Via Negativa

Along the circuits of the body, trains run 
carrying their load of minerals and waste,

constant electricity, surpluses of sugar,
salt and bile.  As the body wears down,

they run on schedules that won't always 
stay consistent—they'll need repair, 

replacement, a slick of oil, a suturing.
You feed the body oranges, bread 

barely streaked with butter; beans, onions,
and soup. But sometimes in the night,

you remember those stops open 24 hours
selling beer and ham sandwiches, wheels

of cheese, slices of cake drenched in cream—
everything gleaming in cool refrigerator light.

There's nearly an entire month you can't account for, when (you were told)
you were confined in the hospital. First or second grade, scabby-kneed, hard 
to feed, breaking out in hives and blisters; nose bleeds almost every day. 
Confine—a word that only brings up images of a high bed with a metal
frame; a drafty room, the old-building smell (like yellow piss, like peeling
paint and antiseptic. Nurses came at intervals to check your temperature or 
bring a glass of water to your lips, bitter liquid in little dosage cups. In the hallways, 
the sound of wheels rolling across tile. Years later this is the same hospital where 
you give birth to your third child— every single time the resident pushed her thick
fingers in to check the progress of dilation, she'd say 2 cm. Unreal. It's the same
hospital where your father passed away on a makeshift pallet, the walls having 
collapsed in the aftermath of earthquake. You can't remember how many days 
and nights there was no running water, no power, no gas, no telephone service. 
A drama of tents sprang up in parks. There was rain and mud, and makeshift 
stoves into which you pushed torn newspapers. Box of matches,  black-
bottomed pot from the ruined kitchen; tins of sardines, can opener.  
Grocers handing out bread through a hole in the wall.

Flies led rescue teams to bodies.
The dead got their coffins. For such
things, there are actually records.

Beneath the tree  whose branches 
are garlanded with bits of paper 

covered with now indecipherable 
handwriting, we gather to string 

letters, wishes, poems. Its name in Sanskrit
means wood of the gods. The sky, azure 

after a cloudy morning, peeps through 
a latticework of branches. It must be

indeed patient and forbearing: letting us
transfer our supplications to its arms.

                                         
Why do we speak of streaks
of light, but never of darkness?

I stand inside the circle of an xray 
machine that revolves around my face 
to locate white shards of bone in my gum.

The moon is something that looks
like I could put in my mouth, says the child.

While we talk on the phone, picking
at the remnants of our meal, star
fragments wash up on the beach.

Small bodies shed their tiny houses in the sand, 
looking to move into an empty nautilus.