Month: January 2020

Yes, I am still writing

about my mother. About my

mothers. About the ways 

in which they became 

who they were to me; but

long before that: to, for,

and from each other. How

not even the years can fade

the quality of their scent,

the gestures that remain

embedded in every piece

of furniture, in every green

ceramic mixing bowl that survived

the years of their marriage to make 

its way into mine, with all 

the hairline cracks spread across

the surface. Yes, I am still

writing about my questions, about

the thousand thousand ways a whisper

carries even in the absence of wind

from out of the depths of a cabinet

emptied of its secrets. Because 

the end of a story is only 

convention, because convention 

dictates whose names may appear

on registers and documents 

and deeds, as well as who 

doesn't get to inherit. 

But inherit we all do—if not 

the shape of an eyebrow

then the places moles turn up, 

giveaway signs on the map

of the weathering body: saying

you too have a penchant for men

of a certain age, or you too

love the texture and frill 

of a garment for the way 

it seduces the mind into thinking 

it might forget what histories

groped and penetrated you in that 

loamy dark before you came to be. 



  

"A single swarm can contain up to 150 million 
locusts per square kilometer of farmland." - Associated Press



They are not dark tears from a pharaoh's eyes, 
nor a belt of bees unloosed from a titan's
distant tower. Their flight path is not 
a channel clogged with vessels of trade 
or commerce. They are together 
a dark body on whose surface is a mouth 
made of very fine short hairs. They sense 
the quality of air and can hover 
for days and days in the wind. 
They are said to be patient 
and can withstand extended periods 
of deprivation. Along the edges of the sky 
they find small openings in which 
they can spiral without cease. How many 
creatures can hear the sounds of the world 
and of frightened cows through the ear 
in their abdomen, or feel the color green? 

Talk, we say. 
Why don't we know
how to talk. Nobody says 
anything, or nobody says 
what anyone really wants 
to hear or to say under
the words. It's like
trying to figure out how 
to lift the hem of rain 
as it lengthens, coming 
down. We cup our hands: 
there is so much of it
we cannot hold. 

Mount Vesuvius eruption: Extreme heat 
"turned man's brain to glass" - BBC News 

Before the blanket and surge,
             before the seared 
arms of trees. We would have been 
             face-down in bed, lying 
along the sandbar, wondering 
             at the rattle in the throat
of the sky and the sudden
             radiance, distilling all
we ever knew or remembered.
             Uncovered from sand—obsidian 
sliver, spherulites, feldspar.
      
      
  

of the bees from hives
collapsing from within;
of the mouse-sized dunmarts
and cockatoos, the wallabies
and koalas that firefighters
worked feverishly to save; 
of the towns that woke
as the mouth of a crater
spewed pent-up heat
and ash; of the blood or
of the bowels and their
discharge from the body: 
of the organs made empty 
or void; of the place 
or position one used to hold 
but is now forced to abandon
or give out; of withdrawal
from a place in some
orderly fashion, 
for safety or in
surrender.    

There's an experiment I read about
where they laid a sheet of Plexiglas 

like a bridge between two raised,
solid surfaces, and coaxed babies

to crawl across to the other side. 
Some of them trustingly made

their way; a few were hesitant, 
because they were confused
 
about the drop they perceived 
though their hands told them 

there should be nothing to doubt.
What is space anyway but a checker-

board of moments that light 
can melt or fracture? A staircase

swings around to the other side
of the hall and back down to its

starting point. A hand is a hand
but a pair can turn into wings.