jar.
-some dots and semicircles on the back pages of this
book match up perfectly with some freckles on the
back of your hand. you wonder when i had a chance
to study them, no? well, sometimes i watch you back.
irwin g., i always catch you watching me back; your gifts
and letters are a dusty black moth brushing tasteless wings
over my mouth. brush past me, alan, baby; why so jaded?
the art of lift
he is my crimson demograph. he writes
oh such chafing notes my wheatking. three
weeks of glorious catharsis in the cockpit of his triplane,
skipping over clouds and dwarf-gold like neptune in
a chariot of burlap and consonants.
the bones of my bodies are twice-struck matches,
brittle and pretty and that old-tin smell; he twists
twine around my eyes and pulls them up to the sky
he is that motor-oil smell-- rough hands and old rags
he is building and explicating the greatest machine.
some saturdays, he sings all day
spinnerets scarves and bomber jackets
adjusting the goggles on my head
admiring how they scruff up my hair.
i smile and call me his scarecrow lover.
he means to build a new machine;
we will call it the art of lift.
film noir et film noir et amoureux rouges
on this
little kitten-dark evening,
my skin pebbled with rain
i am
smarting with delight in you.
the walls are hard and horrid,
so you twist a little boat out of
my red silk scarves
and we
sail off like a cobblestone princling
and his velvetest friend.
je ne suis pas désolé!
je suis construit avec de noir joli.
oh love
such adventures!
i press into the grey of your eyes
and you paint with the red of my mouth.
oh love
such mysteries!
you are a little novel i read through
and know the end...
je suis un petit calendrier!
vous arrachez mes pages,
chaleureusement. alors,
course avec mes
chaussures
cliquant
sures.
little kitten-dark evening,
my skin pebbled with rain
i am
smarting with delight in you.
the walls are hard and horrid,
so you twist a little boat out of
my red silk scarves
and we
sail off like a cobblestone princling
and his velvetest friend.
je ne suis pas désolé!
je suis construit avec de noir joli.
oh love
such adventures!
i press into the grey of your eyes
and you paint with the red of my mouth.
oh love
such mysteries!
you are a little novel i read through
and know the end...
je suis un petit calendrier!
vous arrachez mes pages,
chaleureusement. alors,
course avec mes
chaussures
cliquant
sures.
box with string pt ii
...........we are
...that tangle of arms--
discomfortless and
..pleasing like...........little green
turtle-doves-- that
.....gives us our name: friends.
if you wish to talk,
............I will be all grapefruit shadings
my mouth and seashell ears
ready to talk ...........................with you,
and if you'd rather be quiet,
my eggshell lips will seal, darling, over
with silent membranes; I will never
..................say a word.
when you are tired,
..................I will be pale-whiskered secrets;
....I'll be gentle like ............................a lamb in the bible
and if you wake up
.....................................sometime
................to me
I'll be
...a little red-and-gold nametag
......that gives us a newer name
.........................in a box....................with string
approaching a city
approaching a city, I turn my head,
eating with my eyes the
biscuit stucco and chocolate grime.
a child by my side
sleeps deep; the city
in my eyes sleeps deeper.
approaching a city, I stack up sounds,
faint murmurs of rice-paper cars
that spin-cycle over the pavement,
and hang to dry.
the buildings are cereal boxes
and the child at my side stacks them like blocks
approaching the city I think of you,
I wish for you and i run my fingers over
the ricketing tracks, feeling illness
and degeneration in the splinters they collect.
I have collected bare lightbulbs, little whiskered thoughts
that creep through my head at night--
I miss you.
but
approaching a city
I twist my head like a seagull
up to the c-sharp major sky
and I will live and
the sun breathes.
gingerbread friend.
i bought you in increments, making monthly payments and getting pieces of you like chocolate and pecan and brown sugar; i built you in my basement over the winter and you looked offended and ran away as soon as you had legs, but you left without most of your left arm, and the back of your head and your ears were only partially built. you trailed thoughts like cinnamon and rum flavouring from your open gingerbread skull.
silly and desperate, i left you notes and put up posters but you wouldn't come back and you wouldn't come back; i found your right arm, half-eaten, lying by the river on the edge of town; i dug you a little grave but some animal must have gotten into it and i won't try that way again.
purchases
my friend has a brother, a
dark plum-blue boy; one weekend
i called and it was him and i said,
"hey lincoln have you found the end of the world yet?"
marseilles, the dashing lines on highways,
treacle and turpentine curdling in our palms--
oh! we laughed gloriously then, and
i can hold you closest when
i have no idea what we're talking about.
