Month: December 2022

i have been green
it made my insides come out

i became a sort
of intermittent stream

prone to flash floods
scoured and raw

though the world
is frozen white

now i’m under a green blanket
my waters are calm

i address my remarks
to the hat stand in the corner

lost in what only
looks like thought

As if every day was a new invention, 
           rib shaken loose from darkness.
As if every sudden, fraught silence 
          came from that hollow. 

When the heart thinks it has been 
          irreparably cloven, how does one
know it can't ever house anything
          green and growing again?

                  In lieu of a new-new poem today, and in the spirit of the season, 
I'm sharing a poem I wrote in 1997, which was published in the December
issue of Poetry Magazine that year. May we look to gentler times.

***

                  "The mystery kept secret for endless
                  ages is now made clear."

1

The way it came to you
was through the story of
the carpenter, working one
day in shade to plane
the wood—

Both hands, blistered and
attentive to disturbances, finger
the knobs and raised welts of surfaces,
rubbing where the heart is the color of raw
wheat or honey

                             The shavings fall
away like wings among the small
pebbles near his feet, curled seraphs'
ears near the ground, listening
for the footfall of his
intentions

What of the woman who is already
taking her place at his side, at night
laying the tools in the basket, whose
hands have kneaded the dough
and wrapped the warm body
of bread in napkins, leaving
the outline of her fingers
in its sides

         After all it is early enough, still
possible to turn the other way,
name it an act of will—

To shut the window and remain like this
inhaling only the musk of cedar and sandalwood
among the cunning drawers and cabinets,
the hasps and boards that do not need
to sing when they are joined

What of the course he might not
have chosen but is given the chance
to repudiate or consider, the salutations
of light falling in a certain way
so as to make objects compelling,
to render in relief the outlines
of chisels, sawteeth, nails,
instruments

A seam on the burnished wood:
now barely noticeable, unsolicited
memento, remnant of a casual
encounter with lightning

Unimportant
except for the slight
alteration in design, the way
coming life is hardly yet breath,
a flutter beneath the ribs, but
already married to the coming
days of this life.

2

A woman sets a table
and cries out in surprise

On the barren
horizon there are no figures yet
but something rises to her tongue—
wintermelons, red rice, freshwater
fish, green mangoes, extravagant
longings

The empty doorframe fills with
space that throbs, a rectangle of light
spilling on the stone patio

Hand midway between her heart
and her belly, she is wondering
whose is the extra place

The blue plate shimmers on white
linen, the figures etched on china
bow decorously, each to the other—

a man and a woman, behind them
a three-tiered pagoda, a willow
tree, the grandmother at the upstairs
window, carefully turning on
the night-light

Here we are, awake; and it hasn't been
            a century! We've emerged from sleep,
not some kind of spell that strikes the land 
            with famine and rot, so all who travel in it
turn into animals or stone. From this point on, 
           you say, we can count on the days beginning 
to get longer, the nights gradually shrinking 
           upward at the hem. At least we have most
of our teeth and rejoice that we can smell
            the coffee, the toast when it burns. 
If I'm crying in the kitchen,  it's from the sting 
            of chopping onions, marvelous mask for what 
will always be the never-endingness of sorow. There are 
           days of terror followed by one, incandescent hour. 
That we can't have everything is true, the same way
           dawn breaks, until finally it doesn't.

I am told my name bloomed first
in the fingers of a concert pianist 
I've never heard play; then 
in a votive candle someone lit
to the madonna in blue. I cannot tell 
what promises were made in my name;
if my arrival guaranteed love or a life
of ease for the one who took me in 
her arms, or maids in a kitchen where
she could practice being a lady. 
Eventually, though we kick 
and scream in the padded holding cell 
of our names, we learn to live 
with them in a country 
where headstones in the graveyard 
bear the names of saints or prophets, 
prisoners, martyrs—or we grow
away and out of them. 

 

the curtain opens on
an unslept-in bed

blanket and pillows
white as ash

and the fool with
his endless soliloquies

staring at the ceiling
as the first traffic

labors uphill in a darkness
orange with streetlights

the old moon hangs
just over the rooftops

almost blotted out
by our glowing shadow

a manhole cover
that doesn’t quite fit

A growing number of species
          have become more at risk 
for extinction in VIrginia: the box 

turtle and the big-eared bat; the black-
         banded sunfish, whole drifts of bees 
faltering under vapor clouds of insecticide; 

mussels. In the meantime, laws meant  
        to shelter the most vulnerable go
unpassed. Ships come through the harbor

weighted with machines and all kinds
       of goods; copper, rubber, marble,
silicone, wood. A woman turned away 

from the emergency room goes home   
        and sits in a bath filling with her own 
blood. Everything of importance 

seems to happen like a story 
        scribed with invisible ink. A horse
stamps its feet and neighs in a field.

 

doom’s petals are lustrous
darkness isn’t one of her virtues

though her rain may feel
at first like benediction

her triphammer heart is small
as the first domino

and her nails are real
her paint and her bullets
still have lead

quietly as water she gathers
everywhere there’s a hole

lost tribe missing mountain destroyed
village extinct species

doom came dressed up
as enlightenment once

now on a casual friday
she fits right in