what we have done

2009-03-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

Doesn't grass, grow on its own out of sand? He should have felt guilt ripping it out with each hurried step. The mist maybe waters it, the sea air too thick to do much else, he thought as his tissue thin lungs bore on. The night had given way to new humiliation, given way to a morning still dark, still grey, but backlit by the sun somewhere. He could not compete with this world, this hunk so infatuated with limits. The sky shakes hands with the sea, the waves pound the sand, the sand swallows his feet, his weight and all the weight around him keeps him from drifting into the one place with no limits, the one place forever collapsing, expanding, folding in on itself.

A limit: the path a secret takes from mouth to ear, brain to memory. On the ferris wheel over the water, mood still reflecting all the cheap, gaudy boardwalk lights, he swung the gondola grabbing the cage and throwing his weight. She screamed, clutched her hands to chest and laughed. They were kinetic, hands waiting to connect, to start the cascades. A limit: this desire in the dark.
Standing in line to the fairground swings, the two watched as the summer visitors were strapped into their seats, raised and lowered through the air around the tall sea horse in the middle, paint peeled. He remembered his childhood thrills, the way the lights from below would blur as he went round but the passenger in front would stay steady in view She sat in front of him, hair pulled up showing the soft of the nape of her neck. He reached for the chains to her swing and held tight. He could have whispered in her ear, through the wisps of hair from the wind, but his words were caught in the circumference. He felt his palms redden from the chains, a slipped grasp and the centrifugal force pulled them apart. She turned to him, bangs blown over her eyes. She reached her hand back to him and opened her mouth to laugh, but all he heard was the chimes of the organ carried by the air past his ears.
Consequences exist for limits crossed. He could still feel her skin, taut and littered with raised bumps--fear. He could still feel her grip, so tight around his arm before loosening. In an instant it was swallowed by the dark---her pigtailed grade school face, the encrypted notes they'd pass through lockers, the smell of her first car, all the times the path veered, his months away, how their small town preserved her just so. The street between their houses the same, the potholes still potted, waiting to bloom; the tree branches almost hugging over the flowery avenue and the broad leaves blotching the sun from the sky. he found her there in memory, sitting in the yard with white flowers covering her eyes and a smirk. How is it we recall things as they did not happen? Under the pier, sand rough on skin, she'd opened her mouth but the sound she made had dissolved, swallowed by the waves slapping the planks. Face slick, he now walked back turned to the seaside town. Before him stretched the sand all brown and green, the fields and their brambles, and the sky a morning grey with three tufts of smoke dotting the horizon. The smell of her stained his hands. He laughed, should he feel any guilt at all.

2009-03-04T21:47:00.000-08:00

Her collegiate years she stood
background, mouth open, words
formed--the wrong medium for
capture. Goldenrod by the sun
light, streamed white through her
bedside window. Said her Hail
Mary in the rector's room.
Said Our Father cloaked
in basil; knees touching li

tracing the completeness of
a hummingbird in flight.

By the crate of the elevator door
is the place where the belly of his
hand met Lizzie's soft left temple.

An uncertainty of possession:
was it his pulse or hers beating
through the thinness.

Underneath all sleeps. Lizzie knows
in like a lion and what follows.
Perhaps there are grimmer ways to
love another.

Let us attempt discovery--

Lizzie, there are things that cannot be held.
Water falling from the shower faucet; the spin
of the ceiling fan; his tongue on teeth. The clouds
clotting the sky are made of ice, not
whimsy. Lizzie is uninvited to my poem.
Find what unearths: these words become spring.
The elbows of branches, after months spent straight,
now flex bent. bees buzzing everywhere;
an oozing strawberry chin; the tree outside
stands blushing; and somewhere:

honeysuckle.

snow day

2009-03-02T21:45:00.000-08:00

I will sleep this away as with all illnesses. I will allow him to reside in my fever dreams: the smallest space available. Maybe it's best that most of what happens between us resides in the internal world; I am watching the snow fall through the sliver of window not covered by curtain and this is how he must view me: through the smallest space available. I could be the world's sleepiest escapist. These words will meet a violent end, the way Robby is writing the book that cannot be carried, the way I change my poems to white ink. All I have to offer is my silenced ego. I do not want ships in bottles because they deserve more.

2009-02-22T21:46:00.000-08:00

I think now of the house starting from the corners and then going in. There is a use in piecing this together. Keep the kitchen walls bare mother always told me. It's the busiest room in the home, keep it the starkest. A house is built from the outside in. A house is a container. It is emptied from the inside out. Its skeleton w

ill be remembered. This house was our vetree branches remember a chimney. The windows are blown out now. They are seen by what is not there. The roof is sunken now. The roof swallowed our attic. The attic where

our secrets slept. The attic where on rainy nights you could hear the raccoons. From the corner room you could see the ships in port. From here I can see it intact. A house after our own hearts: not withstanding many winters, inclement weather, shifting neighborhood lines, a highway, the industry forgotten. I am old now. I have few fascinations left. Preserving his name. Ke

eping the walls from crumbling, the boughs from crashing in. Each room behind a closed door and inside them secret plays happening one act at a time. Every floorboard a name shouted on a city street. There is

the human desire to be bound, to be withheld. A house

could not contain all the dead

words

#3

2009-02-22T21:45:00.000-08:00

a little white

house lingers

in
my memory

of that

little white house i dream

every night

the
little boy rows

what
does the body

become?
expression stays longer than

bone turns to

powder easier than

and only teeth

remain.

2009-02-22T21:44:00.000-08:00

Yes, he'd say, I do remember the jellyfish washed up on the shore.

the end

2009-02-19T21:52:00.000-08:00

Dead words bloom tucked
under tongue: His name, some
verbs; the scrim is lifted, the
language learned.

2009-02-03T19:40:00.000-08:00

Language is so arbitrary
that nada can mean nothing
in one place and hope in another.

He's not leaving
behind feathers,
only saying hello.

2009-02-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

As a species
we have little
instinct left.

Feel the ground through
tremble lips. Hear from
which direction a train is coming.

2009-01-22T21:40:00.000-08:00

And when the clearing ended into a thicket we heard the sounds the night was making. Such a tender hostility exists in texas hill country; how we held hands at it. A deer in the road stared at me and then leapt straight into the air as we drove in reverse. The country constellated sky (understand this as my secret language for farewell). I navigated some natural way--I could feel the water pulling me north then west. An internal compass rooted in the muddy banks. A valley and a hill, again; the temperature changing 12 degrees. There is no language for what came next. We invent:

2009-01-21T21:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, thanks to my amazing sister and her amazing boyfriend, I got to be a witness to one of the most historical things that will happen in my lifetime. I know it's cheesy, but it was seriously the coolest thing I have ever been a part of. I'd like to write my account of the day now, while the memories are fresh in my mind because it's a story I will get to tell for the rest of my life.

We spent the night at tim's apartment because he lives in adam's morgan which is a lot closer to downtown than cate's. We woke up around 7:30 and left by 8. We figured if we absolutely had to, we could walk. BUT we were lucky and a relatively empty s bus pulled up right as we got to the stop. We took that down to L street and 16th and began our walk to the mall. I'm so glad I have no idea of the lay of the land there or how far we had to walk because I just enjoyed conversation and all the crazies out and about rather than focusing on the 2 miles I would be walking. The sidewalks were full of people selling t shirts, buttons, and hand warmers. Tim planned ahead and picked some hand warmers up for all of us and those proved to be life savers. One man was selling buttons for $5!!!!!! I thought that was ridiculous. I still do.

Our tickets were for the silver section--standing room behind the reflecting pool on the capitol side. In order to get to the entrance, we had to be on the opposite side of the mall. With everything blocked off, the only way we could get there was via tunnel. It was pretty eerie--they had closed it off to traffic so it felt a lot like an end-of-the-world disaster movie: a tunnel wall to wall with people walking out of town, the occasional cop car, inaudible mumbles. There were thousands of people walking through that tunnel with us and it was just a really surreal image. Once we got to the other side, we made our way to 3rd and independence--where the silver gate was supposed to be. We spent close to 30 minutes walking the length of the line, trying to find the end. It zigged and zagged around blocks and buildings--we thought we'd never find the end. Cate says she read somewhere it was ultimately 11 blocks long and I believe it. We finally found the end and felt really bummed out. The line was several thousand people long and not moving; there was no way we'd be getting in. We comforted ourselves saying at least we got to be NEAR it, at least we got to see all the crowds of excited people. It was 9:45 when we started waiting and we decided if we hadn't moved by 10:20, we'd give up and head to Tim's friend's family condo down on Pennsylvania Ave. and watch everything from there. Thankfully the line started moving a little after 10 and by the time 10:20 rolled around we were almost in. It was bizarre--the line started moving and remained orderly for a few blocks, but once we rounded a corner, instead of snaking through the buildings like we had on our way in, the line just dissolved and everybody was making a rush towards the gates. i'm glad i'm not claustrophobic because at times it was a very tight squeeze through all the crowds. Cate, Tim and I all held hands and made a human chain so we would stay together and we finally made it in. Once we were inside, it wasn't crowded at all. We first went in through the second half of the silver section and quickly decided we weren't even going to bother with trying to get a good view of the jumbo tron. there was a road separating the silver section in two and we decided to cross and head into the front part. there were border patrol officers standing at the crossing trying to keep order so nobody got trampled. i thought it was very fitting. we crossed the street and got into a pretty open part of the field from which we could see the top half of the stage in front of the capitol building. by the time we were all settled in it was about 10:50 so we entertained ourselves for about 40 minutes. poor tim. if anybody has spent any amount of idle time with cate and i, they can understand how weird we can get. there was lots of dancing, marching, rolling around on the ground. all in all, we were laughing and having fun and trying not to think about how cold we were.

