I was born first. I want my own child now. I want him to place his hands on either side of my ribcage and make me feel small again. I want to feel the burst of his breath against my neck, just below my ear, the way he breathes when he first finds the part of me he most wants to touch. The damp center. The dying star. Sitting in the dark of the restaurant, leaning forward to hear you, face over a tea light, hands cupped over my ears under my hair, I couldn’t understand how a person’s eyes could be that dark and still be blue. Or how wicked affection is, once you’ve let it loose.
II
Deer Suite
And these deer at my bramble gate: so close
here, we touch our own kind in each other.
TU FU
(I)
Her neighbor was an archer who drew his bow
on paper deer.
He tacked them to trees in the ecotone between
his clipped lawn
and the scrolling ferns and roots
of the woods.
Told to stay back, she went close enough
to hear arrows
shuck and plait light between birches, to listen
to the piercing
of their paper lungs. The deer stood,
arrow filled,
eyes trained on the horizon. Dusk
masked their falseness.
(II)
At school we dissected the hearts
of deer, gifts
from hunters, our fathers.
Hearts frozen
and thawed, glistening on blue dissection
mats. They reeked.
It was the stink of old death. But how
did we know? We knew.
We looked at one another, pretended
we didn’t want to pull
our scalpels along ventricles, the hair
on our arms stiff
and no spit in our mouths. It wasn’t
like the sheep’s eye,
or the pitiable frog, pithed for us
out of sight.
Blood implied a living thing. All
that remained was
its four-chambered heart.
(III)
They asked us to envision medieval surgeon
William Harvey
standing over the living doe belted
to his table. We tried
to imagine the thrill of discovery
at her open chest,
the way ventricles sucked his fingers
like women
or infants did. He named the domed
structures atriums: rooms
filled with light. But we were thinking
about heat,
what the doe’s body transferred
to his hand, the tarry dark
of her blood. The hearts we opened
held thickets of clots, pearls
of blood like blueberries from a tin,
lumps like buckshot.
(IV)
If I say my longing is a doe,
that it bounds,
that it chokes, has parts that splinter,
that it can be split
from breastbone to pelvis. If I tell you
I remember the doe,
strung up in the neighbor’s yard, throat
unzipped, flesh
delivered again in a surge of water,
that I’d never seen anything
born; calves came at night, but deer
were butchered
during daylight. If I tell how I watched
her dismantled,
that I searched for the deer
in the hide like a pit
in a plum. That he plundered her
but I found nothing there.
If I say the rope was stained copper yellow.
That it became the color
of ruin under the green walnut tree.
If I say that it had a scent
like rain in rusted eaves, will you
tell me, then?
When the deer leave after dusk,
where do they go?
Trophy
Up north, deer are eye lights among pines,
green lanterns of tapeta lucida, ghosts
licking the salty periphery of dreams.
They’re tabletop figurines, thin running legs
cracked and mended, line of glossy residue,
glue made of bone.
Watching figures stalk the fields,
small flames threatening to touch off
the chaff, my brother vowed to build a barn
to hide deer during hunting season—
an old story we tell to watch him flush.
He’d seen trophies in the basements of men,
black noses giving a wet illusion.
On highways, the inside out
of a deer—viscera slick, shocking
as a stranger’s nude body.
Yesterday, he said soldiers in Iraq
call tattoos meat tags—hard
glint in his eyes.
Fisherman
I read that fishermen
lose fingers if rings catch in netting,
and rarely do they wear wedding bands.
You’re the only man I know
who could handle life
on a fishing boat, so the hand I saw
holding the net was yours.
I don’t always want to be
your wife, can’t make you dance
in public, don’t want to give up
everyone I could love, but I confess
that when I saw you, rain slick,
red face and a rough
sea behind you, my first thought
was how do I get him off that boat
and home, safe beside me?
Apart
We kissed in a broken elevator
in a bar in downtown Tacoma; an elevator
stalled in the basement. We slipped inside
this metaphor and kissed
until my face felt raw.
When we returned
to Minnesota, I started
sleeping in the back bedroom, away
from our bed.
You came in the first night
and drew the curtains—these windows
face east, you said.
The second night you carried an extra blanket.
On the third night, you found me wrapped
in a towel, stepped in close, drank
from my collarbone. As if I were
a flower holding water in its throat,
a thing patient with drought
and cold. You touched me
like it was nothing—
nearly nothing,
that mouth on that skin.
