questions

plump, vacant-faced
she keeps one hand on her wedding ring
anxious lest I demand it

Her husband stays close, his breath
expands and contracts
to fill the space around her

I want to be mute
not ask the questions
who, how many, how long, with what

type the words as she says them
feel the need to apologize
--this will help your case

she stares, doesn't care
still relives it on every hour
who, how many, how long, with what

the ingenue

Zahra was the ingenue
chained to her daughter's hand
mother and father all at once
Offering the girl juice, crayons
until she forgot (as children do)
the neighbor boy's assault

Zahra sat across from me
idoneous against painted cement
sniffed without a tissue
while she spoke of war, rape, death
and not having money
for the metro ride home

I put my nails into my palms
selfishly I dreamed
of bleeding out for her
for Zahra in a donated blue sweater
for Zahra in another life
drinking starbucks in the suburbs

the professor

All the students were
deep, half-mad in love
with the tweed-wearing, swearing
bespectacled Greek professor.

He slouched forward from the edge of the desk
roaring "lie to me!"
while he lectured them on
international humanitarian disasters.

Invited the students to his house
beguiled them with imported scotch.
Later, after the locals went home,
sang Greek love songs and fingered his guitar.

The students got into taxis
smelling his cigar on their lapels, hearing
waves come up past the garden
of some implausible Greek isle.

One night I joined them in Odeon
he disdained international courts
sneered at the tribunals, and all the students
tried desperately to match his derision.

Went to his house to catalogue his books
shelf after shelf, while he
brewed the finest espresso and shared
his beloved cigarettes with me.

He had turned on the radio and he moped
while a voice read fairytales in Greek.
Looked out the window at the Nile
and let off a congenial stream of curses.

All the students, he said. I am,
always will be, a professor. Like he read
my mind, the words I didn't dare say:
Why haven't you gone back home?

heart's winter

Be still in the winter of the heart.
Learn the climate
Learn the rhythm of earth asleep
Learn the earthworms deep, deep under
Learn the sky, in retreat
Learn the sun in chill mourning
and the trees, each alone and naked in glory,
unsure if blood will come back to their roots,
meditating on the leaves that could be
if they survive.
In the winter of your heart, gather your stillness
store it up for that noisy spring to come.
Store up dark dead earth
drink, swallow that helpless sky.
Learn the myriad of white, the hunger of gray
learn it for those too-bright days
which will surely come too-bright and too-brief.
Now all is dim and eternal, an omen of the ether.
Be still now, still in the heart's winter.

and still smile

I have seen you, oh I have seen you
I have had eyes like stars, scattered
around worlds, scattered through bodies
felt your skin through tree bark
through grasses and winds, I have known you.
Unlocked a place in you,
pulled open a wide door behind which
there is only truth.
I have swallowed
up your truth, spun it into gold
cast it back into your arms,
I have done all this, and still smile.
I have broken through the dry earth of your
bones, the layered skin of your callouses,
the soft belly beneath that you cover.
In, in, I have poured my cordial
in, in, I have looked, and seen.
I have wrapped you in competing winds
I have whispered to you from a tiny urge
when you walked our road at night, but did
not know it. I have hallowed your footsteps
I have preserved your memories
I have flowed past you, a stream, when your lips
cracked with heat. All this I have done,
and still smile. 

bewilderment

The big cat stretches all the length
of the wood and shakes. Puma, the sign says
an advertisement for a bewildering idea. Be wild.
Be wildernized, euthanized, be meant.
The paws are
the size of my face, and carpeted. No where
to go, so another sleep. The cat snuffs, twists,
piles itself into a corner.
Gets up because there is noise-- the little cat next door is feeding.
Is that your baby? I ask.
The big cat turns and turns, looks at me with derision
shrugs shoulders. Not anymore. Not anymore.
Puts her face up to the wire,
licks, grips, chews
and the little cat can't come closer because
of the harness. Well. In the wild, in wilderness
you'd have a hard life, and maybe your baby
would be dead, I offer. The big cat shrugs,
blinks. You silly human. Once they left open the
door of the cage,
and I didn't leave. The cage itself has
nothing to do with my captivity.

fetish

I was allowed my little ways
when my toes were painted, and
out in the yard they picked up
moss bricks daddy-long-legs
I picked up
the speckled sun and sniffed it.

Turned your crime into my charm.
No one ever told me
what is the cure for all this--
what the cure might be for smoke
born in the lungs
and screwed on black glass eyeballs,
eyes made that never could see the sun.