the ceremony started. i'm not sure i can remember the exact order of things. lots of people came out and were introduced. my friends have told me the tv stations muted this part, but when bush walked on stage, the crowd went nuts--not in a good way. people were booing like crazy and chanting "nananana hey hey hey goodbye" which was very embarrassing. look, i don't really like him either and THANK GOD he is leaving office, but this wasn't a protest or a rally--it was the formal inauguration ceremony. have some respect. this event is all about the peaceful transition of power that makes our democracy so awesome so please save the boorish behavior for another occasion. aretha frankling sang my country tis of thee and it was incredible. a lot of fancy people played john william's "air and simple gifts" which was so beautiful. cate tried to remember the words to it to the best of her ability. then rick warren stepped up and gave the invocation. i was happy to hear him use inclusive rhetoric but i know a lot of people were surprised by his decidedly christian prayer--closing the whole thing with the lord's prayer. joe biden was sworn in and cate almost cried. obama was sworn in and cate cried. i was way too excited and happy to cry plus i think by that point my tear ducts were frozen shut. obama's speech was so moving and it was incredible to be THERE and hear him deliver it IN PERSON. every time i turned around, I could see the crowd of millions stretching past the monument. and they all had little american flags that they were waving and it was such an incredible sight to see. it made the size and magnitude of the crowd so physical. i got chills when obama said "...know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." YES. this is the president we need right now! It's like west wing BUT IN REAL LIFE. I am so excited because this is the first time that I am old enough and mature enough to appreciate a president who i actually agree with. I can't wait to see what happens.

So then the poet started to read, but at this point everybody was leaving and I couldn't hear anything and so we started to make our way out. We were heading over to Tim's friend's condo so that we could warm up and watch the parade. They live on Pennsylvania, right behind the canadian embassy. We tried to head over there, but the roads were blocked for the parade route and we couldn't cross even though we could see their building from where we were standing! So we had to turn back, make our way back across the mall, back into the tunnel and around that way. There was a man selling photographs of obama and MLK "conversing in the oval office" and cate and i really regret not buying one bc cmon how ridiculous is that. We got to the Wards' condo which was super swank. They had some brunch and delicious hot chocolate. I took a little nap sitting up on the couch much to Cate's horror but I was so exhausted! My eyes wouldn't stay open! When the parade started, we headed up to the roof. We had a really great view of the front of the national archives, so when the Obamas got out of the car and started walking up the street, we could see it all. It was awesome! Everyone was going nuts! It was crazy being up on the roof and seeing all the snipers set up EVERYWHERE. there were at least 4 guys on every roof. I'm so glad no funny business went on. Once we couldn't see the Obamas anymore we went inside, said our goodbyes, and began the long journey home. We walked a good ways out of the mess of downtown and picked up a cab and drove the rest of the way to Tim's.

All in all it was an amazing experience that I am still processing. I'm so excited for the beginning of a new era in american politics. YES WE CAN!

2009-01-20T21:46:00.000-08:00

There was a dialogue we used to share, there were words we are not allowed anymore. He has hiddens only I know. He has forgotten mine. He does not care to remember the softest stretch of skin. Maybe another—something. There is no visiting time or our stifled vocabularies and I refuse to believe because happens never stops. He is standing in the doorway now or then and I am saying don't. I feel him most in the places he won't touch. Be quiet. I am dreaming.

2009-01-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

Every seven years
the body becomes
new on a cellular level.

For each second inside
of us there are little
births we cannot recover.

am i ably

2008-12-14T21:41:00.000-08:00

There is no need of mentioning names. There is no reason why why why why why why A family might be a prize. The cause of conversation is this seated on the orange bee on pink clover and a white butterfly between paper and birds. And hours.

This is the type of landscape which She saw and no more. There can be in the way of making a distance be deadly night shade and mistake. A genius says that when he is not successful he is in this way introduced to left left left right left. Never shall he be alone to be alone to be alone to picture. And he had. It had happened on that trip or by accidently witnessing rain. All gold is put into water and all water is put into translation and all translation is resisting days.

When this you see remember me. She said stay the second day in memory of the third day moving and also giving blue to green and thought of red blue and pretty lights. And so remove trees not in the sense of becoming but of displacing not only rivers but water lakes and when you see this remember this remember when this you see remember that it was at most at best at best.

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten one is here here and there on the fourth and twice. Twice is once. To wish to remember that every year is a change.

And rejoice.

also the sun also

2008-12-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

We watched the beginning of the evening of the last night of hell on earth. We lay with our heads in the shade and looked on and on after every one else's eyes in the world never seem to be working. I was very angry. Somehow they always make me be in love. Nothing happens to me. I walked alone all one night and the houses looked sharply white. I could picture it. I have a rotten habit of picturing the long line of his neck in the bright light of the flares.

"I got hurt in the war," I said. "Everybody's sick. I'm sick too."

He put his hand on my shoulder again embarrassedly. "Kiss me just once before we get there."

We were sitting now like two strangers. On the right were there photographs. The photographs were dedicated to a very special secret between the two of us; But they did not mean anything.

the night is tender

2008-12-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

The Night is Tender

I slant forward lighting cigarettes, then diving down afterward out of the blue toward other weather; the lush midsummer moment outside of dawn and into the pillows, to keep the light from our eyes. Some shadows swayed with the motion of the pines outside. Two bumble-bees. The sky was low at night, full of the presence of a platform, with spring twilight gilding the rails and the glass in between being centripetal and centrifugal. She felt his footprints as she crossed the garden; and now the rain that touched his cheek.

The lakes are sunk in brown clay and the boat is made to carry my form forward into the blues creases of a belly. The photographer gave us the picture of me, I am motionless against the sky and only remember the sun-torn flesh of his shoulder; the best thing that could have happened.

featureless sky time was already over.

this side of this side of paradise

2008-11-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

Though she thought of her body as a mass of frailties, she, through a spiritual crises, joined the Catholic Church, and was at regular intervals. Like Freudian dreams, they must be old, moth-eaten London accents that are down on their luck. It was still a music, though, infinitely sorrowful.

Sunday broke stolid and respectable, and even the sea whose passionate kisses and unsentimental conversations she talked until midnight and then fell in a dreamless sleep, fell unwillingly asleep.

In her less important moments she returned to America, met the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the crashing and aching limbs. For those minutes courage circling an end, twisting, changing pace, straight-arming violins swelled and quavered on the last notes, the girl dreaming on the music that eddied out of the cafes. New music at night, the sea; I don't catch the subtle things.

And so on in an eternal monotone that the spring was so purposeless and inconsecutive that it seems ANOTHER ENDING As in the story books, she ran into them, and on that half-dusky dreamy smell of flowers the ghost of a new moon lived. All the broken columns and clasped hands and doves could find nothing hopeless in having dead lovers, when they were exactly like the rest, seemed so beautiful. PARADISE meant to lose this chance.

There's so much spring in the air-- strength she drew down to herself when she knelt and bent her golden hair into the stained-glass light. never be a poet. I'm young. People excuse us now for our poses. (She looks at him once more, with infinite longing, finite sadness.)

(Brokenly) You'd better go hate me in a narrow atmosphere. I'd make you hate me. We can't have any more scenes like this.

thunder of cheers... finally bruised and weary, but still

2008-10-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

Here the moon is bent just so; a crook in the wrist, the little girl's softest stretch of skin. The moon is framed by nothing. I am learning something new every day. That is to say, I am learning new ways to communicate his absence. A celestial body falls formless and only place dictates shape.

The words were forming themselves in my mouth. Come home.

2008-10-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

Clouds cast
shadows long
and then longer
and then none.

Sometimes
I can still feel
teeth moving
inside my jaw.

2008-10-22T21:38:00.000-07:00

A healthy head
is said to lose
one hundred
hairs a day.

My room self-
constructs these
tiny monuments
to him.

2008-09-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

We thought about going back to the palmed path under fence; now only for barn cats and field mice. My knees remember the red lacing underneath skin. In the night we hear noises and know we are animals--we are not alone in the dark of the field. The ends of grass itch through cotton. The ends of grass touch me and touch you and touch other animals in the field. The moonlight erased the edges of the frame, leaving me with a yellow fading. I thought the stick was a snake. The stick jumped up and bit my leg.

sola gratia

2008-09-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

First light is fleeting and
head-ache making.
Sweat pools in
the small of your back,
sticking like peach pits.

This morning finds
your skin three days
from ripe.

Time runs front to back
I know. Think of a
pitcher emptying; a
bed unmade; the waves
spread so thin
I am left with silence.

Every demand
is a demand
for what?

It's the last light that
traps into corners of
our room, bent slightly.
Prisms become one of
our more fluent languages.