"hey janie here's sixpence,"
"hey lincoln you make a perfect wheelwright,"
"hey janie you make time displeased,"
"hey lincoln here's experience,"
hey suddenly we're dispersed over a
plaza of spiral cord, making purchases of
tin-wine and lollipop wire.
arms full i laugh and i like
to fight with you over real things
and i like to make up.
[removed for further study]
do you know what i want? of course
you don't know. thinking like any lover,
sneaking admiration into the conversation,
making me guess. do you know what i want?
september 17, last year, carl took me to
the beach. "how do you like being an
object of study?" he asked. little sand-crab
scrutinizing eyes; i brushed my fingers through
his deer-brown eyes. "i love it," i told him, "as
long as i know it's happening." so all day
i dug in the sand, waded and glared through
jewel-green eyes, tossed our desires into the
boisterous sea-breeze (he sat up, annoyed; "hey,
i needed those!"), lay on the brown-sugar sand
keeping one eye on him as he kept both on me.
'round about 3 pm he suddenly jumped up,
pulled me by one arm off the beach into the
car and drove me to the hotel. later, i stole his
briefcase and read the report: [subject removed
for further study]. when i next saw him, i let him
see my tattoo: [retrospective feature studies] because
nonsense parodies scare him and my hair gets in
my eyes, displeasing him. i told him, "you miss me
mirroring your expectations." he wrote a bitter novel.
do you know what i want? of course
you don't.
box with string
after we fight you bring me presents-- not to make things right again; presents to weigh me down, wind me in linen, shroud me in gauze.
you give me confusion in a box with string.
sunday morning i open it as you watch from the doorway; my eyes travel over you in dismayed arcs. you are smug, magnificent, scratched lenses.
sitting in the sunday morning sun, amid the wreck and ruin of crumpled brown paper and quick cut twine, i hold confusion in one hand, watch you laughing quietly to yourself, and try to think of what i should say.
later, you should come and find me. i only need you to tell me, "you don't mean that; say you're sorry." i really don't; i really am.
fiery squall
the ochre in her eyes reached out hungry jawbone,
swallows darted insect sticks over the erosion-plain.
brushed locomotive dreams thundered through her
and he was a gentle judge;
he talked softly against her
splintered head.
.
spontaneous/combust, baby
distract me, dishevel me
pour dirt in the windows, raw and red-brown.
grind black stones to powder and touch them
to your tongue; concentric ink circles
across the walls and ceilings and around your throat
circuits play in 3/4 in the bedroom and
all your lights blink out in time.
shards of indigo magi
skitter over the tiles
leave clinging streaks
of purple blood
sparks of golden fire
coalesce like malformed glass
air pockets evidence of
misplaced passion
flame-brown retina, cornea; iris singed--
the heat sticks into you like
burrs, brown and doll-like
he: "cerulean embryos, designer-child technocrats--
did we give birth to prometheus or the minotaur?
(either way, we bleed on and on and on
in trailing ribbons of azure and chalk;
you'll have to forgive me for the self-inflicted wound)"
she: "it is years from now!
the august-blue back jagged under my fingers
i remember you crimson-stained.
the thievery still tastes like poison with an
aftertaste of bewildering delight."
i think you meant to say 'wild'
but i'll pretend to forgive you for reverting to our kinfolks' ways;
you always were the strongest of the litter
every tiny mouth, pink and white of treacherous teeth,
the saccharine lecherous teeth in my tongue,
infant devourers i shake them off beside hungry mountains;
ravenous world-eaters; ravishing consuming sinking dirt-claws
into cliff walls; pinpricks of obsequious
sunlight burning away flesh and sod
and coverings less common
to feast on shattered
bones.
