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.