I cannot say whether this map
is old or if it is only drawn to
appear so.

this pose can only be held for so long

2008-09-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

Some statues go missing
pieces at a time and
we are left with imagined limbs.

I will not apologize
for your toothbrush left
next to mine, or for using it.

Incomplete fiction

2008-06-10T21:46:00.000-07:00

The cloud cast years of my youth can be found in few photographs as, even we, spent little, sometimes none. My legs were thin, tiny little girl legs never touching. I sat at the dinner table knees knocking, a valley in between, and my blonde curls hung heavy on my shoulders like the branches in the peak of August outside our summer home with the punished hills and all their grass-forsaken land.

My memories of the city before the siege feel far away, the coast of an imperial colony I have never visited, only seen in brochures and on tea tin labels. The streets all cobbled, all bustling. The flowers blooming from windowsill pots. Sunlight streaming into my eastward window on mornings when kitchen sounds trickled down the hall--Father lacing his boots up tight and Mother ladling breakfast onto our plates, the ceramic bowl swanning under the faucet.
In the threshold to my bedroom there lay a loose floorboard. I would take a wide step over it when sneaking to the bathroom late at night after hours of reading under the blankets my father's boyhood adventure books, the pages all humid jungles with my hair stuck to neck, mosquitos in my ear and a brave native leading the way through the fleshy thicket with his machete chopping. This specific memory may have been born in a movie I saw later in life, but time has made it, like so many other things, only mine.

My mother grew up in the estate far past the railroad lines, near the southern sea, and it was there we stayed out the war. I recall only the fragments of how we arrived there.
Father left his job with the Louvre--his last days were spent emptying its halls. My mother and I would bring him lunch--a ham and butter sandwich with an orange, the last of our reserves--and instead of playing hide and seek in the sculptures, I sat back against the bare wall of the Greek wing. Men wearing thick black belts around their middles circled Winged Victory and wiped their brows as even more men made way planking wood down the stairway to her throne. And then she was inched down that steep incline, no head, no arms, only wings trembling, each thousand particle a threat. Father stood over me, watching the descent from over his shoulder. Mother gasped as the statue almost toppled all together and Father, his eyes closed, as if to remember her in her place, turned to us and said, "Surely, we will never see her again."

Sirens sang through the afternoon hours, and my days were spent listless. It had been weeks since the schools were shut and the battle line was drawing nearer when Father pulled in front of our house in his big black car rather than his bicycle. My mother came into the foyer were I was lying on the ground, content with watching the rainbows refracting inside the chandelier above. She held my camel colored suitcase in hand and told me, "Colette, you must be a good little girl. You will be staying with your Aunt Therese in the outer city for the weekend, and then you will get on a great big train and come out to the country. Your father and I will be at the station to pick you up, you understand?" She said, "Colette, do you understand? You must be a good little girl for us now." Mother had the hiccups that day. I remember the sun warm in the kitchen as Father and I sat at the table, the boiling water on the stove the only conversation. Mother wiped the counter in large sweeping circles, weeping and hiccuping with her mouth closed.

My aunt's thick black hair sunk far past her freckled shoulders. Her house was much smaller than ours and the backyard had a brown and white rooster. When I arrived she sliced a baguette and held out a piece to me. "Colette, has your mother told you about--" she said before trailing off, her gaze focused some place out the window, skirting the horizon. "Something terrible is happening in the world, Colette," she said. "We must pray to Mother Mary." And then Aunt Therese placed my hand into hers, snaked with veins and loose with age.
Mother Mary, lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth. Lead us from despair to hope, from fear to trust. Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace. Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.

Aunt Therese's eyes were shut tight for a long time after she had stopped speaking. "Colette," she said. "You know the Hail Mary, yes?"

Before I could answer, she was frantic. Aunt Therese took both of my hands, pulled them into her lap and unloaded a white Rosary into my palms and then pressed them shut, pressed them so hard that the beads made pockets in my skin.

"You will be safe where you're heading--"

"Safe from what," I asked but she didn't answer.

"If those awful men come to your house with their sharp tongues, I want you to stay completely still and silent. I want you to take these beads and say your prayers. Please Colette. You must."

"I will," I promised and with that Aunt Therese walked out into the backyard, away from her uneaten bread, and began to lay out the rooster's feed.

Other than that, all I can see is the view from my train seat and her long thin arm waving farewell from the platform below. The land was flat and then it lolled and the stations in between had bricks both red and grey. With every stop, passengers would leave the train but none would enter. The attendant wore a black hat with gold trim and served chocolates with my tea. The corners of his eyes folded when he smiled, sneaking the treat into my tiny hands. Silver stubble gilded his jaw-line. My father would have been his friend.

Last stop. End of the line! rang in my ears as the conductor made his slow way down the aisle. I climbed onto the seat and pulled my suitcase down. Outside the train my mother stood waiting in a pink dress with white lace on her hands. "Oh, Mama!" I said, so tired and happy with the end of my travels. She carried my suitcase to the car with her arm around my shoulders. The station sat beside a field of grass long as my legs and heavy under the wind, saturated with the sun's light. Father started the engine and I climbed into the back seat and we drove into the sea of orange waves, the setting sun, the dark of the night.

I woke in my father's arms as he carried me from the car to the porch. The moon was bright enough in the country to light acres between the house and the sea. All possible futures stretched before us in this new home. Mother said, "Everything will be fine ," tussling my hair as Father opened the front door. My eyes sat heavy with sleep and I climbed into the master bed, ready to dream, to feel everything fine.

In the morning Mother showed me what would be my room. "Now Colette, I must tell you. You will be sharing your room." Following her up the circling staircase, I imagined a young nurse on leave in the country, or perhaps a distant relative holed up at the estate. Flashes of late night talks, morse code across the floorboards, learning how to braid, scandalous stories of dance halls full of soldiers--all things I lacked as an only child all fell to the floor when Mother opened the door to a room empty besides the furniture and a painting.

There she sat. Mother introduced her as Grande Odalisque. The gentle slope of her bare back, the sad smile hinted by her eyes, the feathers in her hand. Mother said it was our family's job to protect her, it was father's duty. She seemed obscene, a spine impossibly long, but I liked her. She could listen to my stories and tell me hers. Someday I would look like her, hips wide and waist nipped, all the unknowns kept inside my lips.

The Odalisque, born Martine, sleeps with her bed pushed up against the window. Instead of drapes she keeps thin red silk, samples she found in market stalls, layered across the glass. The red intensifies the morning sun and wakes her up, brow slick from sweat and cheeks flush. Martine, the odalisque, is a hot blooded girl. Her mother used to say Good morning my hot blooded girls as she pulled off the covers each blue-black morning in their small country home. The odalisque rises with the sun and the grumble of her stomach. She waits for the water to boil in her kettle and rubs the sleep out of her shoulders, her ribs, her calves.

We slept like sisters with our secrets, my back turned to her. Branch shadows slid across the ceiling, tiles of tin screwed in by hand so long ago.

2008-04-17T23:32:00.001-07:00

Someplace in Austin, Texas
in April 2004 runs a creek

with pebbles smoothed
and babbled. Someplace

in the creek is the white
stone I held in my hand

as Joshua held my arm
with his entire body

and told me to bend
my wrist just so.

Lizzie

2008-04-10T01:03:00.001-07:00

Her collegiate years she stood
background, mouth open, words
formed--the wrong medium for
capture. Goldenrod by the sun
light, streamed white through her
bedside window. Said her Hail
Mary in the rector's room.
Said Our Father cloaked
in basil; knees touching
tracing the completeness of
a hummingbird in flight.

By the crate of the elevator door
is the place where the belly of his
hand met Lizzie's soft left temple.
An uncertainty of possession:
was it his pulse or hers beating
through the thinness.

Underneath all sleeps. Lizzie knows
in like a lion and what follows.
Perhaps there are grimmer ways to
love another. Let us attempt discovery--

Lizzie, there are things that cannot be held.
Water falling from the shower faucet; the spin
of the ceiling fan; his tongue on teeth. The clouds
clotting the sky are made of ice, not
whimsy. Lizzie is uninvited to my poem.
Find what unearths: these words become spring.
The elbows of branches, after months spent straight,
now flex bent. Bees buzzing everywhere;
an oozing strawberry chin; the tree outside
stands blushing; and somewhere:
honeysuckle.

The Waves, Again

2008-04-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

(the first line in every section is taken from Virginia Woolfe's The Waves)

I hear through it far off, far away, faint and far, the chorus beginning; wheels; dogs; men shouting; church bells; the chorus beginning. A landscape perhaps; of clouds clotting the shoreline; of Texas unfolding behind us; the westward rains quieting; or synesthesia;--feeling your hands on me like the musk forrest bed, October.

Save for these, I would bury it all as I bury these ugly stones that are always scattered about this briny coast with its piers and its trippers. I would send my best homeward, heading onward, tripping all over myself. To be buried, to ask for an unearthing. To need another; to be within arm's reach; and the weight of air replacing sand.

Month by month things are losing their hardness; even my body now lets the light through; my spine is soft like wax near the flame of the candle. I have dripped away early spring. I am puddling, I am creeking. I am bayous beyond your back gate. Once stood a tree, blushing with April. Once stood a tree blushing but it is gone now. That is to say it never stood. Each leaf fell to the muddy shores to be swallowed. To be swallowed, to be within arm's reach, to be laid side by side with my teenage hope, my skin two days dirty, the pears four days too ripe.

