Via Negativa

There used to be a man: he sat there a few moments on the edge of the deck in a faded brown jacket, taking in the sun.

There used to be a woman: she came in to look over her daughter’s shoulder the day we came to sign the lease.

There used to be plants we called Bandera Española, all along the right side of the fence: ridged stalks almost dark purple, broad leaves, flowers streaked yellow and magenta.

There used to be a girl-not-yet-a-girl, delivered from the airport in a taxi at sundown, the cool, slim points of her fingers emerging as the window rolled quietly down.

There used to be someone peering out of her bedroom door through the gauze of curtains.

There used to be a house for quarantine built on the anchorage between two buoys, a path marked by bleached stones and shells from the beach.

There used to be a man police had beaten up: one eye bashed in its socket, weeks of streets and storefronts burning. Then today, his dark body found at the bottom of the pool.

There used to be a time when I could take it all in, take it quickly, ride the animal of necessity.

There used to be a time when the window didn’t stick, when the screen filtered shadows that came and went among the faded myrtle blossoms.

In response to Undone.

“Scarecrows grow scarce
since we no longer till fields.”

– John Montague

If I stopped feeding you the regular diet you expect from me, told you once and for all Shop’s closed, take your business elsewhere, would you finally go away, leave me alone, find some 24-hour diner down the road, turn your taste buds to something else more worthy: sushi rolled in gold leaf nori perhaps, or trending donkey stew; fish maw soup, smoked venison, pasta in squid ink— washed down with vats of Veuve Clicquot or better yet, that 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux ($160,000, Thomas Jefferson’s initials etched on the bottle)? Tell me you too have grown weary of the taste of my home-cooked platters of regret, my overboiled tureens of sorrow, that poor excuse of a pastry case holding every dried, crumbled madeleine from the past. Those creams taste curdled; even the spoons cringe from being dipped into them. Yesterday, I breakfasted on tofu, wanting a cleaner palate, to rinse the acrid aftertaste of salt from my mouth. You must be tired as well, tearing through sinew, chewing through gristle, sucking the difficult marrow out of these bones. Here’s a concept to consider: the complex food web, multiple levels where surely, you’ll find something suitable to your palate— like a food court devoted to global cuisines! I’ll find you a deal, even some Groupons. In time, you won’t even remember the taste of me.

 

In response to Speech alone.

“I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside!” ~ Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks)

Didn’t I feel like this at least a few other times before,
didn’t I roam the streets crazed with grief and worry

when you disappeared, taking your off-the-shoulder tops
and halter dresses, your makeup bag, your winter coat,

your paperbacks, leaving only a note taped to the door? Didn’t I
drive looking for any trace of you, whip around at every wisp

of hair disappearing around the corner at the mall? And you,
and you, didn’t my heart lurch through the clattering elevator

of my throat, and plummet down again into my gut with every
phone call that came or didn’t come in the dead of winter,

in the middle of the night, with sobbing at the other end?
Didn’t I press my face against the white sheets newly

laundered, smelling of newborn skin; and scour the tubs
with chlorine bleach, all the while making fevered

supplication to a litany of gods? Yesterday I trimmed back
the roses, watered the mint, poked at the gravelly soil

with the tip of a garden spade and my inadequate knowledge
for growing things. On faith, I try to take what the Sufi poet

says: don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet,
but the roots are down there riotous. Yes, yes, I see how they

come back, even thrive, though they might nest now in some other
form. But tell me what happens, after the snake has made its way

up the trunk of the dead elm into a den of flickers, emerging later
with a new bulge sleek in its black belly— Except for the wind,

and cries of birds that haven’t learned anything but account
for duty, nothing troubles the branches of the lilac trees.

In response to Black Snake Moan.

Growing up, I did not know the mythical
pomegranate, its leathery hull hiding
sacs of ruby-colored beads— the ones
you slid under your hungry tongue

to suck, forgetting your captor’s warning.
I did not know the stains that reddened
fingers shucking them in the bowl, how
each, merely the size of a broken-off

tooth, gravely bore a full raft
of consequences, unreeling through
the seasons— I did not know that smell
from the underworld of festering

desire, dank and sour-sweet like a dog’s
wet fur or an old wool robe, and how
it could follow you aboveground. Girl
that I was too, what did I know?

Between my teeth I cracked salted
watermelon seeds and blistered
the papery shells of passion fruit,
desperate to quit the ennui

of my listless existence, eager
to dive into the fire of real life,
whatever that might be. Lickety
split, here I am: shored up past

the middle course, the frost
beginning to thicken the hair-roots
at my temples. I have daughters too,
for whom I’ve paid ransoms now

beyond calculating. Does the story
ever finish? or does it merely go on—
summer a flash, then that consuming,
unmapped winter? The eldest daughter

consoles me through a window crackling
to life, holding a dumpling that she
has made, up to the screen: almost close
enough to touch and taste. Another says

she wants to return to a simpler place,
a country where there’s only one example
of everything. A third dreams of birds
in trees and the music she wants to make

from the wood in her arms. And this
morning, my husband, making scrambled eggs
in the kitchen, rushed upstairs bowl in hand,
to show our youngest girl the amazement

of a double yolk. And I, I look on, still
fumbling with charts and keys: daughter-
mother, mother-daughter, swallowing mouthful
after mouthful of glittering seeds.

In response to small stone (93).