(a stab at each year) she knows what would pour out
but what pours in?
What put her here brought her to the ground so to speak.
*
Or did she (not he) simply stretch out? She
in reality at peace, face down. Laughing still.
Her body twittering like a machine.
Hard to keep flesh in the mind’s eye
when the story
is a mountain range pulsing.
*
One day it is happy birthday or I love you or how did you know?
The next day, the next minute,
the ceiling is falling or calling her name or whispering,
rinse your face of this, whispering, be your own—
Funny, isn’t it?
lying on the ground too ironic to call for help.
*
Again the naked nude must suggest the soul’s
bold face:
a bold personification of eye
a bold personification of sky: purview)
Dirtied up
*
Door opening to green bowl of narcissus
without meaning to communicate (strayed toward stagnant,
caught between fish gill and flesh
as each bone corpse, stirred up
offshore, sticks in one eye; another eye recoiling,
wrestled, inquisitive, settled on its own reflection)
she is dreaming the story of recurring commas,
the one that gossips of simple equations, complicated,
solution obstructed—
or is hers a wake claiming delay, piling blemish onto finery?
She pushes with her feet and the bed things fall scattered,
to the floor goes the pain of resistance, its ashy crumb,
its that’s-enough-now, enough, dank hint of constriction.
*
Though you thought you heard, so sure you heard
sweetheart
(to be made uncomfortable. to be made to turn the head.
to swallow. to accuse. to dismiss as the jaw drops,
the leg crosses, the fingers fist. to be made to feel
superior by necessity
when or while squatting to remove. simultaneous to quicken
the pace. to step away. or to find herself exposed without
sides. sniffling without tissue.
like when feces is stuffed in the mouth (an image woken
into) to spit up. to call out. to smother the eyes. the opened
yolk at the magnitude of wound.
like when, due to ejaculation, sperm. to bite the fingernail.
the cuticle. the lip. to admit. oh honey
to smile, inappropriate, awkward:
*
(suspecting only illusion (some vindictive act of mind
even before voice
depressed the edge of the bed, pulling shadow
from beneath memory spoke from its crushed throat
corrupting neutrality, until I knew, must know
what was coming, already here—with its nomadic bartering,
unwilling to sleep, unwilling to leave the day even as I
drifted off (a way of stepping away—it made the dreams
keep me awake, driving me from room, to room, to bed,
to bed. always reluctant, sluggish—
I tried
and still the ice cubed against the sun—I buried it.
the smell of chicken stays. soft yolk of the egg.
And how bothered I am, how graspable the irritation
(beneath the skin, a voice calls—
I cut in,
inherit the vein
in this cat-and-mouse maze, to be closer, not to misunderstand,
and I am certain: the skull was covered in rubber and used
as a ball but unsure where the passage of Venus gets me
and a termite colony ate my eye but not my palm;
that was swallowed as the owl screamed, the crickets called
(I know what I heard (what I saw.
And to speak
out in the open, to tell all is to listen
to the whole as it happens
and be understandably ambivalent and stripped
down and booed off. And, of course,
the woods are disappointed in me.
Where is the sea?
*
The boy with his skate, the man in love, St. Christopher,
his sweetest dream, his map to heaven.
We are all here,
remembering elephants and black coffee and the wild
horse. Where is the sea?
______I will dance to the rhythm. You will play.
*
Though we need make civil the war in our hearts, deepest is
the violation absorbed
and borne its widening passage— Nameless man
creation on your head in this day, that gray
and us huddled
recalling other times. Come out
of the rain, pickle. Though vexed as it is
it is not time that moved the lightning inside. Before existed in
such dark unsaid—though I expressed it. Preposterous.
Who kiss them teeth?
What craziness she? Among others? —these
that have no mouth, speak out
whispering my name. You is the door
too difficult to enter, so overly the struggle. Whoever happens
is no subject for this throat. No one knows— Come out
of the rain—
no one knows
but you is pulled together, alternatively … I and you and
she juxtaposed
can be
walked away from our door you don’t have to go through
(the expression
eats away) Who said, I have room
for you, willingly, every day, room for she, my suitcase, all my stuff?