time hauls upward in a dim spiral
and your fingers grow dull with pain and yet
you cling and you cling to that bronze head hour hand,
while ages below you the city unscrolls.
toy cars collide, combust.
putrid smoke billows out of furnaces
seeps from dim-lit poker rooms out into the alleyways;
i never knew my feet were made of clay.
and your mouth (hot and painfully dry)
burns my toes as they glaze over in the kiln of your lungs
hours later, week or years later, in the film of her oil-spill eyes,
a woman of incredible age looks back at us through the brass
magnifying glass of time, and the glass
shatters from the brutal black paint
images flaring out from our eyes.
no water spills around our feet.
he: ". . . why didn't you tell me dorian was dead?"
she: "maybe it was too late.
somewhere between midnight and three a.m.
a streak of owl-fur grew across our window
and some warnings cannot be ignored.
some warnings must not be ignored."
010011010101010100
110101111101101
01010111100010001001011
01010100101101101010101011100
[error 2904: reality is leaking]
part iv: i roll out of the way
did i mention that you were asleep for decades at a time?
no matter, dear, we're sailing through scattered pebble-stars;
there's no rusted train to block our view of paris this time
when i blink at you--so--in the stifling fraternal air,
it is all surprise, all blame, and i feel tiny universal
earthquakes ripple out from my face.
is it clove-gold love, or is it seismic despair?
you can tell by the shaking of my rattan fingertips
that i am woven out of cast-off strands of old wood;
i prefer to tell myself that it is only the aftershock of desperation.
it was a gold ring then,
burnished like a mouth caught on the fraying fibres,
the drafted weathered woodwork
feathered over the tangled grass.
you are sheathed in snake-skin plates that let in all the blame.
molting season has come and gone and still you remain the same.
so never mind gracelessness, never mind restraint,
never mind perfection or debate--
this is all black-telegraphic urgency and
some
fears
hurt
he: "i never could tell the difference
between white-ruffled ripples in the ocean
or the not-quite-symmetrical
stencil on your door. but if you come close
we can move down to the sea;
i'll house you in a conch shell until
we outgrow the sea-anemone neighborhood
and return to analyze the thumb-worn filigree
of your walls."
she: "but give me a few weeks and
the whole world will center
on your littlest finger. lift this
weight off me; lift this weight
off me and let the
raw red dirt pour in."
vilnuis
mykolas woke me up then at 7:15; i came to the door half-awake and mute and he told me we were going out. kind of a no argument voice. i got dressed. "what are we doing, mykolas?" i asked, and we tumbled together down the echoing stairs, three flights, four. "you'll see," he said in his secret voice, with the clatter of our shoes and the pale light like tulle in the four-pane windows like a quiet bell.
we left my building by the back door; the heavy metal clang back alley grime. it is still cold here this time of year, so i had my burgundy coat and the air held onto my breath in smoky clouds. i pulled the black-cloud knit of my scarf over my mouth to hold the warm inside me. "what are we doing, mykolas?" i said, and he said come, and i followed him out onto our side street, and then onto the main street.
there was a peaceable ominousness hanging in the air, and as we stepped out from my side street i realized that it was silence. the wind tumbled bits of littered paper across the empty street. pigeons bobbed unhurriedly on the ground. they winked little worried eyes up at mykolas and i as we crossed the street. i turned my own worried eyes up to mykolas and he nodded and so that was why he had gotten me up. i looked up and down the street, the creaturely air and my fingers laced up in mykolas's and forlornly i let my scarf fall open and the wind run up against my chin.
i can almost hear your words
i.
i soliloquized, wrote my name on your desk,
i am the cruel beautiful wanton mischeivous.
my head is cool and gold in the light falling in
from behind the green velvet study curtains.