I have torn them off and screwed them up so that they no longer exist, save as a weight in my side. I have left you there, in peace or pieces, without a map or stones to cover your eyes. I have renamed you, replaced you, untraced my steps to the spot beneath your window where we would wait for time to favor us.

The birds sang passionate songs addressed to one ear only and then stopped. I have no home. It is what happens when you leave a place for a long time and return to something else. The trees grow taller, otherwise they are trimmed in May, otherwise they are cut down. I remember seeds from the market; seeds sitting in my entire palm; the hard of the dirt; the cold of the soil on my shins; the film under fingernails; my father's hands large and patting earth. Our house was not built; all we had was the plot and our plans.

The sun struck straight upon the house, making the white walls glare between the dark windows. The first morning I woke up in my room was bright and after that my memory is only leaf splotches; the elbows of branches reaching across the floor.

Barns and summer days in the country, rooms where we sat--all now lies in the unreal world which is gone. I read that memory and dreams can exist only in the present, again and again. Father's hand; the trenches in his palms; the scar across his thumb; my smallness felt inside his gardening gloves; my fists nesting inside the thumb. There were tulips for Easter lining the fence. Each spring we'd pick our colors. Each spring we pick our colors.

I see the pear tree through the streaked steam on the window-pane. I see the pears on the ground, surrounding the pear tree. I think of worship. I think of Sundays after church. Looking skyward, I'd tell you to watch the clouds but you would whistle grass, toss handfuls of soil into the air, exploding with green and bone-white roots like some organic fireworks display. I think of pears waiting on their branches, how I thought they wiggled before falling. I think I never saw one fall, only found them on the ground, sometimes days later, bugs freckling the soft yellow skin.

In this silence it seems as if no leaf would ever fall, or bird fly. We are weighty as we are waiting for time to favor us. Flight depends on density. Dependency is such a heavy concept; the densest idea to float; your hand folding into mine; the grass ticking all around us; this is a time of day.

I said to myself, by a lion on Trafalgar Square, by the lion seen once and for ever;--so I revisit my past life, scene by scene, there is an elm tree, and there lies Percival. His fur still soft, his eyes still open. I read that memory and dreams can only exist in the present but there lies Percival. I confuse his softness for a bitterness, the back spread of my tongue activated with each touch from ears to tail. I confuse the soil covering his body as you shovel over his grave for the waves on the muddy shores. I confuse your voice for the sound of leaving, a ticket halved on crease; a passport photo; you're past this; waiting transatlantically.

Tahiti becomes possible. The pit of your knee becomes possible. The softest stretch of my wrist becomes possible. The moss on tree trunks; the bayou beyond your back gate; the tree there, blushing; the radio static ; palms full of grass; Texas, unfolding. The years spent; the time gone; a hand folding into another becomes possible.

Rippling small, rippling grey, innumerable waves spread beneath us. You've grown taller, but this does not mean you are permanent. Find Father chopping down the pear tree, found the roots dead-ending into the cement foundation beneath our house. The tree is sick. The tree has no pears. The tree is gone now.

contrition

2008-03-03T21:43:00.000-08:00

Forgive her knee
the skin on ice;
the red of it like cobwebs.

Forgive the snow on waves
and all that sleep below.
Bless all deep sea bloops
recorded at living
decibels--
larger than any
vocabulary yet.

Forgive the flocks
five hours vast
as they move
north to south
overhead. Forgive
my eyes as they
swallow her tonight.
Say Holy Father forgive
me for I have sinned:
I have held some
one so fragile
in my hands;
for I have desired
mine over ours.

Forgive the winter
words on my lips when
we, walking too fast
down the hill, ignored
the man whose
wife tried to kill
him. Whatever
you are looking for
sleeps underground.

She tumbled down
Taaffe and her knee--
the skin on ice,
the red like cobwebs;
seeping like the secrets
in a parent's attic.
The clocks forgive
and daylight will forgive
as it peels back into
my room. I will
wake coated sweetly
in sweat and his pillow
next to mine, her coat
on the floor. His breath
hot in my ear:
Maybe nothing
ever happens
once and is finished.

Her knee, the cobbled
steps up the park, the
sun in his eyes, the
view from the pier, the
statue pointed west
and we followed.
The walk was too long,
the day ended quick.
Night tucked us in
and we forgave who
we became.
We hid hands in our
coats and still we were
caught and sat on that
bench in the station
feeling shame. Saying
Holy Father please
forgive us for we were
born and we breathe
and our days are spent
dying, and our days
are spent rowing against
the tide, and we rebel, Father,
because you will let
the waves consume us.

home

2008-02-27T06:02:00.001-08:00

This city is a (possible) home. The streets run wide (seamless and uncracked). The light is pleasant but you won't have to squint your eyes (reminds you of that day at the park in the spring with your father; the cotton candy, the man painting a picture of elephants). This city will be an echo.

This city has a square in the middle and the grass is sprouting now (were grass stains real?). This city waits under a canopy dim purple for dusk (technicians man their desks). This city has all the comforts of a (possible) home. The water streams from pipes on high (listen). The farmer's market tables fill with fruits, nuts, and vegetables (barely miss the taste of soil; remember the film dark under your nails) all grown from seeds stored long ago. The architects have ensured it will be tall enough for a carnival to come through (remember the state fair, the summer and the freckles on his shoulders). This city is action, promise, your dead language. This city is a home (possibly).

Studies show you will find familiar feelings in time: a sun warmed bed in the morning or his pillow dented next to yours. The oatmeal will be too dry then too wet and your shower will not stay hot. A shirt with his scent (untraceable) at the bottom of your hamper, wrinkled with filth. Your parents in front of a house and a wooden stork in the ground. The tulips or kites (a dream? No.) red dot the grass and the sky. Studies show that the city (underground, inside the mountain's mouth) will make the best possible home.

Forget your old city (gone, soon). The streets baked in the summer's heat and the vines crawled up (crumbling) walls. A signal: the waves (remember--your ankles swallowed in the wet sand) are quiet now. Look for your breath in the air or your shadow (no, ash) on the wall or the birds (quiet now), trading places on their power lines, harkening twilight. The monuments, the cobbled streets, the springs, summers, autumns; now only winter (the sirens, the tumbling; not a dream not a drill).

The trees are only saplings (new and teeming under false sunlight) but there is speculation they will grow. There is speculation their branches (like roots) will reach towards the soil.

exercise #2

2008-02-18T00:02:00.000-08:00

2/19 We crawled through dust, a pair of snakes.
We devoured our former selves and we, belly full of molt, we moved parallel to the city on the horizon.

2/23 Unwritten letter
He thought to translate her touch into an unborn language, but he found her hands could not be conjugates.

2/25 Evidence of a real pre-existence: I have seen you before.
Under water perhaps--the last great frontier. Eyes open, as always, eyes open. You came before vocabulary, before the capacity for more.

2/29 morning clearness
looms days away. Here is our event horizon; here we slide molecule at a time for all the was is will be, and I disbelieve. First comes an unpleasant sound, followed by a separation, then warmth-suffusive- and you.

(portions taken from the blue octavo notebooks of Kafka)

to be

2008-02-12T02:13:00.000-08:00

The grass grows on its own out of sand, so should he have felt guilt ripping it out with each hurried step? The mist maybe waters it, the sea air too thick to do much else, he thought as his tissue thin lungs bore on. The night had given way to new humiliation, given way to a morning still dark, still grey, but backlit by the sun somewhere. He could not compete with this world, this hunk so infatuated with limits. The sky shakes hands with the sea, the waves pound the sand, the sand swallows his feet, his weight and all the weight around him keeps him from drifting into the one place with no limits, the one place forever collapsing, expanding, folding in on itself. A limit: the path a secret takes from mouth to ear, brain to memory. On the ferris wheel over the water, mood still reflecting all the cheap gaudy boardwalk lights, he had swung the gondola grabbing the cage and throwing his weight. She had screamed, clutched her hands to chest and laughed. They were kinetic, hands waiting to connect, to start the cascades. A limit: this desire in the dark. On the fairground swings she sat in front of him, hair pulled up showing the soft of the nape of her neck. He had grabbed the chains to her swing and held tight. He could have whispered in her ear, through the wisps of hair from the wind, and they'd be caught in the circumference. He felt his palms redden from the chains, a slipped grasp and the centrifugal force pulled them apart. Consequences exist for limits crossed. He could still feel her skin, taut and littered with raised bumps--fear. He could still feel her grip, so tight around his arm before loosening. In an instant it all got swallowed by the dark--her pigtailed grade school face, the encrypted notes they'd pass through lockers, the smell of her first car, all the times the path veered, his months away, how their small town preserved her just so. Face slick he walked back-turned to the seaside town. Before him stretched the sand all brown and green, the fields and their brambles, and the sky a morning grey with three tufts of smoke dotting the horizon. The smell of her stained his hands. He laughed, should he feel any guilt at all.