*
To locate the self salvaged. persuaded by. Within the drawn
breath, within its bloating immensity, her voice, low,
dried out, held back
as she peeled her face off, ran
her hand over its last expression,
bloodshot still coloring eyes, doused, dying down,
then, sorrysorrysorry, scarcely heard, as if silence
might erase (the self in motion. in stillness. in its squatting.
near despair, outcropped, knottier in its particulars.
The past is. Two hundred
shivers holding against—
While underneath, wet heels,
a drain blocked, ambushed
by some infernal pocket.
What’s all around—
singled out in its willingness—
beating its shadow. Wholly
within a chill
not progressing, spreading.
And wrapped, and soaked into
is the stripped unanswered: The first person,
herself a kind of pedestrian institution
dearly slipping
into some remote deceit
of transparent wrists, slit, reaching up
to grab the loathe. A low choke
against such damn trespass.
Tongue dabbing blood with its oh-oh motion.
(I don’t survive, she thought; though aloud,
as the underbelly of forever eased, she said,
There must be an uninvolved and there, outrageous calm.
Cast away moan
*
She inventoried her interior and despite the striking good
looks,
too sudden on this shore, handkerchief to mouth,
lachrymal glands stirred, eyelids vein-weary, she was here
where a body begins to slush, sloped toward gully.
Remote was the heroine’s plateau: yesterday
recognized on a whim thought through thoroughly.
No noose of bedsheet, no
canary in mind. Indeed,
she did as predicted—couldn’t go further
in her undamming, its liquidy surrender,
before the weight of her dress pulled her down.
Which is the point after all—all the loss lost,
even as both hands and neck are restfully occupied.
Forcing a way—how could she not
see bleeding as the weeping a body should do? Its cry
without pulse in its stillbornness, no upstream, undertow,
no muteness in death
after all—feverish, affected, she caught. Was caught.
Enough is never the route, never, not now, to celebrate
a soft-eyed June. That settled her,
like an introduction, like dominion stretched out.
*
Plumage of bird,
all that’s seen
all that’s left:
Our exteriors, admit it, collided (as who hoped?
I am done. This attempt dead. Its last exhale
broken off in my solitary face. The final stammer,
cruel, unable to restore the monitored bleep-bleep,
unheard. Water to the lungs. Opened the throat. Disgorge,
the footnote, the waste remembered— though the body,
truly ruined by effort, is not what assembles the way.
While you, feathered, winged, accounted for on the outskirts
of brick, observing views, surface
experience—your expanse is
rootless and without vein to association, no thud, thud,
no preposition of entrance. Simply the squint of newly
recognized—In death we have met, in its tint of indiscretion.
Or would you deny me, feeling me ill-blown, unacquainted,
while you—compelled to watch my bowels
spill out—exquisite, soar, your psalm
descending: inappropriate the terror, inappropriate its lies.
Vulgarized by breath, plundered, handed round, I ask you, how,
how to have lived this?
*
Every towel. Every glass of ice water. Seduced
behind the ears, it becomes clear: It all will work, all this
wrapping and unwrapping willing one
through—Forgive me
this struggle to exuberance, for as much as I love the mind
it is there we lose. Otherwise,
we are exactly right. Hellish
or all goodness, try to dwell outside more and ever.
With so little left to appeal, cross the fingers even if
unsure why, even if being caught entirely. Avert the thinking,
intervene, recognize the rushed notion of movement overstepping
any act of stepping back into, landing
the foot there in what crosses the mind to break
its bridges, to knock down, to capsize
the disordered slaughter. Pull out your voice;
it will scrape along: Evening Grosbeak. Crimson Primrose.
One can just decide. Remain dogged. Argue faith
in time. And though I am sensitive a body gets full up,
like very much each petty, each indulgent breath. Be
flattered. Yes, insist. Stay.
I only mean you need to reenter, bring forward yourself.
In this sense, beyond
*
… then I think, I must have done something perhaps
before remembering and this view is my apology, the revenge,
quid pro quo, each breath in payment of what went before,
some little mix-up or stepping out. To think of it anyway
at least creates a frame
in which to footwork about,
to reduce resentment, injury to, for I am not behind in hatred
which will spill over, a split scrotum, the torn oath,
as if it was I who lost the war with God—
unless I too have strayed so far from my error that there where
each truth runs blood the breath began—
*
We store at this late date repair against the base insults
of weather: A craving gives way, silence is peeling.
