~ "One eye sees, the other feels." (Paul Klee)
We threw down sticks to shape
a rune and counted numbers
burned into six-sided cubes
of bone. Adding them up,
we looked for guidance
from stars that were
no longer there, except for
telegrams of light they tried
to send from out of their
aftermath. We asked
how long we have to live
inside this temple of war;
how many more weeks
we'll wander without
food or sleep or shade. On one side
of a wall, willows droop with names
of missing children. On the other, flares
sputter; flies hover over fetid pools of rain.
Sisters: An arrangement
youth might return to their bodies
a peach flush a glow in their cheeks
they don't fight for the love of a man
anymore they're tender with each
other poison under wet tongues
women have come and gone they know
in the same bed they lie with fingers
entwined when one dies the other is hollow
whose face remains who dreams who slips away
hair loosened they used to keep each other's
rings and garments pulse and jealous fire
secrets breathing inside
House Call
"...a fur of experience
rose over us like amber." ~ D. Bonta
How did you know what to do, which number to fumble for in sequence on the rotary phone, your small hand cradling the receiver and your small voice asking for the doctor, you only knew him by his first name, this doctor Fernando, in those days when house calls were still made and you, feverish on the couch, with wet cloths and hot delirious dreams that came out through your chattering teeth and then you felt somewhere the burn of a needle entering the flesh of your arm and the heavy quiet under your lids after– But this time it wasn’t you, it was your mother passed out on the kitchen’s cold granite tile after she and the cruel grandmother had another of their terrible rows and you didn’t know if she was alive, if she was still breathing, after she screamed and heaved the stalk of green bananas leaning against the shelf across the room… You don’t know why that comes back to you, or the smell of antiseptic and lime, the sight of her body on the floor, pale limbs, bony elbows, and the kindness of the doctor when he comes through the door, how he pats your hand, how the curtains look with the sun sieving yellow through their fringes, and the sound of water dripping from a faucet–
In response to Via Negativa: Maquiladoras.
Self Portrait at the Fish Market, with Scales
They’re clean, said the man
behind the counter; they’re gutted.
Meaning the gills had been taken out,
meaning he’d drawn with the tip
of his knife one swift incision and slit
from the anus all the way till the head
of the fish. You wonder what they did
with all the slick guts that spilled
out of their bellies, on whose grill
the long floppy sac of roe will char
and sear. At your sink, you unwrap
the bodies from newsprint and see
they still wear their armor: there are some things
that don’t get taken away. They shimmer
like crushed gems you’d touch to your lips.
January
First month of the year, named for
the ancient Roman god of beginnings,
doorways, transitions and endings: poised
at the terminus of change, countenance
like a book with leaves splayed open
to face forward and back. And I too
am caught perennially in passage,
ambivalent nature wanting most of all
to hold on but also to let go. Another
cycle, another drift; and no real
middle ground between knowing and not-
knowing, between feeling like I’m done
here, and like I’ve only just begun. Amid
the bright, tinny noises of celebration,
desperately I long for silence; and in
the thick of silence, want to be taken back,
enfolded instead of exiled. I am a boat
sailing forward into the current, and what
the water brings back because it doesn’t know
what else to do. I’m the girl that picks up
the vessel and fills it at the well, only
to empty it on walking back. I shield a flame
in darkness; in sunlight I shade my eyes. I break
and put myself together, over and over again.
Prayer
Who hasn’t asked to be granted reprieve, mouthed a plea not to be fossiled in despair? More time and space, please: and clear vistas, less elegy. Let our feet dance again, let us walk without limping, let us see and be seen; let the men come back from the edge of the tracks where they wished to throw their bodies at that machine rumbling closer out of the dark. Let the women repeat the owl’s whistle without lining it with warnings. Let the guards dismantle fences and those miles and miles of concertina wire. I ask the fields not to be so quiet, to make their poppy flares wilder and redder until even wandering ghosts are tempted to stop and eat or make bouquets. I want them to get up hours later washed in the perfume of wildflowers, no longer burdened with what it was that turned them away, turned them loose or out of doors, unhomed. I want the soldiers to walk through the desert bringing water, blankets, food; for the coyote to be nothing more than a small prairie wolf with broad ears, scraping at cypress bark with delicate paws.
After suffering
“First, you must suffer for a thousand years.