The boy stretched back on his bed, feet still on the floor, and pressed four distinct notes out of his tuba. Each sound descended as the girl in her pale pink dress sat on the velvet armchair, pushing her finger tips to change the color of the fabric. His English when spoken was thick with German, but it came out softer than she'd grown used to in her time abroad. Men in bars all over Berlin had hungry eyes and harsh consonants. She missed peanut butter, the sand of the east coast. She missed contagious weather, patterns free of Russia's jurisdiction. Her only friend from home had finished his semester two weeks ago and it took those fourteen days for her to realize then congratulate herself for not ruining their friendship with sex. Now the apartment she sat in was unfamiliar, the living room separated from the bedroom by only a white sheet on a rope. She could see the instrument as part of the German's silhouette, she could see him lying in the spot she would be as soon as her glass was empty. It wasn't until his mouth hot with whiskey was on hers that she realized the music had stopped. The German stepped into the bathroom and left the girl in the room on her own. She poured the rest of her drink down the sink and pushed through the sheet. She sat on the edge of the bed and felt all the alcohol swimming in her calves. In the bar down the street the two had been pushed together by friends spouting Getränk! Gespräch! They spent the night whispering in germglish, swallowing both pints and the excitement of hardly touching. For the first time the girl did not pull away when a boy kissed her unexpected. She felt a small accomplishment, the sand in her hair finally washed out, the fairground music fading. The German's night stand was a collection of glasses of water and candy wrappers with a pile of books. On top sat the german edition of the girl's favorite book from high school. She recognized the raised lettering, the gold on blue of the hardback edition. She flipped through the pages and saw his notes, some of which she could not translate. Her favorite part still lay somewhere behind his bookmark. She wondered what got lost in the translation--was he reading the same book at all? did he deserve to in the first place? The change of heart is almost always slight. Escaping audibility, it can never be traced to memories of a girlhood night stand or a mistranslated passage in a coming of age text. The girl closed it and crawled under the covers. She shut her eyes tight, opened her mouth slightly and pretended to pass out. The German returned to the room and stood for a few moments at the foot of the bed before turning off the light. There was a pause before she heard his body sink onto the couch on the opposite side of the sheet. In 72 hours she'd be on a train to Italy where, on a boat, she'd be joined by her mother and the two would celebrate a birthday.

He grew up in the countryside in a sprawling house. Vines wandered up past his second story window, the view outside rolling green with a small pond. His father had built a diving board out of wood summers ago, but all the changing seasons, the expanding and contracting took away it's spring. The winters would find him in Munich among stiff-collared boys in blue blazers, but in the summers of his youth he'd return to the brambled fields with his family. Days would pass in a hazy heat, lazily sleeping into the afternoon before heading towards the kitchen for a glass of water. There was one early afternoon mid June, the yellowest month of all, when the house felt too quiet. His mother and sisters would sometimes go to town for the fruit stands and his father spent most days outside working on the grounds or cars, but the air in the house felt disturbed, as if the last words rang through panic. He turned the corner into the kitchen and found blood-soaked rags, blood on the floor, blood running down the door to the yard. He was alone, no sign of bodies. He was alone, truly alone, an orphan at sixteen, the sole survivor to a horrific crime. The boy invented motives, imagined culprits. Was it fast or slow? Did his sisters have a chance to cry, his father a chance to be brave, his mother a chance to say I love you all? Why had he been spared--had he been spared? He slid to the floor. The peach tile was stained a dark red, the grout once the color of his sister's freckles now rusty. A call would come within ten minutes, from his mother at the emergency clinic. There had been an accident, the father had cut his leg just above the knee on scrap metal. They had all gotten into the car in such a rush, there was no time for a note. Until the call came, however, the boy was with the weighty realization that he was just a body on this earth. How gentle, what he had. To be.

deep ocean blues

2008-02-07T00:26:00.001-08:00

As if the sound were coming not from the larynx but somewhere near the heart. I hear him now far away, think of deep sea bloops recorded at living decibels, made by creatures larger than vocabulary knows. I see him, just barely, above me now, think of migrating flocks five hours vast. All this clumsiness, the clever minutes--this could be the closest we will come to cooperating, and yet.

sub humus

2008-02-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

"Forget what kissing feels like," Madeline tells me, our formal introduction, but I am tempted. Dressed in army issue olive, we climb down the hatch inside the missile silo door, knowing months of dark and waiting stand before us.
For a woman she is strong, never talks about her mother or the boys waiting above, only sighs and says she misses her freckles. We take vitamin c pills and I watch the honey in her hair fade. We lack any entertainment but the games that we invent; Madeline's favorite being Guess the Season, mine I Am in Love with You.
"Winter, probably," I say.
"What makes you guess that?" Madeline asks.
"It's a cold, cold war up there."
Madeline lists the landmarks she's seen, a catalogue we know to be final. I am the one man in the world with this knowledge. Intimacy blooms out of this secret, the period looming like my thumb over the button. We sleep underground, missed by our families, answering only to the commander in chief. Picked at random, he told us, as if 300 feet underground isn't enough of a humbling place.
We sleep underground in this silo. Kind of like living in sin, where her habits still seem damn near endearing. We sleep underground, kind of like brother and sister in a hotel room; two beds by each wall and all the space between so hollow, all the sleep sounds at once familiar and foreign. We sleep underground when the alarm goes off, telling us what the night sky so far above used to.
Things change and Madeline contracts lingering eyes, a hunger the rations won't feed. A chain reaction follows. Just like the cascading avalanche waiting at the end of this, our clothes cascade, our hands small avalanches exploring . I feel the most selfish love for anything: that she is becoming me, that I am inside her and a part of her and the chain reactions fill the silo, echo off the warhead.
Sleeping it off, Madeline dreams of a boy building a fence, a boy unaware. I hold her tight and instead of smelling her, I smell us. This was a mistake and even if conditions improve up above, ours will get worse from here, the days longer but colder yet. Once exposed to the sunlight our love will live a half-life, decaying over terra firma and scattering to the four corners. I am the one man in the world with this knowledge, the knowledge of Madeline calm in her sleep. I am the one man in the world with his finger on the button, and I am tempted.

man/wife

2008-01-31T13:32:00.000-08:00

The waiting room remains stale, all coffee pots and frayed magazines, the smell and colors not sterile enough. The waiting room doesn't change names when I'm not waiting anymore. The waiting room is for waiting, all nervous handed, for the man with the smooth voice and cookie baking wife you'd met with earlier in the fall. Doctors pass through in their blue and white, and the occupants sit on their own, carpet gazing, avoiding eyes or doorways. The television blares the network news, as if there is a world outside.

It's strange to sit here with my dad growing cold. He is still in a room down the hall with the yellow roses and the window view parking lot. His eyes are closed because a nurse shut them for him, the same nurse with sweet brown eyes who fluffed his pillow and sponged his back. My dad might come walking into the waiting room, IV dragging behind, hospital gown gaping open, lacking all dignity with knees knocking. He can't, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

It takes four days to happen. In four days my hair turns dark with oil. In four days I read the same interview in the magazine from April and it is personal and I know the answers behind your vague wording. It's nothing personal, it's publicity, you don't have to say it again. The freckle on your lip has been airbrushed away. The missing band on your finger didn't need to be. It takes four days of little sleep, no eating, my father and I suffering together. It takes four days and then, the morning the sun first breaks and starts to melt the snow.

Cole, when we met you told me the greatest thing about yourself, hiccuping from excess, you said the greatest thing about yourself was that you will never mess up this bridge and then you dove head first into the chorus of the song on the radio, the song for some different girl, one more natural than me. You bellowed the words down the stairwell as I left that night, a voice you only use on new girls. The words, worth repeating. I thought I could say them but you never wanted me to, did you? I look for trace amounts of that voice on the answering machine, our source of contact, but it's not there. This is Cole and Anna, leave a message. By tonight I will be erasing my own voice.

My dad is giving you his guitar, a Hummingbird, and you don't care. I'm in white, a shorter dress for the reception, a back yard bar b q at my parent's ranch. Play a song, Cole, play a song! Faces change from excitement to acceptance and the silence recedes into polite conversation. Instead you play modesty, thank my dad quietly and retreat once more. I think you're shy. He needed it more than you.

My dad's lungs are full of fluid but his eyes still so wide the day you call me from one state away.
"How is he doing?" you ask.
"Not well. I think we're going to the hospital."
"When?" you ask.
"Today. We'll see. He doesn't want to go, but if it's not better this time tomorrow, we have to."
"It's that serious?" you ask. "I didn't know."
"It's happened before and things ended up fine. It's seeing my father like this--he's like a child, I just--" I shutter, on accident, and cover my mouth. My voice comes out next foreign and warbling. "Cole, I just--"
"I'm coming back," you say.
There is silence on my side of the phone. My eyes are shut tight and I'm up against a wall.
"After tonight," you say.

My dad's eyes are closed, but he can feel me watching him through his sleep. I know this because his hand reaches up, weak as it is, and scratches the place on his cheek I am staring at. My back is turned to you, but I can feel you in the door way now, three and a half days late. You place yellow roses in my lap, for him, and I turn my head. I ask you to meet me in the waiting room in just a few minutes, dad's a light sleeper and he just fell asleep for the first time in-- you leave. My eyes shut again, this time not to black. The glare from the window makes everything white, red. My dad's lips are on my eyelids. My dad can feel my eyes moving beneath them, the warmth spilling down my cheeks. I open my eyes and my dad is still there. I open my eyes and my dad is still gone.