"don't you care? i wrote my name on your desk,
indelible ink on the antique oak; it will never go.
don't you care?" 7 a.m., the street's empty and light.
ii.
little pistol seeds rain down; tree shedding sounds against our window
you are mostly made of wrought iron, i am mostly made of yellowing lace.
sunday, april 17 in the dining room we stood on opposite sides of the table,
darting ideas through each other's displaced skulls; dull swallows flit past us.
and i [love you] no longer wish to know you; their shadows taste like vitriol;
vitriol tastes like love- warm mouths, arsenic, whispers against rough brick.
iii.
i have heard promises, miscellanies,
infrequencies, radio edits. i have heard
taciturn larceny spiralling out from that
boneyellow ridge-of-skin chest of yours.
outlawry, my danger my love, i put four
tiny seeds in the dust under your desk,
carve my name in the beautiful wood,
leave you one last note on the windowsill:
"living off the land comes unnaturally, to us."
holy graffiti
by 9:30 I was back outside, sitting
on a park bench all crimson scarlet
in my dress, huddled under my
black umbrella, wearing my blackest shoes.
the little bits of water that fell on my knees were
infant worlds where I hung,
tiny and upside-down.
I'd left a note on your countertop
among the freckled fragments of old food
and no-wise papers, and right on time
you came to join me; holding hands through
red yarn mittens and softly getting wet,
we raised a prayer to the holy graffiti and
bent low at the altar of black-gum sidewalks.
later:
you bought me
cherry-flavoured penny-candy.
I bought you a tiny bark sarcophagus at a souvenir shop.
the art of sinking
he is a hyperbolic dream-king,
each finger splaying into a despicable arc
as he claims "my life is in shambles
my hope is gone"
and my life is in snapshots:
one of green glass, dark wood,
his page with all the clutter cleared away.
one of a neon sign: BREATHLESS,
an implodic glow in the vibrant night.
one of a fingertip, a mouth, tiny
full-throated imperfections of skin.
his pencil sketches my features,
his lice crawl over his tongue. ever more
his straw-thick hair wobbles drunkenly over his eyes.
the marauding riot of his speech tumbles purple in my lap
for me to stroke with two fingers; it purrs like
a ring-tailed kitten, the heat of milk rounding it's
egg-sac sides. I shudder.
I think he means to write an epic;
we will call it the art of sinking.
letter #5- attic
hello love i have been living in this attic for four days now.
it's lovely really. at times, i write songs on a toy piano or a broken organ- requiems for headless dolls, dusty chairs, cloth-covered furniture. forgotten boxes. there are bits of spider, bits of light, in the corners. it's hard to breathe. at times i lie under the skylight on the worn embroidery of an old sofa. i threw little bits of red into the dusky sky and orange lights shafts back at me. i got your last letter. i threw it in little bits down to the unkempt backyard. it made me happy though, i promise.
enclosed is a map. if you follow it carefully, it will take you as far away from here as possible.
it was just like that
this afternoon i was hanging out with kate and owen. owen is a misplaced beatnik; there's nothing else to say about him. kate, she is kind of funny; she has orangish hair that is kind of frizz-curly with side bangs. she looks really nineties. and she wears terribly red lipstick and white blouses. she usually has paint on her hands, and sometimes she wears men's boots. we've been friends for a while, i guess.
when i got to their house, kate was on the steps with her legs sticking out into the dripping rain, drawing on a yellowy piece of paper. it was a kind of abstract collage of tiny shapes and arcs around some rain clouds and a disfigured face. she looks really sweet, but most of what she does and says is not pretty or nice. the rain made little mud puddles and flat grass on the yard and ground around in the gravel driveway. owen was sitting on a porch chair tying knots and stuff with this funny skeletal emerald string. he wore a burgundy sweater and he was kind of scrunching his face so his black-framed glasses sat in a funny place on his nose. his hands are such boy-hands-- the fingernails are bitten down shorter than you think possible, and they're all imperfect and flattened at the tips.
"hey, guys," i said. "what is that?"
own looked up at me.
"hey, janie. it's a seacatcher."
"a what?"
"a seacatcher. it catches bits of sea that are in the air and your eyes and the words you say and the tv and stuff."
i went over and looked at it. it was a kind of complicated spiderweb of twigs and string.
