Don’t be misled
by the ivory page
which seems virginal
and without history.
Don’t think for a moment
everything has died
beneath the hillside’s
frozen plate. There’s
a plot thickening inside
the iceberg, uprisings about
to explode on the surface
of a speckled egg.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
In this creased picture, I am one of a half dozen
school girls in navy blue skirts and white blouses
with Peter Pan collars, whose mothers sang us to sleep
with Que sera, sera. Skin thinner than papyrus,
blotchy with hives and more restless than the others,
I pressed my forehead against the cool of windows
lashed with rain, the steady run of water from the roof,
as they coaxed bright floss through the eye of a needle
and eased squares of cloth over embroidery hoops.
Who knew how many children would pass through our
narrow hips and where they might be headed? No sign
swung from the ceiling of the sky, and when the eye-
shaped gap eased shut in the clouds, only the wind,
unstitched, came to shadow our heels at bedtime.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
1.
Jot or tittle?
Eye or eye-drop?
Hole or window?
Explain.
2.
Make yourself
uncomfortable.
3.
What is it?
How many legs does it have?
Is it woody or chitinous?
4.
You are a cat.
No, not you—
you are nothing like a cat!
Help us find the cat.
5.
What would you tell time?
What would you read to books?
6.
Invent a ceremony for
the successful failure of an exam.
7.
Demonstrate molting.
And just as the fog burns off and lifts,
there is a white bird wading in the shallows
gathering its silhouette tightly to itself
as we cross over the bridge.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Pennsylvania Dutch used to celebrate Thanksgiving
not with a turkey but the stuffed
stomach of a hog.
When eating smalahove—Norwegian sheep’s head—
the ear & eye must be consumed while still piping hot,
before their abundant fat starts to congeal.
Belgians prefer their cow tongues warm
and their pig tongues cold
with a vinaigrette.
Testicles are among the most versatile of foods,
delicious sautéed & sauced,
fricasseed, battered & deep-fried, put in pies,
poached or roasted.
The penis, or pizzle, is mostly
just fed to dogs.
According to the Talmud, tractate Berachoth,
the spleen is the seat not of anger or melancholy
but laughter. The Greeks roast it
over an open fire: splinantero.
Eating humble pie originally meant
eating a meat pie made with umbles,
originally numbles: those glistening parts
in which no one takes much pride.
Sweetbreads, which are offal,
should not be confused
with sweetmeats, which are mere confections.
I hate your guts, we say
to someone so detested
even their innocent viscera seem repulsive.
The lungs when put
to culinary use
are called lights.
*
Updated 1/25/12 to add a new sixth stanza, prompted by a comment from rr, as well as a new eighth stanza.
“The obvious,” Charles Simic once wrote, “is difficult/To prove.” (“The White Room,” from The Book of Gods and Devils.) This is my new favorite quote.
Continue reading
Hard to say now where a seam in the soil
marked the place where a row of villagers
with their arms tied behind their backs
slumped to the ground after the order
to fire. Someone has engraved a plaque
to show where something was raised
from rubble— But dark wounds petal
every patch of earth under stone
and gravel. Someone has pledged
a troth or signed his name in blood
at the base of a monument. Bird wing
or flag flutter? It’s hard to tell
when shadows lengthen and currents
darken: so many faces in the river.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
We buy the rice called Milagrosa
that comes in sacks imprinted with
a red elephant or a pair of fish.
Poured into plastic bins, it makes
the sound of steady rain, not
the soughing of wind in branches
laden with armfuls of snow.
*
Neighbors think they’ve heard a red
fox at dusk, its piteous screams carrying
from the rocks by the edge of the water.
Washing up in the kitchen, I look out
into the garden where night has fallen.
My fingers trace the oily film on a dish,
and somehow the air has eaten sorrow.
*
On shelves in the craft supply store,
alpaca yarns in watercolor hues. I know
a knitter in Vermont who dyes his threads
in bowls of Kool-Aid. I want the Arctic
Green Apple, or Aguas Frescas
in Tamarindo and Guayaba— colors
of shoots pushing up through murky water.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
1. England
I fall asleep early with the laptop still on, wake to five kinds of weather visible by turns through the net curtains: all-the-way grey but no rain; rainy lowering grey-yellow; blue with large scudding clouds; cloudless blue, bright with low sun; & now a smeary dark grey with wind. I shall wind a green scarf around my neck & go out.
2. Pennsylvania
Brightness wells from the new-fallen snow; the overcast sky seems worn & tired by comparison, like the face of a mother who has just given birth. The snow is a great muffler of sound, though it does squeak faintly under my boots. I’m a moving smokestack, emitting white clouds of breath. Just as I round the last bend toward home, my shadow joins me.
What softens the light-
fingered distances?
Colors of citron and honey,
bare floorboards.
Quiver of windchimes
set off by light rain.
Surprising how so much swims up
through this crack in the cold morning—
koi trapped in golden resin,
lifelike, like breathing.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