In the waiting room the magazine sits in front of you, cover facing down. I imagine:

Cole sits in the waiting room. In the stuffy room he feels itchy around his collar, his cuffs. This morning he put on the sweater Anna bought him but now regrets his choice. What did Cole think, that (even now) she would fawn over him, how the sweater matches his eyes? On the table before him sit magazines for homes and gardens with recipes and diets. He flips through the one magazine for men, months dated. Cole stumbles upon his own article, an interview in a Brooklyn bistro, the source of indigestion. Cole sees his picture doctored at the hand of some waiting person, a small, dark ring drawn around his finger. Cole shuts the magazine and puts it cover down on the table, feels his face burn and looks away.

I lied:
Doctors must learn to speak with non-threatening voices. We're sorry, Anna he says and I thank him, a habit. I place a phone call to the man with a smooth voice and cookie baking wife, let him know the arrangements will be needed in a few days. I return to the now crowded waiting room, sit between you and a stranger reading your interview unknowingly. I see the ring I had drawn on the page days earlier, when my dad was he is, rather than he was. Neither of us say anything. I rest my head on your shoulder.

work in progress/ a pantoum

2008-01-27T23:37:00.000-08:00

It was so kind of him to say we're not safe--
Coney Island sunrise four steps in sand.
The world moves every second.
A year ago I would have remembered.

Coney Island sunrise, four steps in sand.
This is a new world that we cooperate in
(a year ago I would have remembered.)
Make a promise, break it, fingers toward the water.

This is a new world that we cooperate in
so I swallow your secrets compacted in snow.
Make a promise, break it, fingers toward the water.
there's a space under breakers, facing the shore.

So I swallow your secrets compacted in snow
and say how strange the wheel is all covered in white.
There's a space under breakers, facing the shore,
kick hard legs bent against currents need.

Say how strange the wheel is all covered in white.
Now take it now take it now take it I can't
Kick hard legs bent against currents need.
And with what little instinct left: use the light.

Now take it now take it now take it I can't.
I once held you so close and so fragile
and with what little instinct left used the light.
It was the least attractive option available.

It was so kind of him to say we're not safe--
The world moves every second.

the story, followed shortly by the story I didn't tell

2008-01-23T10:21:00.001-08:00

Eight years old my hair was light and my teeth had jagged edges like babies changing to adults. Matt Robert lived on the other side of the fence and my oak tree planted from an acorn would drop leaves into his yard. I stood on the fence splinter palmed and watched the leaf piles build up in late September, imagined falling from the post into them and Matt Robert nowhere to be found. His hair sat stringy and his clothes hung gaping.
There was the bunny pen tucked into the corner, hidden under the thick branches. We had two: one black with a white stripe across the middle and the other white with big black rims around her eyes like make up. In the summer we would freeze water inside two liter bottles and bring them out to the bunnies panting in the heat. September brought relief and thicker coats.
On the fence near the ground was a path tunneled by Bogart the cat before I found him dead in my mother's closet. It went from my yard to Matt Robert's where there were less trees but it was closer to the field so it had more mice. Bogart would bring these mice to our doorstep, sometimes still half breathing, little offerings with big pink ears like paper twitching.
Now Matt Robert would use the hole to poke my ankles with sticks. He'd try to play paper rock scissors but I'd stomp on his hand and yell nuclear warhead I win! Matt Robert was always on my nerves, always breathing down my neck from his seat behind me on the bus, always pulling the bows out of my hair, always looking at me and Janie Causey from his hole in the fence. Olivia Osterhouse swore he gave her a mummified rat. At school he'd make up stories, said he was living in the sewers beneath the streets, thinking about sleeping in the fields once he got friendly enough with the coyotes.
It may have been October or it may have been April. It was a crisp morning--either dew or night time rain making everything wet. I went to feed the bunnies but there was a hole in their pen and only one bunny. The black one with a white stripe had disappeared over night and I ran and told my mother. We searched the entire backyard and found nothing. I don't remember now when I looked, but in the grass on the other side of the fence I found the bunny resting, fur slick, lacking dignity. I reached for her, pulled her back to my yard and held her in my hands. I could feel her skull halved, held together only by skin and fur so soft. I thought maybe she was still breathing, there were two labored gasps but my mother said no, no those are just nerves there's nothing we can do. But the bunny was looking at me, or at the treeline up above. I stroked her little bunny ears now reared, always to be reared.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I asked Caroline to marry me she said no so I asked why not and she said because Matt Robert you are weird and so then I asked her what I could do to make her want to marry me and she said well maybe if you grew your hair out real, real long, all the way down your back so you could sit on it so the next time my mom tried to cut my hair I ran outside and hid in the field and she gave up I guess because I didn't get another hair cut for a year until one day I heard Caroline and Janie laughing and I wasn't sure why they were or what could be so funny but I don't know it was one of those things where you just know you're the butt of the joke--I was always the butt of the joke with my outie belly button and my grass stained knees-- so that was it and I went inside and found my mom's scissors and I cut all my hair best I could and it fell to the ground in patches that I wanted to take and shove in Caroline's face, fill her throat with them, block out her eyes with them but I didn't I just fell asleep. The next day up before the sun had completely broke through the storm clouds I was in the back yard looking for salamanders when I found Caroline's bunny rabbit and I'm not sure what happened next-- I remember how calm it was (didn't run, only quivered with its nose and little lungs) and I remember reaching a point where I couldn't stop and couldn't go back I was just pushing it's face into the grass and it's little body struggled against me but my hands were bigger and my face was hot and there were no tears in my eyes and then it just cracked like something so fragile and everything was easy after that.

2008-01-23T00:20:00.000-08:00

I circle the house from my room in my sleep. Morning will bring pale blue light and a toe tapped kitchen, floor warm by the pipes and my mother in her robe.

I circle impatient the halls and the yards. I write your initials on book spines, put your name on my thigh before kneeling in prayer.

I circled the block four times to stop smiling five years ago. I didn't want my mother to know you had kissed me. She could smell your hands on mine she could smell your hands in my hair on my waist stop smiling stop smiling.

I circled your lap, your lap, your lap, your lap. I circled your lap when it was the only seat in the house and I knew my bones would hurt your legs and I knew what I felt when it started to rain.

I circled the cents spent and the senseless ways I pick fights and swallow a glass of water waiting beneath a top sheet of ice. The ice hits my teeth and it hurts. The phone doesn't ring and the sun is coming up.

I circled red-cheeked when I couldn't look up. Look up, look up! I didn't look up and you got in your car and you closed the door and you drove home and I laid on the rug in the middle of the room and my mother ran her fingers through my hair.

I circle all day and the paths are run down.

I circle all night above creaking floor boards.

I circle your name in her mouth. I circle your name in her mouth and she swallows it and now it is hers. I circle your name where it used to be mine.

I circle the place where my wrists were so soft.

I circle the place where I am no longer a girl.

I circle my own clumsy hands, dug deep into pockets. My mouth finds no place to sit.

I circle the days and the months since you called. December for you was warmer and bluer. Here the sky is mixed all sleet and gray.

I circled that morning when the horn honked and you squeezed tight, mouth open with sleep and eye lashes too long to be anything but right.

I circle each wave I can see from my window on a train cutting coast. I multiply and divide the distance between each wave, the distance between this island and you.

We circle the zoo and the names and the places we used to. We inch hands closer under sheets in the blue white glow.

You circle your breath in my ear when you lean in and whisper. We say nothing much but it cannot be heard.

I circle oldness and slant the cold. I look for green envelopes. You find red hairs in your car.

We circled the city on a ghost train and settled on the roof of a parking garage. We circled everything but and finished two bottles of water.

We circled Texas and ended with Brooklyn. More bridges, less bar-b-q pits.

I circle your name and swallow it whole.

if tempted

2008-01-17T14:36:00.001-08:00

pelicans will,
maybe.

the immensity of smallness

2008-01-17T14:20:00.000-08:00

Was it rain or dew this morning
turning things too wet for touch,
for holding? I saw the yarn yellow

and fence snared--all flagging
in the wind--untethered over
night, embodying an absence.

The rabbit cage had a hole
and one bunny too few. The
fence had been dug under

and in the grass on the other
side she rested slick, lacking
dignity. When I held her in

my hands I could feel
the skull halved, held together
only by skin and fur (so soft).

Her breaths still came out
labored and she blinked
twice in my lap as I stroked

her bunny ears, now reared
(always to be reared).

When I reached up for your
cheek turned face and felt
your neck strain against

my weight, autumn rolled
back over. There was a
tree bare branched. There

was a tree relieved of
leaves. Weight shifting
in the wind, it did not

bemoan those fallen,
but whistled.

The Mountain

2007-12-17T14:37:00.000-08:00

The climb took more than we thought and from the top we could see the breadbasket. We pushed into a place where the air spread out and our lungs shrunk--we could feel it happening. Our ribs like the birdcage under a blanket in your attic with the white bird still inside, throat sore from silent singing.