"that doesn't make sense," i said.
"here," said owen, handing it to me.
and there were inky squid eyes blinking into mine, barnacles pinching the skin on my arms, the continual grey sound of moving water, coral fish and nautilus spirals-- a salt-green wave smashed up against my chest and i stood there breathless as owen took the seacatcher knowingly out of my hand.
"damn," i said.
"yeah," said own. owen is a misplaced beatnik. nothing he does makes sense.
fallwater
last night the rain came, the first real rain of the year static and lucid static and lucid i walked in it after midnight and it was like an open tap streaming off the blue-green arch of umbrella. i like the way damp air mists on my hair and the wool of my coat and the way
the whole air sounds like a monument to something sad and lost.
this morning i went out again, because i was feeling like the static on an old old record a grey sky and i think you know how i felt because it was mostly made of you, the little bits of irony and the formality and i know you're a little bit sad most of the time.
i am a wartime lover, listening to the radio for news of places where you are.
the untidy princess
once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a princess. her father, the king, had a great palance one hundred stories tall, and at the very top of a tallest spire was the princess's bedroom. carelessness hung out there, little witching fingers among the books and the bedclothes, the dishes on the windowsill and the dust on the desk. insolence, too. down the spiral stairs at the very bottom of the palace, there are all sorts of servants who might clean it up, but the princess was the only person in all the land who could climb all those stairs without fainting away. the law of the land decreed that the princess must be slender, but with all the feasting and the gifts of candy from hopeful suitors, the ancient kings had found that the only way to keep a princess's weight down was to have her climb one hundred flights of stairs every night.
every night in her dressing room, her ladies-in-waiting would help her into her nightrobe, and then with one candle, she would begin her long climb. she had been climbing these stairs since she could walk, and it did not tire her, but it was very long and very lonely and things were beginning to get nasty in her bedchamber.
one day, the princess was sitting amid the disarray of her red velvet comforter, frowning at herself in the gilded mirror. it was against the law of the land for princesses to furrow their lovely brows, but the princess did allow herself certain liberties in her spire.
"i am an untidy princess," she said. "all day i attend affairs of state and dance with princes and eat delicious feasts and a great deal of candy, but what good is such a joyous life if i cannot have a neat bedchamber?" and she pulled the covers over her head and cried herself to sleep.
summer was coming, and the princess's heart should have been light, for summer meant all sorts of lovely things- boating parties, tournaments, carnivals, fireworks- but instead, as the squalor began closing in on the princess, she grew more and more sad of heart, until at last her father noticed.
"my child," he said, "why is your heart not light with the coming of summer?"
"o my father," said the princess, "i cannot feel happy when the knowledge that i must return every night to my bedchamber, filled as it is with dust and cobwebs. insects are beginning to congregate at the windows, and i can hardly walk for the refuse upon the floor."
the king was very sorry, but did not know what to do, for the laws of the land forbade princesses to clean their own rooms, but no commoner could climbs all those stairs.
"o my father," said the princess, "perhaps we might issue a reward. any commoner who can climb the stairs may have anything they want, as far as i'm concerned. let it be my hand in marriage. i cannot go on living in that bedchamber."
so the king issued a proclamation to all the commoners that anyone who could scale the hundred staircases and clean the princess's room would receive a mighty reward, and the toughest, strongest commoners from all over the land came with buckets and mops, attempting to scale the mighty staircase-- but all failed. the princess's face began to be wet with tears all day long as every man and woman who tried came slithering bumpity-bumpity-bumpity back down the long spiral. she shed her tears into the rivers at boating parties. her wine at the feasts tasted of salt from her mourning. her greatest champions at the tournaments could not bring a smile to her eyes, and the fireworks over the palace illuminated the droplets wet on her cheeks.
as summer wore on, the proclamation made it's way into the deep forests in the north of the land. in a little cottage in the midst of the forests, there lived three brothers- joffel, hank, and ralf. joffel and hank were hardy boys, who had chopped wood in the forest all their lives, pulling great carts filled with wood out of the forest to market every week. ralf was not much for pulling great carts of wood; he hunted and grew crops and repaired the house instead, though he could weild an axe with the best of his brothers.
at any rate, they three loaded a cart with provisions and began the long journey to the palace. It was agreed that they would take turns pulling the cart, but when ralf's turn came, he pulled too slowly for his brothers.