Yet not a spindle in view,
not mother not demon not nymph
So. Screw off these eyeballs, put in
the new citrus leaves,
waxed monstrous impenetrable organs
they are. When they catch red and fall
at some bilious frost, at least then
I'll remember the painted
foot of the sun.

carpet to wall

Lines, white on white
a worn washed quilt,
all white and empty

Here is the land of my battle
the stains that could be blood
I have fought the air.

Lines, skin on skin
Once I fought myself
then the suit of armor came

Two ants crawling, lost
through the crack on the wall
and I am bludgeoning no one.

Lines, carpet to wall
this silent land, this silent war
the salt crusting the skin

Drove the sword in, only
the suit of armor had grown a body
flesh and blood

Lines, white blood leaking,
pooling; a man after all,
but without courage.

stopping up roots

The boxed walls of the vegetable patch
are squatting outward again, yanking up
the soil and no doubt stopping up roots.

I'd pull them back in, but why bother?
The cilantro invaded the thyme last week--
and where the lettuce came from, I don't know.

I had a pot of rosemary, thinned out now
from the stews and roasts. I sit porched in
by the screen, drinking dominican beer.

There is the candle-jar for an ashtray,
and a bobcat out by the red canoe--
now when did he move in? He crouches, watches.

And my contribution here is the wind chime,
by which I count hours in heaves and sighs
--offends my alarm clock but pleases Aeolus.

A bit of ash has got onto my jeans, gone down
into my throat. A cough, and the bobcat flicks his
ears back, banishes me from his kingdom.

I push the boards back into place, and the vegetable
patch looks cramped. Well, why not? I say. Me too.
Why should we be different, as subjects planted?

white noise

I asked a man I know about the train track
of belief-- asked him because,
through white noise and copper wires,
I read wisdom he gained rather unhappily.
Asked him what to do when believing stops,
a train with no more track, rusted out,
obsolete.
And the folly was in my question, sent out to
one dear stranger, that pitted place inside grasping
grasping, grasping
beyond voids, valleys, souls, bodies,
when will those fingers be still, filled?
The man said (and I thought of him looking
past a desk into a yard and beyond that, the sea)
said, it's shit.
But you have to sit with the emptiness
and let it speak. So here I sit,
where he once sat, this well-worn place.
And the emptiness keeps making noise
like a stomach growling. 

adventive

Not once did I walk that path alone, but
twice did I walk it with you.
On a dim little evening, we would
have forgotten the path altogether if the man with the falcon
hadn't come pattering down it,
a feather in his cap like he got left behind
by a few hundred years. And the bird
on his arm rubbed beak to leather wrist-band,
dropped feathers
and next to me you were breathing
breathing a thunder-wet wind on my neck.
I don't know where the man went,
but the breath all went back to your lungs. I
put a feather in my pocket and then lost it
in the wash. Didn't go back.
After all, it wasn't my path.

the last moon

Clittering clushing jaws
and the beastly maws
suck a pipe of tobacco
out of blistering doors

Magiclous mournish decay
(what a very fine day!)
and a yo-ho-dee-do
for one unfulfilled road

Tattlebone in pheromones
drop of parasitic kerosene
--for the smoke off the river
--to the stink off the hide

Loverly lidless ladies
on their amble through hades
found a dried up macaroon,
shot down the last-ever moon

winterously

winterously
look at me
what can you see?
my shivering, frolicking
swarm of a song

pretty one,
my winter sun
my darling gun
blue, mute, and wild
white winterous child

winter storm
sweet first-born
hellish groan
and parting sigh--
interminable goodbye.

let me pretend

you-- you there!
if you have a soul
that is heavier than mine
if your arms happen to be
stronger than my tattered cloak
if your heart
is thicker to ward off stray arrows
or merrier to soak in more wine
come close to me
and be my shelter
come close to me
let me lean against you
and soak in your greatness
let me pretend for a moment
you are the god i've lost

tender cows

No gift given
just a drink swallowed
a hunger met
a counter, cleaned
no horizon shimmering
no storm clouds gathering
just a yard, pitched, beneath a hose spout
cicadas, mosquitoes, lazy, relentless
without hope left in the jar
just a list of chores
just a grinding will
to carry on.
There are patient, tender cows
with softened eyes
so different from us,
us impatient, miserable creatures
burning for the end.