Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Black rice cakes rolled in sugar
and thickened with coconut cream.
Aroma of singed banana leaves.
Juice from cane or fermented rice,
sediment in the jar. Hungry,
always hungry— here
they come, asking for more.
In response to Via Negativa: Next Life.
The skull whose name was smoke spoke
worm words. Its missing teeth hissed
from the gizzard of an owl.
How odd, I thought, to be a skull
& haunt a body from within!
The air smelled of rotting
leaves; it was October.
Icy feathers began to form
on the edges of grass blades—
the only kind of next life
that made sense to me, stoned as I was.
My gut gurgled polyphonically.
I considered fear as if from a great height.
while you want nothing but to be
undone— To grow sleek in the dark
and unlayered in light; to be the girl,
no, all the girls who danced so much
they wore holes in their slippers,
even after the room was locked
from outside and someone threw
the key away— And the poem wants
a shirt to shrug way down its
shoulders, it wants a heap of agate
beads to slide like fingers
across its breasts. Wrap
a woven tapis about its hips
and thread the spines of skinned
reptiles through its dark hair;
under a moon round as a gangsa,
feed it rice wine sweeter than vodka
and make it tell of the night-blooming flower
that shows its face only once a year.
In response to Via Negativa: Unknitting.
I come from a land where grief is palpable and raw, where ceremony cannot blunt the shapes of sorrow. I come from a land where omens deckle the very curtains, where a yard white with uncharacteristic frost is visitation from some host— For even before they’ve borne the stricken body back to its ancestral home, it’s hitch-hiked through the early morning streets: bringing a gift, a dream, some sign. Everything is portent: a leaf that spirals through the air, a moth or hummingbird that pins itself upon the mantel; mold that blooms in the shape of letters on the sill. The women’s voices shred the hours. Tears mingle with handfuls of sod as the body’s lowered in the earth. Above ground, the men thrust knives into a trembling animal then singe its skin. The smell clings to our clothes for days. We wash our hands by the door-posts then cross the threshold. We wear black for a year, but don’t look back.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
An exercise: they pass the paper cup from bow to bow.
The teacher tells her student, All is memory—
how fingers clasp the wood so they will know.
We learn by doing, especially when things don’t go
the way we might have wished. Technique isn’t accessory;
it’s the calloused fingers mastered by the bow.
Full measures laid upon the flesh: no time to cringe from what we know.
We’re here, we’ll pass; but must believe there’s more than misery.
Within this kitchen’s quiet chill, I clasp you and I know.
The days, soft grey, will fill with signs presaging snow;
but music sifts through branches still, more etched than scenery.
We’ll gather kindling with calloused fingers mastered by the bow,
then fill the cups with warmth. Filched comforts might bestow
a moment’s ease, could knit affections with no boundaries.
The soul remembers what it clasped, so it would know.
As many times, repeat the lesson till the sinews know.
Exacting teacher, your syllabus is the fragmentary—
We pass a flame like breath from bow to bow
and clasp the wood as lightly as we know.
In response to small stone (166).
I have company on my porch these days. Knitting is happening,
Continue reading “Unknitting”
Etymology: also malarky, “lies and exaggerations,” 1924,
Amer. Eng., of unknown origin; also a surname.
You say a large, dark weasel? or was it a mink?
& you stared at each other in mutual disbelief?
I believe you more than I believe
the chronically hyperbolic—
untruths that spring from the mouths
of those with aspirations to lead.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
So now I know it’s not really going to get easier. But perhaps it can keep becoming more fluid. Perhaps I can feel my way into the ephemerality of every hard moment.
Somehow the ephemerality of the happy moments, the strong ones, the softly joyful ones, is always to the fore. But it’s not just the good bits, it’s all of it: here, blink, gone. Hard, but not fixed; never lengthy; a flickering, ever-changing string of moments.
I increasingly wonder if the enormity of confronting this is what lies behind so much of human madness, cruelty, masochism; behind our obsessive need to build boxes, lock our own cell doors as well as other people’s.
My neighbor’s mother wandered into the hall at three a.m.
Spending the weekend at a daughter’s house, had she forgotten
she wasn’t in her one-floor flat beside the river?
Was she looking for the bathroom when she fell down the stairs?
She spent the weekend with family and friends, yet often forgot;
I too have heard her repeat the same story, tell it over again.
Looking for the bathroom which wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs,
she slipped and fell; her fragile bones sailed headlong into the dark.
I too get stuck in the same stories: I tell them over and over again.
Even the birds sing just two wistful notes, in the rushes by the river.
Old leaves, new flowers— the trees are yellow-gold with sudden shimmer;
see how they change before our eyes. And my neighbor’s mother has flown away.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
We hadn’t planned our Adirondacks camping trip to coincide with the peak of fall color — in fact, my hiking buddy Lucy and I hadn’t really thought about it at all, because we see the fall foliage display every year, and we knew that if we didn’t catch it at its peak there, we’d certainly see it here. We just wanted to show Rachel one of our favorite places. (It also didn’t hurt that another blogger friend happened to live less than two hours away.) Hell, we were even foolish enough to think the campgrounds would be virtually deserted, as they had been the last time we’d visited the Adirondacks in October. No such luck.
Instead, we found ourselves hopping from campsite to campsite as spots became open in what had otherwise been a fully booked campground in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. (Thank you, rainy weather!) The cold rain might have made hiking and camping less than optimal, but it did nothing to diminish the autumn colors. And our British visitor seemed suitably wowed — that’s her arm in the photo above, gesturing in inarticulate appreciation at the drops of water dangling from the ends of shed white pine needles ornamenting a balsam fir bough. Though I did bring my own camera along, I had a hard time seeing things afresh. There’s just nothing like seeing something for the first time, as Rachel’s Adirondacks photo set attests. Go look, and prepare to be wowed yourself.