"little brother," they said, "we will pull the cart, for if you do, we shall never arrive."
"you have no chance at winning this challenge," added joffel, and the pair laughed cheerfully and took extra turns pulling the cart, but it didn't seem to worry them.
oddly enough, it didn't seem to worry ralf either. after two weeks, the brothers arrived at the palace. they didn't have to wait long for their turn to try to clean the princess's room-- most had already tried and failed. joffel went first. he climbed forty flights of stairs easily, and the princess, who watched everyone's progress eagerly and secretly, began to be filled with a secret hope. But after sixty flights, he had slowed to a weak plod. at seventy-five, joffel very suddenly got calf-cramps-- he dropped his mop and his bucket and slid bumpity-bumpity-bumpity down the stairs to the bottom. hank and ralf dragged him out to the tent they had been kindly provided with, and ralf fed him restorative soup while hank went for his try.
As hank began climbing, the princess was again filled with hope. this brother was even taller and stronger than the last. at fifty flights, his energy was unflagging. "perhaps he is the one," said the princess, and then felt scared not only for voicing the secret thought, but also because she had suddenly realized she would have to wed this immense bearded stranger if he succeeded.
however, at eighty flights, when hank had slowed to a sort of listless meander, he stumbled, and such was his weakness at climbing for so long that he could not catch himself, and he slid bumpity-bumpity-bumpity to the bottom. once again, the princess climbed up the stairs in sorrow and cried herself to sleep. molds that hadn't been named yet were cultivating in the corners of her room, and the dust billowed aroud her knees.
the next day, ralf bid his ailing brothers a cheerful farewell. "i have left enough food to last you a while in the cart," he said, "and taken some for myself. don't worry over me."
"you will be back here, in bed beside us before the hour is up," said joffel grumpily. his convalescence was not making him pleasant. "that may be so," said ralf, but he smiled with unerving superiority, and left the tent with a large pack upon his back.
of course, by now, neither the king nor the princess was interested in 'fair play' anymore. if the dark-haired peasant had a contraption that would aid him in getting up, so much the better. they gave ralf his mop and bucket, and he began the great ascent.
the princess followed at what she thought was a safe, unnoticeable distance to see what the peasant would do. what he did was pull an apple out of his pack and munch it as he climbed. once, when the princess peeped around a corner to see his progress, he glanced back and winked at her. she was sort of haughty for a while, until it felt silly to be haughty at someone who couldn't see you.
at forty flights of stairs, ralf sat down, and the princess's heart sank. but, instead of sliding bumpity-bumpity-bump down to the bottom of the stairs, he pulled a blanket and some journeybread out of his pack, had a nice snack and settled down to sleep for the night. the princess was suddenly quite gleeful! what a wonderful scheme! for of course he didn't need to climb up all in one day. she bid the peasant a very courteous goodnight as she passed him at the fortieth flight. "goodnight, princess," he said, and she smiled to herself despite the mess that awaited her at the top of the stairs.
in the morning, the king asked her if the peasant had reached the top of the stairs, and the princess shook her head with a delirious little secret smile. then she spent the day following ralf up the stairs. in the morning, she was rather shy of him, but at noon when he offered her half his pear, she timidly climbed up level with him, and as they ate, they began conversing. ralf, who was still a little tired from yesterday, stopped at sixty-five flights, and he and the princess looked out over the land from one of the casement windows. ralf pointed to the distant part of the forest where he lived, and the princess showed ralf places where carnivals and tournaments were happening-- tiny little coloured tents and flags. when it got dark, they watched the fireworks together, and the princess went up to her filthy room and, for the first time in month, did not cry herself to sleep.
the next day, ralf, tired from the last two days, only climbed fifteen flights. at the eightieth flight the view of the land was quite breathtaking. he sat with the princess for most of the day, and she brought up some pastries she had pilfered from the breakfast table. for a while, she did embroidery and he whittled. they talked of all sorts of things- wars and woodcutting, storybooks and affairs of state. at night, they watched the palace fireworks and the princess skipped up to her room, so happy that some of the mold wilted away.
the next day, ralf climbed ten flights, and the next day, five. his legs were indeed very tired, but he could have climbed the last five. instead, he spent the day with the princess. as it grew dark and the fireworks began, ralf grew silent. "what is wrong, ralf?" said the princess.