Appeal scoured for nut, for bolt. What is wanted
is something strict, a thing more violent
than the violence of
broken, burnt, worn, disorder.
What is wanted is pregnant with, concentrated, weighted.
We cannot sleep soundly through—The moment comes
and what we ask equals traffic between authorized
and intended. Unable to leave off, to shut up—
the railing is gone.
*
Not to bad-mouth a momentary mood of mind
but something stays wrong:
a hoarse brawl, fueled
by softness near the inner lining. There
thought suffering slow secretion arrives
past scrutinized, to where okay
masquerades as the first word
because reason forced its pieces into a furious fit
to cultivate dumbness: its silence operating like lace
above an aftertaste easily recognized
and naked
so unwilling though spilling into this disfigured future.
*
Brought to this: chagrin of falling rock.
oh sieved and meshed. the sorrow owed.
compelled recuperation. scent of—no matter
what is sung of the lavender, the rose,
it is true what the birds say; the shell
is the first wall.
Smash such solitude, the way it turns
in years, its back. By its expression
this world is only our stillborn: company.
*
Its ache routing a body I do not know. Its nos
formed by lips never parted. Better to let
the mind feel the best it can and shatter
the heart, its recycling machinery.
Better to have all that gray matter act,
to have it call up coherence
out of some lobe in the left brain. Compassion again
sends my hand to the heat and sweat of this forehead,
again bends my torso over this torso, keeping it
nameless, refusing. For above all, I know to desire
sweetness:
Let the mouth be fitted to earth, concede gracefully,
the inevitable incorporating compelled. Disentangle
from all brooding, sidestep this wilderness preceding Amen.
*
Addie says, sin and salvation are just words for Cora (who hasn’t
seen such in the mirror). For if you know your life
the feeling opens in the eyes, an unchecked expression which then
cannot be eluded, cannot be told. And it is always some failure
the body involves and holds you to; in its translation,
picking you out to recognize and be recognized, owning you
the way no fingerprint can. Then escape is useless,
even the funny man knew that; if he said, Grab everything
and run, the vultures are coming, he was still joking. Knowing
scavenges the inside, more thorough than any bird, more mortal.
Nothing can hold us back, save us from—Feeling decomposes
when the body does—
despite what the throat holds, the body hoards more.
There is a lot of talking going on
masked in retelling because the feeling forgiven is too much.
*
—to bring such need
to utterance, to arrive before words so ready.
Wringing years into syllables,
to lay it out, to see it clear, bad, bad
here and here—
Desperate is the deep sweep of the opening throat,
&nbs
p; overturning the amputated, the endless call
from broken pavement.
_________________
____________How to pity me?
Remember, so that the evening breeze
would be refreshing, I went into the sun,
stood there,
as an idiot might,
and after all clouds passed, ran around accumulating
discomfort. The purpose?
To emphasize, to show I take pleasure, appreciate
all this, the relief it brings me.
*
So you, in this role as your own rescuer, trebled
voice
trying on happiness, groomed echo of another,
look out for yourself. go outside. stand up. straighter. flirt.
The quotidian
*
What we live
before the light is turned off
is what prevents the light from being turned off.
In the marrow, in the nerve, in nightgowned exhaustion,
to secure the heart,
hoping my intention whole, I leave nothing
behind, drag nakedness to the brisker air of the garden.
What the sweeper has not swept gathers
to delay all my striving. But here I arrive
with the first stars: the flame in each
hanging like a trophy in the lull just before
the hours, those antagonists
that haunt and confiscate
what the hardware of slumber draws below.
*
Night sky,
all day the light,
responding without proof, vigorously
embraced blue,
lavender-sucking bees,
a stone mouth spewing water to golden carp.
Light piled on indisputable light rekindled bits of garden
until bare-shouldered, coherent, each root, its stem,
each petal and leaf
regained its original name
just as your door opened and we had to go through.
Which is to know your returned darkness was born first
with all its knowledge—
routine in the settling down, little thumps