Like tracing a circle on your own hand
again and again until it hurts.
Until you don’t know
if you are touched
or doing the touching.
Split
He kneels,
hand on my sternum.
I forget how soft you are, he says.
After two days, I forget.
To preserve—
the inclination to.
If I could have,
I would’ve slipped away
on thin legs, become
invisible at the tree line.
I wanted. I wanted to go on
wanting. Is it any different
than any animal want,
to go on breathing
Nobody wants their life
to become unrecognizable to them.
Lost
Weeks after the last time, she bled.
It was startling. There would never be anyone
made from the way he needed her.
Montana
You and I are sitting in the sun eating ice cream with huckleberries outside the entrance to Glacier National Park. I’m wearing my white bikini top and blue jeans and I’ve recently cut off my long ha
ir. Your pockets are full of blue-green stones we stole from the Kootenai River. As I eat the ice cream, I save the huckleberries under my tongue. I’m not used to you kissing me, so when you lean over, my mouth is already full of huckleberries. I’ll save everything from this trip—the receipt for our admission into the park, the cork from the bottle of wine that night, the map of the campground where the ranger marked our site with a red circle.
Later that night, after the wine is gone, we lie on our backs, away from the fire, and look at the stars. When you first see them you say, I can barely breathe. It’s so dark we can see every one—blue, orange, white—and I talk about temperature, the length of my body grazing the edge of yours. I wish you’d have brought it up, how those stars had been dead for millions of years, so it wouldn’t have been such a surprise, later—what happened to you and me.
I was the one you loved first and best; the owner of a dozen names you’d chosen. My body had taken the years it needed to make itself over as something only you had touched. But it didn’t matter anymore if I was dying, or if I was brilliant, or if I was lit up with a light anyone could see for miles. That last night, you knew it, even though I didn’t yet. What burns has to burn itself out. I was already someone else.
III
Want
When I was twelve, I wanted a macaw
but they cost hundreds of dollars.
If we win the lottery? I asked.
Macaws weren’t known to be great talkers,
but they were affectionate.
Yes, my mother said. If we win the lottery.
I was satisfied, so long as it wasn’t impossible.
The macaw would be blue.
A Poem about Childhood
A girl at Penny’s was crying—
her parents wouldn’t buy
the pajamas she wanted.
You didn’t like them,
but you chose them, made sure
she saw when you put them in
your cart.
The pajamas were yellow;
you wore them all summer.
Dear Gretel,
Did you spend the night
curled close to his cage?
Near enough that you smelled
the straw of his bedding, did you lie there
and listen to him exhale? Did he talk
in his sleep, a sound loud, nonsensical,
its echo disappearing into dark
like a rock tossed down a well?
How did you keep him safe?
Was it merely proximity? Say the danger
is too large to fit in an oven.
What would you do?
Dear Gretel,
Was it your idea to give the witch
something to pinch? The chicken bone,
I mean. Did it haunt you how akin
it was to his little finger?
Dear Gretel,
They say you stole her glasses,
ground their lenses to dust, to flour.
Is that a hint? What’s to steal
when hazard has excellent sight?
Dear Gretel,
Did you ever consider
the moment his face
could disappear behind flames?
Did you wonder if it would be
a clear day, a Wednesday
laundry day? That without him
you would no longer be
a sister, just a girl
with an ashy apron?
Gretel,
When the stones in the pit were cold,
the witch out collecting
herbs or busy snoozing,
did you fill these lulls
with distraction? Did it help
to give him things, chocolate,
gummi bears, magazines
to read? If he asked for sheets
with a higher thread count or
for grass to plant,
because he was lonely
with all that dry straw,
did that finally break your heart?
Gretel,
How did it feel, later,
to walk in the woods with him,
a witch’s smoldering bones
just color in the sky? Was it relief you breathed,
to thin ice, unstable rock,
opaque water. Did you always wince,
afterward, watching him dive?
Did you let it go on too long?
For my brother, 1st Lieutenant Greg Rueth
Lament with Red Wall and Olive Tree
—After Lorca
It occurs to me the places
where the bullets entered and
escaped, and the cup
of your skull emptying of light
and filling, hourglass slow with clay,
your teeth in your mouth
and nothing left to chew.