There's Alaska. Better yet, Russia--ignore the compass. We ditch our coats. We made better sons and daughters at sea level. Our hands were filmy from sorted laundry and produce purchased. A conclusion: posture does not improve with altitude. We gain nothing but yards and a walking stick.

I took a picture and on the back I wrote I'm sorry. I'm sorry because I am happy. I left you there feeling like you were in outer space. Maybe. You asked for this because everything feels easier. Your limbs were curling like the first time you came only this time I won't look.

Lions with Curls

2007-12-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

How is it that a bird sits centered in memory, but the cage and the living room and the color of a mother's robes have faded to sepia? Remember on the shelf a mug that said Trafalgar Square in red. For nine months it was the bus stop. Now no lions can impress.

I found missing letters for green envelopes; found international polaroids. Statues blur at high speeds--a caption reads is this the only time they move? Don't send me anything more ce sera le dernier. Hear that heartbeat underwater. Through pipes I can feel the ocean just two-hundred feet away. I press my ear to the waves that are born between this island and yours and there must be millions.

An ocean between like this: I sit on the phone as the sun rises and wait as the transatlantic static collects like creeping buttercups in the alley, like Hare's foot clover in my Soho, in your Soho.

Four Flashes

2007-12-06T14:39:00.000-08:00

Four flashes find us mislead. Haircuts locate: bangs (Coney Island) or hat (left for dead in Chicago) or dark (our time overseas.) Can you think of anything past kissing me on the cheek?

If you would turn ninety degrees you'd see the balcony's edge with cherub guarded lamp posts. A river separates the Old City from the Older. Was Florence really that white or was it the high(er) contrast? Were your hands really that cold or am I inserting something borrowed, something blue?

Let's resort to petty crimes to remember the times. I'll take the menu from Dante's cafe if you toss the spilled salt over your shoulder. I wish pockets were made to hold wine but all I can fit is the grapes. Put a penny in the fountain and hope for squarer jaw lines.

I cannot sleep under such painterly skies. This crux feels more honest when you yell into the canals and curse this sinking pit. You say you won't miss me and you won't. Please, let's close the red curtain and pick the blue background and show our veins. Hold still--I don't want to remember you moving.

Precipitation and a Man Can Fall from any Angle and Land

2007-12-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

Mine were the first footsteps in the snow. Your stone legs bent, your hands on waist. There was no head, only your body climbing out of the frame. Like the view, memory cuts out and is a little leaning to the left. Somewhere in the world it is summer, spoke through bare tree branches. Somewhere in the world it is night and somewhere--

As a species we have little instinct left. Feel the ground through tremble lips. Watch with your ears, hear from which direction a train is coming.

We Three

2007-12-03T14:34:00.000-08:00

We three boys sit legs criss-crossed on the brown grass. Leaf shadows make blotches on the ground and the house and our memory's landscape. Please let's not play war Ma said with twig gun in hand, pine cone grenades shoved down pockets. If Pa were here we'd be building kites out of newspaper or touching tadpoles, screaming at the slime. If Pa were here we'd be grass stained, we'd be sulfur handed from firecrackers.

We three boys wear matching white hats and in the summer we plant gardens to honor our father, grow vegetables to feed our mother. Memory goes like this: an image piled on top of another image, different but only slightly. Is nothing still and silent? Shoot, bang, fire; shootbangfire.

We three boys lie in the grass, face down. Mother says casualties is a terrible game, but we compete to see who can stay so still, who can trick the enemy. We're not really dead, Ma: we're only practicing.

proof

2007-12-03T14:32:00.000-08:00

It is in a candid cheek kiss, subjects still overcoated, blocking the entrance to the party. The lady wears a hat (now ladies never wear hats) and the man's white neck tie is only visible in the shadows. Ascots and feathers and molding trimmed ceilings; pearl earrings, Jacquard skirts peeking from beneath swing coats.

She asked if it was real, as her mother sat brushing the soft curls into her hair. She asked about Father and dinner parties before there were record players. Now, now.

Left going in, again (always, forever, amen), when the boy with freckles held down the shutter and lit up the room with a light unlike the soft yellow overhead. Shoved in deepest pockets, no peeks promised, a hidden message developing in the dark.

Found in the corner, in his scrawl--proof, a one-line drawing by fingernail. White as the Monday morning they met when he told her of the waves he bore into, of the spices bought on coasts with no maps.

D.

2007-12-03T14:26:00.000-08:00

Paper provides a father, or, more accurately, a man standing in the road, almost turned away. What else could he be? A man of charity, donating red hair, green eyes, a stubborn will, a sorry stomach, and a second toe longer than the first.

Honor and valor and maps and sea journals. My mother kept a box over the doorway, next to the wreath and ornaments, labeled D. (an initial I mistook for decorations until one Thanksgiving I opened it to find the flag, folded ceremoniously). Now it could be for Dylan, as I read on your papers, or Dad, as I never got to call you, or Dead, as you have always been to me.

In history I learn all about you, the millions of you, try to find your face in the mud or the sticks. I pore over your pages from the island's jungles, read about the natives and the malaria. What was it really like when the elephants marched through your camp? Were the tusks threatening or did they gleam in the sun, like the bait you and your father used for flounder in the sound?

Did you know that the clearing you came to, described so meticulously ("A white palace glints miles ahead, but it could be footsteps for all I know. The sun keeps shooting through the branches, I miss Lydia we smell like shit we eat bugs ") would be the place a bullet would rip through your stomach, would be the place you'd lie down?

I learn that photography is the process of recording pictures by means of capturing light, chemical information that develops as lines into an image we recognize. It is the art in science, in sentiment, in strangers connected by chemistry.

point of view

2007-12-01T14:31:00.000-08:00

1. It's my first bathroom without a window. It's our first bathroom as man and wife. The pipes heat up the small steamy room and I have to blow dry the mirror to get past the fog. I've grown accustomed to these new things, to my naked morning routine. I was never one for being naked, I'm still not, but the heaters on have made this bathroom a steam room. I'm standing in front of the mirror and I'm almost done with my routine. Last is where I trim the split ends. This is new too. I have found new ways to deal with my new life and I am surprised that it involves the eradication of split ends. I can hear Paul in the hallway, shifting his weight. I can see his little shadow in the crack under the door. Paul is wearing his navy robe and he wants to shave and shower before Jane arrives. I don't feel guilty for making the bathroom steamy and I don't feel guilty for trimming my split ends and I don't feel guilty for calling Jane Jane and not Mom. These things are natural. Being a good wife is not in my nature. A good wife would walk out of the bathroom and stop cowering. A good wife would give her husband a kiss on the cheek. A good wife would please for Christ's sake call her mother-in-law Mom.
I think sometimes I test Paul because I wait for his knock and his soft, Oregon, non-confrontational voice, "Hey hun, you okay? I need the shower and Mom will be here in half an hour."
I open the door, still naked. Man and wife have hardly anything special between them. There is a pot of coffee on the table by the morning paper. I used to read the paper front to back. I used to skim it even. Then for a while I got the idea what the headlines where referring to. Now it's all these stories I am out of touch with. It could be the news from another century, for all I know.
"Hey babe," Paul says. "When you trim those hairs could you please rinse them down the sink?"
"Sure," I say. "Sorry." This is a weekly exchange.
I walk through the living room into our little bedroom with the too firm mattress and the closet for the both of us. I slip on a soft sweater dress and the boots I wore the night we met. I've been trying to wear them as much as possible lately. After I have the baby they won't fit, at least that's what my sister told me to expect. I'm curling my eye lashes when I hear the buzzer.
"Paul, she's here," I say, sticking my head into the bathroom. I'm waiting for his directions, like I don't know how to let somebody in. "I'll buzz her up, okay?"
"Great," he says from the shower. "I'll be out in just a minute." This is probably true, the water is turned off. I don't understand people who towel off inside the shower. People who towel off inside the shower were never an archetype for me until I became a cohabitant.
I press the door button, not realizing until afterwards that a friendly "Hi!" would have been appropriate. Judging from delivery boys, the journey between the front door and our doorstep is between 45 seconds to one minute. Jane is getting up there, so it'll be closer to one minute. Paul dashes from the bathroom to the bedroom, his short hair almost dry. I hear the knock at the door and my stomach turns to knots. It makes me even worse when that happens now, it doesn't seem good for the baby.
I open the door with a smile and hug Jane or Mom and take her coat and hat and gloves. Her cheeks are flushed and her glasses are foggy, but she looks happy to be here the poor thing. As I'm putting her things in the closet, I pull out my coat and hat and gloves.
"I forgot english muffins Paul will be out any minute have a seat," I say in one breath, before she has a chance to argue. Neither of us care about english muffins and Paul has a wheat allergy. I step outside to the first snow of the year. It's eight a.m. on a holiday and the street is empty. Cars are hiding beneath blankets of white and the only footsteps on the sidewalk are Mom's, heading in the opposite direction as mine.

