Tag Archives: gabriel gadfly

She asks me, “Is there any advice
you can give to someone who
wants to have a poet’s heart?”

First, find the poet of your choice.
Subdue them. There are many ways:
drugs, perhaps, although be sure
to choose ones that won’t damage
the various atria and ventricles
of your poet’s heart.

If drugs are
too illicit for your tastes, consider
seduction, an abundance of alcohol,

or what my father would call
ball-peen anesthetic.

Next, you will need a cardiologist
with a questionable ethical character
and a mostly-clean operating room:

I hear you can get a great deal
on them in Brazil or maybe Colombia.
And of course, you will need a
very sharp scalpel and a jar.

You will need a large glass jar
to keep your poet’s heart in,
so you can pull it off the shelf
from time to time and admire it.

Incidentally, you might give some
thought to what you will do with your poet
when you have claimed his or her heart:

a heartless poet tends to sour
and really isn’t good for anything at all.

I have caught the dog
by the scruff of her neck.
I have her by a fistful of fur
and she strains
and she yelps and she growls
at the coil of scales
half-hidden in dead leaves.

My father has gone inside
to fetch his pistol
and I am waiting,
I watch the snake
and it watches me.

The stony slit-eyes narrow.
The tongue spears the air,
tastes the dog, tastes
the cold sweat under my arms.
The fangs are hidden in the mouth
and I am trying to remember
the length of the strike,
to gauge the distance between
my body and venom,

but my brain is buzzed,
the sound of the shaking tail
like a thousand hungry locusts:
it sets the teeth, it raises the hackles,
it says I am angry and frightened
and I bite! I bite!

and then Crack! Crack!,
my father has put
a pair of ragged holes
in the serpent’s head.

— I must still hold the dog,
until the shovel blade
clips the head from
the body still writhing,
until the head is buried
and can no longer bite,
and then I can let go.

I count the rattles,
one, two, three
thirteen in all,
and a body longer than I am tall.

This spring afternoon,
the sun through the windows
warms old barn-beam shelves
and glass jars full of spices
with names like small poems:

pink peppercorn, red saffron,
turmeric and star anise,
and bulbs of blooming teas,
of jasmine and globe amaranth,
yellow osmanthus
ready to steep and unfurl.

The owner is writing
the spice of the month
on a chalkboard so old I think
it must have been salvaged from
some one-room schoolhouse
of a bygone era.

(tart sumac, cherry-dark,
measured out in little hills
on squares of brown paper,
if you’re wondering)

There is a sacred quiet here,
an honest stillness,
like a prayer you can taste
in the fragrant heat of
cinnamon and dried chiles,
in bold cumin and mustard,
in every tiny seed of fennel
and black sesame.

After dancing all night,
you left open the bathroom door.
I can see parts of you in the mirror.
I watch you unpaint yourself.

You stand at the sink, unbloused,
you remove the tiny baubles
of your earrings, you remove your pearls.
You take the pins from your hair,
you let it tumble down —
I wish I were the shadow of your hair,
full of the fatal scent of you,
guilty of tangles, guilty of a murmur
on your shoulder, your neck.

You wet a cloth.
You wipe away blush and eyeliner,
cleanse foundation and contour,
dark mascara,
the sinful deep rose of your lips.
You confess your skin,
you whisper the truth of your skin.

You step out of your heels,
tired ball and arch of your feet
uncradled and returned to cool tile.
You tiptoe from view

into the hot susurrus of the shower,
and leave me only with imagination:
I imagine you, enveloped in downpour,
in suds, in scents of sandalwood and wild orange.
I imagine you sponge away sweat and perfume,
soap and heat tumbling out of the dark
confession of your hair.

I imagine all places you wash:
hungry rib and live collarbone,
kindled breast and hot belly,
thigh, fevered vulva,
imagine my hands as washrags,
my hands as steam.

I cannot wait for you to finish.
I lie and listen to you bathe,
I am tense with desire for you.

Bring your body back to me,
its blemishes uncovered,
its shape adored sans adornment,
let me untowel you,
let me lick the cleanliness from your spine.

I want you without decoration,
without pigments or jewels,
only with the red flowers
only with the purple gems
my mouth will paint on your skin.

You go inside for more drinks,
and I wander your garden.

You have left it to weed over.
Old perennials suck desperate
at the slums of the soil.
A plastic windmill sways
on a rusty stem, one vane lost.
All the rest hang their faded heads.

I found a fat Buddha
in a tangled flower bed;
hands upturned,
he invites the seasons back,
ever the optimist;
he laughs even as a vine
wraps her hands around his neck.

I’d like to reincarnate this garden.
I’d like to pull up
the clotbur and the crabgrass,
lay down fertile new soil,
plant dozens of little bombs
ready to explode in spring.

I’d scrub fat Buddha
and let him breathe. I’d fix the windmill,
I’d make barren into beautiful

but when you wobbled back,
with drinks in your hands,
I decided I always try
to fix wasted gardens,
and not this time, not this time.