Your last words, written
without the sway
of your duende, its pied
cloak swelling in the coil
of wind raging from the place slashed
between here and there, the figure
born of watching bulls coughing froth.
Ghastly, your last written words—Father,
please give this man
a donation of 1000 pesetas
for the Army. A sum
he swiftly paid, not knowing
you were already gone.
There are men in my family
who’ve gone to war,
they killed other men,
men who didn’t want to die—
this isn’t about war, only grief.
O, let us be birds together,
let us both be lilies let us
eat the ineffable bliss of having stamens
and pistils. I know a child
who replaced his father
with apples, carries
green apples, and his mother
swaps them when they soften
and weep sugar, waits
until he sleeps, then sets
a glossy new fruit
near his pillow.
Why apples?
Why green
apples?
About Suffering
About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old Masters …
AUDEN
In the Chauvet caves they discovered paintings: muzzles of lions, curled lips of cave bears, shuddering flanks of mammoth and ibex. They also found human remains: skulls, knitted in places with crusts of new growth—a body, mended. When someone suffered, another fed them, brought water, kept them warm.
Thirty thousand years later, there are still corners untidy with fragments of a child’s skull. Some children are carried through the street by men with eyes like beauty turned backward. The uncles of the dead children, of Suhaib and Muhammad, bear their bodies through the street. A line of men form a funeral procession to the mosque. At the back of the line: fists punch and open hands claw air, mouths open in the vowels of rage: “E,” sometimes “O.” But the men who carry the children are weeping. Six thousand miles away, we can see the faces of these men, and of the children. Noted are the graceful eyebrows on the ashen foreheads, the careful knots of their white shrouds.
Auden was wrong, unless all he meant was that the world is big, and there are so many places for grief to live that we can’t note each address. But it’s few who can turn away, leisurely, from disaster. We don’t just get on with it, though we all learn, eventually, that things can kill and then turn quiet again: empty weapons and men who’ve fallen asleep.
Childhood
Sometimes I feel you close—
as if you’re asleep on my prairie,
recreating childhood
as something durable
we could live inside:
plates of leaves, sachets
of green walnut, jar
of mud for bee stings, chain
of flowers to bless the door.
Like
you, I was never fond
of growing up. I was dragged into it
by my hair, kicking, a knot
like a bird’s egg on my scalp.
Listen. We could take back
your puppet theater, my lost dolls,
your small guitar, and my broken horses—
place something self-made
and frightening in the root
cellar, its floor you’d say
was the color of blood,
of the relentless reunion
of iron and iron.
An Orange
I wasn’t hungry, but took down a saucepan. I wanted to see discs of yellow that butter made on milk, like when Dad made macaroni for dinner. Those little circles of light. I watched the water come to a boil. I didn’t care how long it took. While I waited, I thought about how good it would feel to believe in god. To believe that benevolence took a shape; that something larger than X was out there, and it loved me. That the frozen spring, my wet socks, and empty bed were part of a plan. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago. Humans have trouble with their backs because we haven’t been upright very long. We’ve had culture and language for 50,000 years, but our modern concept of consciousness comes from philosophers working in the 1700s.
I know that I’m missing something. It’s like looking at a painting with my nose pressed against it. I have a memory of sitting on the counter when I was five, waiting while my dad peeled an orange for me. He removed all the pulp, so when he handed it to me it was the soft color of the sky in the field across the street at dusk. It glowed in his hands like a nightlight. I hadn’t seen a peeled orange look like that until I saw one in a still life. The love the artist must have had for the orange, or for his paint—something was beloved. When I was five, my father never once looked at me and imagined I would be alone.
I cooked the macaroni, carried it to my table. One bite and I knew I’d over-salted it. I had to throw it away. This last part is not a metaphor. It’s just what happened when I tried to make myself something to eat. But then I couldn’t stop thinking about what else my dad cooked when I was little. The roux with white pepper over canned peas, the pots of chili with whole tomatoes and the chicken a la king over toast. I couldn’t stop thinking that the universe is a big place, and that it’s getting bigger all the time; there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy and hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. In the early part of the eighteenth century, Pascal said, “The eternal silence of endless space terrifies me.” It can’t be true that I’m far more concerned with the emptiness of the room I’m sitting in, but somehow, I am. Somehow it’s true that there was a moment in time (ten to the negative thirty-second power seconds after the Big Bang) when the entire universe was the size of an orange.