"princess," said ralf, "i do not want to climb the last five flights and succeed in earning the great reward if it means i may spend no more days in your company."
the princess was delighted at this, for she had forgotten he did not know the reward. she did not tell him, however. "please finish for me. i am sure we will see each other again." ralf sighed and agreed, and the princess danced off to her bedroom.
the next day, while the princess was eating breakfast, ralf mounted the last five flights, and cleaned the princess's filthy bedroom. she, who had become filled with a boundless energy since ralf's advent, danced up flight after flight of stairs looking for him, but when she reached her room and found it so clean, she fainted clean away, and began falling bumpity-bumpity down the one hundred flights of stairs. ralf dropped the mop he had been proudly posing with, and began chasing her down. he was very tired but he managed to stay conscious long enough to catch her at forty flights. many guards, servants, and courtiers who had heard the ruckus panted up forty flights to see what the commotion was about. "what has happened?" they demanded. the guards glared menacingly. "i think," said ralf, weakly, "that she was overcome with joy at the sight of her clean room." the crowd on the stairs burst into a hubbub of exclamation, and in the midst of all the confused noise, ralf heard that the reward for success was the princess's hand. weakened as he was, this information was too much to bear, and he fainted away. the princess and ralf slid bumpity-bumpity-bump through the crowd and down to the very bottom of the stairs where they lay, dazed and undignified as the crowd panted down after them and annouced the good news to the king.
ralf and the princess were wed, and after a while, succeeded the throne. they abolished the stairs law and the chores law and lived happily ever after in a very neat palace with a lot of wasted upper stories, which eventually turned from concrete stories into abstract stories, much to the delight of the court storyteller and all the young offspring of ralf and the princess. there were many fireworks.
just like now
i make sense of life
living by arbitrary rules--
"girls must never say 'whore'."
"you must kiss me."--
but they never stay unbroken.
28/04/2008
It's been about a year since I posted this list, which still hangs on my wall. I am very happy to find that I have fulfilled a good many of them, and gotten a great deal closer to others. Here are some I feel I have completed.
I want to paint the walls cream coloured and cover them with everything under the sun.
they're not cream coloured, but they are just covered in lovely things.
I want people to know my name at the coffeeshop and the bookstore and the thrift store.
I was overreaching here. Knowing my name is too hard. But they all recognize me. At the coffeeshop, I am the girl who comes in and draws artcards and drinks chai and leaves random artworks on the tables. At the bookstore, I am the girl who sneaks around in the very back of the maze and leaves artcards in the chapbooks. At the thrift store, I am the militant girl who looks through all the racks, starting with the dresses.
I want to laugh in the rain.
The rain is mine. I own it. I even cause it sometimes.
I want to be at home, alone.
Loneliness never worries me. Even when I don't want to be alone.
I want it to be just right.
This took a while. But I truly am perfectly content with where I am, especially the discontent parts. Being discontent with some things is just right. Not being totally happy is right- it is living.
I want to know at a glance how everyone fits into me.
Sometimes I worry if I judge people too quickly. But I sometimes suspect I can read people's very souls in a two-second look. (But sometimes they still surprise me, which is good also.)
I want to sing.
This one came pre-fulfilled. I was born singing.
I want to know which troubles are truly troubles.
This is like the 'just right' thing. I know now that the things that are wrong in my life are really overwhelming right because there is Jesus and because there are lost and destitute and broken people.
I want mothers to smile at me.
They do. They don't know I have designs on stealing their children and cuddling and playing with the to my heart's content.
