Poetry 365

in see, in captaincy
in collar, see. in carpenter.

the fathering. in senate
the reckoning, in senate

this is the hole in your roof.
this is the bed you carry on your back.

this is the usual undoing.
the fathering, upon the undoing.

this is walking, heel and toe
this is walking on toes.

this is passing lip to lip and hand to hand
this is your pretty clothes, she knows

in starts and phrases. starts, and in dispraise
and in habit being like and being unlike.

broken wires
tubes
and rusty needles
in the nose
mouth
and penis.

on the forehead
misleading like a star
dullard or burnt-out bulb

in the spiraling wriggles
of the intestine
the putrid stench
of missing dreams

in sleep
when heavy footsteps come
and give key
it wakes up
grinding worn-out cogs

in the eye-wells,
the spinal passes
the skull-sky
at the bottom of the stomach

tongue-tied
and unable to down a drop of water
like the steel grandpa
who lay bedridden
for yet another lifetime.

Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,
Tiny explosions at the water lines,
And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.

It is the morning. The country has slept the whole winter.
Window seats were covered with fur skins, the yard was full
Of stiff dogs, and hands that clumsily held heavy books.

Now we wake, and rise from bed, and eat breakfast—
Shouts rise from the harbor of the blood,
Mist, and masts rising the known of wooden tackle in the sunlight.

Now we sing and do tiny dances on the kitchen floor.
Our whole body is like a harbor at dawn;
We know that our master has left us for the day.

A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.

A process in the eye forewarns
The bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.

A darkness in the weather of the eye
Is half its light; the fathomed sea
Breaks on unangled land.
The seed that makes a forest of the loin
Forks half its fruit; and half drops down,
Slow in a sleeping wing.

A weather in the flesh and bone
Is damp and dry; the quick and dead
Move like two ghosts before the eye.

A process in the weather of the world
Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child
Sits in their double shade.
A process blows the moon into the sun,
Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin;
And the heart gives of its dead.

All of Paris must have been away on holiday
when Pascal said that men are not happy
because they are incapable of staying in their rooms.

It is the kind of thought that belongs in a room,
sealed off from the vanities of the world,
polished roadsters, breasts, hunting lodges,
all letdowns in the end.

But imagine Columbus examining the wallpaper,
Magellan straightening up the dresser,
Lindbergh rearranging some magazines on a table.

Not to mention the need for everyday explorations,
the wandering we do, randomly as ants,
when we rove through woods without direction
or allow the diagram of a foreign city to lead us
through long afternoons of unpronounceable streets.

Then we are like children in playgrounds
who are discovering the art of running in circles
as if they were scribbling on the earth with their bodies.

We die only when we run out of footprints.
Then the biographers move in to retrace our paths,
enclosing them in tall mazes of lumber
to make our lives seem more complex, more arduous,
to make our leaving the room seem heroic.

True as the circumference
to its center. Woodscreek Grocery,
Rockbridge County. Twin boys
peer from the front window, cheeks
bulging with fireballs. Sandplum trees
flower in clusters by the levee. She
makes a knot on the inside knob
and ties my arms up
against the door. Williamsburg green.
With a touch as faint as a watermark.
Tracing cephalon, pygidium, glabella.

The heat is deafening
and obliterates distance
until all the panting
ghosts are here
haunting the water faucet,
baring their ectoplasm to
the hard-worked refrigerator.
Nipples galore rise
from the otherworld.
The fans churn and the open-mouthed
unlucky birds stuck
without relief scrap it out
over a few withered blossoms.
Fuck you, the world says.
I’m in here,
too sucked of love to dream.
For a few days a bobcat took
to sunning himself on the roof
of our house. So we prayed
as we entered and prayed as
we left. Fuck you,
sweet dry world, omen and
famine.

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved
in her laughter and being part of it, until her
teeth were only accidental stars with a talent
for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps,
inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally
in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by
the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter
with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading
a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty
green iron table, saying: “If the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden,
if the lady and gentleman wish to take their
tea in the garden …” I decided that if the
shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of
the fragments of the afternoon might be collected,
and I concentrated my attention with careful
subtlety to this end.

I believe I could have saved him.
What he wanted was easy: the poured
sweet wine of encouragement. A smile.

In another life he might have grown
a comfortable margin of flesh, he might
have kept all his teeth and been spared

translation into the skeleton’s cage.
I would have kept an eye on him,
fed him with words passed like bread

broken into a confession of trust.
I would have revealed my own fast,
my own body ribboned into syllables

of bone. I would have untied
the sad bow of his mouth
looped and knotted for a kiss.

I like the parts of you
that are not the parts of me,
the furry paws of your knees
and the angular metal of your upper arm.
So often I turn to touch softness
and find taut rope and hard glass.

My body stretches elastic
to meet and hold forum
with the hollow of your back.
I crawl under your thorny face
and find moist refuge.

In such moments
I forget your bones and fingernails.
I surrender to the mud that moves with us,
sinking and rising
in the steam that is our common element.