Then you must renounce suffering
and dedicate yourself to joy.”
~ Richard Jones, “On Living”
The hour is late, or the hour
begins all over again. The quiet
gives way to clamor, to one
request then another; a little fire
to put out, some flood to staunch.
Ripped hems to stitch, a pot to boil.
You scrape leavings into the compost
bin, soap and rinse plates under cold
running water. The rule has always been
duty first, pleasure later. When does
obligation loll back in its chair, eyes
closed, drool at the corners of its mouth,
fed and finally satisfied? Can you
take off your shoes, tiptoe away, slip
into a hammock in the garden? Whenever
a curtain is drawn around any hard-won
solitude, it still feels so much harder
to keep inside it than to break
the spell. Winter is always coming,
and the mice can’t stop carrying away
the corn. In every gold-flecked bell
that flowers, an agitation of wings.
The dung beetle climbs out of the corpse
flower’s rotting inflorescence, hefting
panniers of spores. And there are so many
sums to reconcile, columns to fill with ink,
ledgers to put in order. But one could stop
to admire the cricket’s earnest if disjointed
music, the late pulsing flight of fireflies;
a squirrel uncertain, twitching in the middle
of the path, temporarily distracted by nothing more
than bars of honey-colored sunlight in the trees.
On the first or last day of the year,
it’s customary among many humans
to speak of wishes and write them down
on brightly colored strips of paper
which they’ll burn at the stroke of midnight.
Or, according to my daughter calling
from a tiny town in Portugal, they’ll put
twelve raisins on their tongue, one
for each month of the year. I forgot
to ask if you’re supposed to eat them
one by one; does chewing then
swallowing them together nix out
or amplify the extended release
features of all that good fortune
desired for the immediate future?
We believe mostly in the efficacy of will,
that there are still some things in the world
open to choice. Do you want the steak
dinner or the mushroom casserole,
the red or white wine to go with that?
Did you want to bring a child with you
over the border just to have her die
of hunger and neglect in the over-
crowded detention camp? Perhaps
this offends your sensibilities. Perhaps
it isn’t fair to consider the mundane
varieties of hunger equal to those
born in greater exigency. At the same
time, there are some things which exist
only as apparent example of their
lethality: take the manchineel tree, lush
and green and spreading, but toxic in all
its parts. Don’t touch the bark, don’t eat
the fruit though it looks like an adorable
miniature apple; don’t even breathe
the air immediately under it. This is
the very same fruit whose sap
Calusa warriors smeared on the tips
of arrows that killed conquistador
Juan Ponce de Leon in his attempt
to colonize Florida in 1521. He
probably didn’t know what gored him
in the thigh other than a sharp piece
of metal at the end of a shaft:
someone else’s will not to be so easily
made vassal, subaltern, subject.
Claim
In the overcrowded cafe, just as I
get up from the table to gather my books
and computer and put on my jacket, a couple
comes up to me and breathlessly the woman asks
Are you leaving? When I tell them I am, she
exclaims Oh good! then rapidly collects herself.
The man with her laughs and she offers
I didn’t mean that, slightly mortified. Oh yes
you did, I laugh back. And I’ve been there
before, scanning the room for the empty seat,
angling my body toward the clearest opening
or shortest path leading to the exit or check-
out line. Whatever name you call it: selfishness,
the will to survive, an instinct for self-
preservation— you’ve got to admire the way
the gut kicks in and takes over. The way
something so sure about the situation
steps up, finds the words before you
can even think them; lays a claim,
moves in to make its presence known.
Luminaria
The star of riches in shining on you
says the fortune cookie fortune,
and I ponder the indefiniteness
cast on everything after the first
preposition but stick it on the edge
of my computer anyway. In shining
on me what? In shining on me,
decides to pour forth a double
dose of its gifts or decides plain
shining is quite enough, thank you,
you're welcome? In which of the many
paper bag lanterns filled with sand
and little votives lining the pathways
around the square will I find that
particular star with my name on it?
The painter wrote un rocío de prismas
sus encantos de mañanas plácidas
por cien meaning he has faith
in the tenancy of light beyond
a hundred mornings. And so perhaps
I should as well, for what difference
is there really between what flickers
so brightly but so far away and all
that we've gathered here, closer at hand?
~ with a line from Armando Valero's "Soy"
In response to Via Negativa: Preoccupied.