2. My days start in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee. Hannah used to be next to me, sipping her cup as we looked out the window at the skyline through branches. Now she wakes before me, leaves me standing by the bathroom door in the morning blue dark of the hallway. There is a thin rectangle of yellow light coming out around the door. Hannah, I miss her and her wide mouth and the secrets we used to keep. I feel the hot air pouring out from behind the closed door; I didn't think being a husband would mean closed doors. But that is romantic, I guess. My wife is her own person with her own secrets and her own time in the mornings. She has her own time this morning especially. I knock on the door, say, "Hey hun, you okay? I need the shower and Mom will be here in half an hour." I can't stand confrontation.
The door swings open to her, naked (which is still exciting), and she breezes past me into the living room. She smells a fresh sort of soft, like baby's hair. I want to touch her. I need to shower and shave.
In the bathroom she's left a mess. Little hairs cover the counter, sink, and floor. Sometimes I feel like she's my sister.
"Hey babe," I say. "When you trim those hairs could you please rinse them down the sink?"
"Sure," she says. "Sorry."
We both know nothing will change.
I do the same thing every day. I shave dry and then I take a shower. I wash my face then my hair then my body. I am done in less than five minutes. In this time I think about the day at work ahead of me or the assignments I have to do or the conversations to have with Hannah or the phone calls home to make. Today Mom comes in for the holiday. It's our first year without Dad and my first year as a husband. I towel off and wish Hannah would tell me whatever it is she is keeping. I hate confrontation.
She peeks her head into the bathroom. "Paul, she's here,"she says. There's a pause. Have you let her in? I'm about to say. "I'll buzz her up," she says.
I scramble in the bathroom, throw my robe over my back and run into the bedroom. Hannah looks pretty in a dress and her favorite boots. I think I'll wear my sweater that matches. From the other room I hear the door open. Hannah sounds sweet, like the girl I met, and my mother sounds tired. It's a long train ride from the suburbs, I don't know how she got up early enough. There is a short exchange followed by the door opening and shutting. I step into the living room to see my mother sitting alone on the sofa. I sit down next to her.
"Hannah will be right back," she says.
"Sure," I say. "Sorry."
We both know nothing will change.

3. I wake up without an alarm each morning at 5:30 a.m. I eat a bowl of oatmeal, take a shower, and get dressed for my day. Today I drive my car to the train station and board the first city bound express of the day. On the train a mother and daughter sit across from me. The mother is telling the daughter all about how to behave at Uncle Robin's house. Tomorrow, right after breakfast, they will go to the shopping mall to visit Santa Claus. The daughter has never done this before. Yes, there will be elves there. No, no reindeers they like it better in the North Pole. It's too warm down here.
I exit the train and walk out of the downtown station into the street. Fat snowflakes are falling. I hail a cab. It's a fifteen minute drive to their apartment. They still don't know what neighborhood they live in. I'd like to find out so I can tell my girl friends at Bunko Night. I'm a little early--the streets are deserted because of the snow. I pay the nice cab driver and ring their doorbell. I can see my breath in the air fogging up my glasses each time I exhale. The door buzzes letting me in and I walk the two flights of stairs up to my son's apartment. I knock on the door and my daughter-in-law answers. She is not the prettiest girl my son has dated, but she was the kindest. She smiles and takes my coat, hat, and gloves. I remember the pumpkin muffins I had made. They're sitting on the kitchen counter. I knew I would forget something.
Hannah too has forgotten something and steps outside. I try to tell her that all the shops are closed, but she is down the stairs before I can. The two have a beautiful little apartment, not as small as I was told to expect but again not as big as they deserve. I hope they don't live here when they start a family. There is never any quiet, never any privacy. The children would be so frightened by a dark black silent night by the time they experienced one.
I sit on the sofa and wait. My son comes out of his room, shirt untucked, pants uncreased, defeated.

harmony arms

2007-11-13T14:27:00.000-08:00

Harmony arms come for me through open windows, lace the streets with their gentle swooping reach. Harmony arms come for me through his mouth, cracked with sleep and only, bound for the holy.

The moment I met him all dear hands
behind desk, head hatted, typewriter typing not paper but
ribbons only wider, made of gold and of childhood sparkling,
spilling onto the floor out into the streets as if--

He was born all instinct, inborn, three o'clock in the morning.
He was born in a clearing, harmony arms took him to a clearing
Fog in sheets streamed through panes of glass, occurring on the minute.

Woke up at sundown to
hair tussled, fingernail palmed.
Don't know daylight but still
hopeful--trait nothing short of hereditary.

Consider this:
belly up, ceiling watch for branches to
scale limb by limb, each one a do, a re, a mi
fa, so, la, ti, do not know when to stop. Twig
scratched arm map-- I want it tonal or sonic
on your harmony arms.

Hold something, the smallest souvenir (a freckle or fa).
Lose it.

2007-10-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

Woke up with fever
in Wilmington by the bay

and watched as you
pressed nearer

Night before was a
gleaming on the shore

when the tide kicked up
all that we had made

Warm weather holding--this
home twitches with want

Hotel room dreaming
as you, as you pressed

I swore last winter when
snow on your scarf melted--

a snowflake made what followed:

i like it right there
good, it's you

And maybe this is it--
as the tide kicked up

as the tide kicked up what
is was were am are being been

2007-10-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

I lost your thread. No, I mean I lost your yarn trying to give the army another parachute while we fought. We fought out in the woods. Well, it's not lost. I know where it is. Up in the tree with the battalion of troops. But the Cat's Tail is swatting at them and the crows are planning an assault. Let's form a rescue mission and save them from freezing in the wilderness (assuming they didn't already starve to death). This is how you execute a rescue mission:
1) Determine if the scene is safe and call 911 if not in a wilderness setting. Well great this is war and we're in the woods.
2) Determine if the injured person is breathing and pinch their nose shut while giving two long slow breaths.
No, sorry. I'm wrong. This is CPR. We need a rescue mission. I guess there are no strategies. Look, if you go get your scissors, I'll get the ladder from the shed. We need to bring these boys home. We need to bring these boys home and we need to bring your yarn home.

After that, we'll celebrate with lunch. I asked around and these are the requests I could hear:
1) Peanut butter and honey with little banana slices on toast.
2) A hot dog with mustard only and some wavy potato chips.
3) No thanks
4) Ham and cheese please
5) A BLT, but with turkey bacon because it is better for you.

Be careful though, won't you? Don't go snooping around in the dirt. Ma says to look out for the--what does she call them? Radishes. Look out for the radishes planted when my grandpa was a boy. No, he didn't plant them. Ma says the people who marched through our fields, the bad ones, they planted them and that the seeds have not died yet, not even through all the winters and all the droughts. Ma says they are asleep deep down in the dirt and they can sprout explosive any minute.

moments of perception

2007-10-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

1. In the subway, a young girl is asleep in her stroller, legs sprawled showing her underwear. Children can get away with anything. She has one shoe on, the other sits in her lap. I am too old to pass out on the subway and show my underwear to the car and have only one shoe on. When a child does this, it is precious. When a grown woman does it, it is a drinking problem.

2. I lie down in the bath tub, flinch as the water seeps inside my ears. I remember doing the same thing as a girl, and I remember hearing the tip tap of my heart once all the water stopped sloshing. Only now I don't hear anything other than a far off disturbance. I've never experienced a stampede, but I imagine this is the sound they make from a distance. I think about the things I've never: eaten lobster, watched an opera, had a seizure, learned a language other than my tongue, been to any country other than my own, seen any coast other than my own, endured any serious lasting want other than loneliness. Upon further thought, the distant rushing I hear under water is the blood inside of me.

3. I am on hold, calling in sick to work. This is a time when I am actually sick, and I know my hoarse voice sounds fake. The manager asks when I think I'll feel better. I am feverish and shivering and throwing up and this is the point in being sick when one cannot remember how being healthy feels. Likewise, once health improves, one cannot remember the pain of the stomach ache.

Cumulonimbus

2007-10-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

Shadows on my face cast long under the white lights of the gas station. We're stopped on a dark strip of country road and the dust is all kicked up behind us and far ahead it's a stoplight or tail lights, either way I feel almost spooked swallowing thick summer air. This gas station is the kind without attendants where you just pay at the pump, with some vending machines and an air pump under the lamp post. You and me don't have any curfew because it's June, and in June we can crawl into bed together under a gauzy sheet and my mom won't say anything and your parents are never in town to say anything either. I lean against the door, turn my back on you in the passenger seat, turn my back on your hand which hadn't touched my wrists in four years and my legs never. I want you to be looking out your window at some trees, but I can feel your eyes on my back turned, and so I crack the car door open but just smile. I do that sometimes; I don't have words only smiles, and it's so strange to me even after all night that when you open your mouth it's for me.

Victory of Samothrace

2007-10-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

Speaking can sometimes be the most violent act between two people. Like the time you opened your mouth and my arms fell off. It was strange because you opened your mouth and my arms fell off and we were not dreaming, or I was not asleep.

There was that time in France when the front was drawing nearer and they had to empty the museums. And Winged Victory was inched down the steps from her throne, wings trembling, as if each thousand particle were a threat. Men wept, thinking Surely, we will never see her again.

And then there's you at the end of the hall, dark in between but behind you there is light-- suffusive and warm like memory. Or there's you, five hours in the future always riding buses over bridges that are older than my city. Or there's you, airport crowds parting to back turned. Or you, the creases in your palm, folding into mine like little prayers.

Greece never found her head, never found her arms. Scholars say maybe she was holding a trumpet to her mouth shouting victory. I can't see anything but the wings, trembling.