I want musicians to watch me.
The right kind, too. Indie musicians have become my kin.
I want to make good food.
I still don't have enough time for cooking with school and work, but I do love to cook things.
I want to be understood. I want to have no need for understanding.
Being misunderstood is an idea invented by teenagers. But a lot of you lovelies who read this are the people who make me feel as if my soul isn't the least bit alone. You understand me, and I love you for it.
I want to sit in places no one else sits.
This is so much mad fun.
I want to be the girl who looked different yesterday.
Somehow in the last year I developed a penchant for wearing costumes instead of outfits. I am usually dressed up as something that is not what I was dressed up as yesterday.
I want to own a little piece of earth where sanity and insanity do not quibble.
I'm not sure I own any actual pieces of earth... but sanity and insanity are becoming better friends each day.
I want simple pleasures and pleasures no one else enjoys. I want common pleasures and uncommon pleasures.
I have them.
I want a blank notebook with cream colored pages that I can fill with everything under the sun.
I have it. It is lovely.
I want a collage.
I am almost made of collage.
I want to busk.
I haven't done any official make-money busking, but playing music for the public in the city has transpired.
I want the windows open.
They are usually open.
--
here are all the incompletes:
I want my own apartment- urgently.
I want not to forget.
I want to support myself with art.
I want to know how to sew.
I want to own the streets I walk down.
I want to drive away whenever I feel like it.
I want to improvise.
I want a wicker loveseat that the sun shines on, with illustrious cushions.
I want to dance when I walk and when I stand still.
I want to stay up late talking.
I want to have teacups.
I want to care.
I want to hold someone's hand.
I want to wake up because I can, not because I have to.
I want to speak, I want to speak what I want to speak. I do not want to speak incompletely. I do not want my words to fail others.
I want to be the girl that you saw walking by and couldn't forget.
I want to be the girl that walked by and smiled.
I want to be the girl who helped.
I want to have no reason to close myself.
I want to fear no frightening thing.
I want to change the world in small ways.
I want to love freely.
I want to have somewhere to go.
I want to be faithful to my thoughts. I do not want to be a hypocrite. I want to love my enemies.
I want to play songs; I want never to be asked to stop.
I want to find all the things that belong to me.
I want to give.
I want to rise above.
I want to talk unafraid.
I want to meet the eyes I couldn't meet.
I want to please the old men and women.
I want to please my mother and father.
I want to please my God.
I want to please myself.
I want to be the girl you had to tell everything to.
I want to be satisfied not to know all the answers.
I want to satisfy others with not knowing.
I want to be content, not knowing what to say.
I want to be kissed.
I want to be remembered.
I want to be loved.
I want to be the girl who didn't assume too much.
I want to wear a dress.
I want to put more into the world than I take out of it.
I want to not be categorized.
I want to make people brave.
I want to make people happy.
I want to be humble.
I want to say good night, good morning, goodbye.
I want to know stories.
I want to laugh until it hurts.
I want to cry for people.
I want to sacrifice.
I want to understand philosophy and art.
I want to think about what I am saying.
I want to be the girl who didn't hurt you.
I want to be full.
I want to be a remedy.
I want to be moved.
I want to make the tired commuters smile.
I want to make the powerful think twice.
I want to think twice, ten times, a thousand...
I want to not steal.
I want my bed to be waiting for life.
I want the sun to shine in patches in my apartment.
I want my own to be proud of me.
I want to be quiet enough.
I want laughing people to include me.
I want to do, make, say, think.
I want to be sensible. I want to be poetic.
I want to know when to laugh at myself. I want to not always laugh then.
I want to make people talk to me straight. I want to answer straight.
I want to turn around and find you waiting there.
I want to need nothing but Jesus.
I want to need Jesus so badly it hurts.
I want to balance ideas.
I want to help needy people.
I want to wear a red dress and a teal cardigan.
I want you to be happy because of me.
I want to make you happy in yourself.
I want you to be happy with me.
I want to be happy in me.
--
of course I know most of these are lifelong projects. That is incalculably good. I love to be alive.
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