Poetry
She places her hand on the table,
fingers splayed, and I am tracing
the shape of her hand with
my fingertip, as if it were a merchantman
navigating the harbors and bays
of a peninsular quintet:
where shall I berth? The cape of her
index, the horn of her thumb, the
shore of her slender wrist?
I am a lost captain wandering
from one ivory cliff-shelf to the next.
Your mother wrung her hands
at the kitchen table, said,
Honey, you ought not keep that retard baby.
Your doctor frowned at his clipboard,
flipped papers to avoid your eyes, said
In all likelihood, he’s never gonna talk. I’m sorry.
Your husband slammed the storm door, said
I ain’t signed up to raise no freak,
and you’ve never seen him since.
Never wanted to.
Thirty years later,
your son grins at you,
gap-toothed,
after singing in the Easter choir.
His knob-knuckled hands flutter,
grasping at spasms of joy,
and you can’t help but think
that the best he can do,
little as it may be,
is more effort of love
than those unfaithful people
could muster up for him.
Fuck what broken people say
about what a whole child can be.
Fuck what broken people say
about people they think are broken.
I wake craving coffee
and you, warm cupful of you,
wakeful pot full of you,
daybreak you, stirring you,
integral step
of my morning ritual you.
Here is grace:
Calm in the earthquake.
Sway when the earth shudders.
Release your pain,
let it seep from your pores
pour from your fingertips,
and stand in the rain,
and wash your pain
into the shuddering earth.
Here is grace:
Cool in the flames
of your own design.
You are all you choose to be.
You are all you desire.
Kindle your pain fire
with dry-plucked reeds
and warm the seeds
you planted in the shuddering earth.
Here is grace:
Breath in the stifle.
The gentle release of lungs filled
with pain charged with hope.
Rustle the stems,
motion releases transformation:
pain seed flower air,
a gift of grace and care
from and to the shuddering earth.
This morning, the sun on the porch
is just the cool side of warm,
and the little hula girl on the patio table
drinks light and shimmies her toy hips
while the crows bicker about us,
while the cats curl through our legs
and I tell you about yellow ginko leaves
and why they remind me of you.
You aren’t here, not today.
Today, you tell me you are imaginary.
You are a wisp of an image
swaying like the hula girl
in the steam that curls
off my coffee cup,
and vanishes just as quick
but I wish you were.
I imagine the spring light
in your wild hair, the music you make,
the poetry you fill my mouth with,
my fingers and my mouth,
I imagine my mouth
full of yellow ginko, full of your tongue.
If I imagine you
real, would you be real?
Be real, so I can tell you of the poem
I’ve picked out for your hip.
Be real, so I can translate the debate
and bicker of crows to you.
Be real, unbrushed and wild, be real
so when I cease to imagine and start to long,
you are what my fingers can grasp.
I dreamt you were a honeycomb,
and I plucked bees out of
your sticky hexagonal cells
and popped them into my mouth
like striped, juicy candies.
I savored each exoskeletal crunch,
the gush of honey meat
beneath thorax and abdomen,
final plaintive plunge of
sticker-stinger into swollen tongue
and gum: you taste like fire feels.
I have put a Worry Eater on your bookshelf,
right beside your favorite books.
It may look like a simple wooden box,
but don’t be fooled: it is a Worry Eater
and the disguise is just so random visitors will
not know what it is and try to take it from you.
Worry Eaters are very rare and coveted things.
I should think the name should be self-explanatory,
but you must feed it daily in order
to keep your Worry Eater happy and full.
Feeding it is simple:
open the lid and whisper your worries in,
or write them on little scraps of paper
(lined college-ruled will do,
but the margins of old poems
make a special treat if you want
to do something nice for your Worry Eater.)
Some people may tell you,
“Don’t worry, everything will be alright,” but these people
do not have a hungry Worry Eater waiting at home,
so you can just smile coyly at them and say, “Yes,
you’re right,” and then go home and whisper
your secret worries to your secret Worry Eater.
In this dream,
you are the Sun,
and I am little Mercury.
I just ask
you let me
orbit as close
as I can.
I know
touching you
would set my
skin on fire.
We nest in waystations,
half split between lairs,
two larva devouring each other
to become a single beast.
We meet.
We crash desperate —
no hesitation before we
skin ourselves and unhinge.
This is the monster of us:
a spider of limbs, a knot of pythons.
We have too many teeth
and too many nails.
We are Chimera.
We predator and prey ourselves.
We crush sex until it pops,
a bubble red and full
of throbbing. We writhe wet
into each other. Too hot,
too steam, too slick —
we are half circles fulling,
fused at crown of mouth
and tangled genital root.
We suck air and thrust
swallows of fire down
into our needy belly.
We have a beard full of blood.
We have a throat raw,
a vessel wrestled empty.
One mouth gasps, the other growls,
we hoard our clenches; we worry
holes into our shoulders to stash them in.
We slip free, we scrabble back.
One mouth wails, the other shushes.
Your mouth
holds the night,
a dark full berry
in little white teeth:
bite down slow,
burst stars, juice black.