a chapbook

 

 

The First in a Series of Memories

The morning I forget is the one
you must remember
for what is man
that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man,
that you visit him?
That they would never be visited,
loved, remembered
by someone,
anyone –
isn’t that the sorrow of all men?

You must remember
the fall,
blazing in silver flames,
the tree
branch disrobing outside
the dusty window of the second floor.
You must remember how
I got there.
If you don’t remember, pretend,
as I pretend.
Tell me it was the child
which lured me up the stairs
and not a plain, dark room
with beams exposed.
It was lavender, rose-budded wallpaper, perfumed
with the scent of my mother,
the few other things
in the world which are safe.

Remember for me all
that was taken
from the moment I was born.
Fill me up like a wellspring
that I might shiver with laughter’s clarity, lust
as one who hasn’t
tasted life all winter long.

It’s been a long winter. I remember.
Yes. That much, I remember.

Dear John Letter

We felt the heat in bloody ripples of the caldron
heart rising passionately upward. Steam curled
from the pavement like a remnant of a stone

thrown in the sea. I remember how seldom
we thought about seas, or stars, or night. You remember—
please remember—how iron is first formed in heat.

Then once—only once—I needed you to talk to me
about something more important than politics, people,
statistics, to remember when feeling the heat

filled the words. But when you wouldn’t speak,
my fist on your front door secured the barrier,
became frozen in impasse of two separate cells.

We built the bars like iron. And not sharpening iron.
We have felt the heat. But now the cold settles
on the barricades we live behind.

In the Shadow of Morning

Monotony is twenty years of dying
the same way,

in the same town with the same man,
making love so many ways
you hate it, and him,
but you love them too.

No Sistine Chapel,
only the obnoxiousness
of the fundamentalists divining doom
for all which falls short of unbelief.

No Louvre,
only pencil drawings
of the local high school
hung on the wall of Wendy’s.

No Buckingham Palace,
only that perfect yellow house

with the green shutters and rust door
in which the only souls
worth bearing were born, and grow,
perfectly.

You sit on the porch and contemplate
the same shadow of morning
you saw yesterday. It’s as close to
happiness as refugees get.

Mind Games

So I justified
clawing his eyes with verbal talons,
winning the War of the Roses,
poisoned-petal words.
When he fell at my feet, I stood –
towered until the blood tear drained
to his cheek, then I clawed
for the memory of how the battles began

Another Day

The sun is a circus clown,
unpainted.
The sky finds its rest in the rain.
Where then, will I find my place?
In the God who made me,
who is everywhere and nowhere?
In the children I have borne?
In the strength of the mountains yielding
breath to the earth?
In the benevolence of hope forever
failing?

I look to the Darkness,
hear its voice, soft as a sparrow,
calling me to sleep.
The moon is a crooked smile, sneering.
The stars find their haven in clouds.

I look, then, to the Light again,
taste its fingers, sweet as berries.
The Light wants me to live.

I rise and I rest. But who decides
how long we play this game
with the weight of the ocean suffocating
and setting free,
as I find myself in bed with this man,
who has loved me forever, who has
never loved me at all.

Fantasy Trial

He keeps telling me
we can separate, “a trial separation,” he
calls it. “Six months,” he says.

Does that mean each of us is on trial
for sins committed against the other
over the past twenty years?

Or does the emphasis rest
on the separation
part, as if two people who have
connected in every possible way can

acquire a marriage surgeon to
divide the parts of them which have,
like anomalous twins in the womb,
grown dangerously together?

“A trial separation.” Fine.
I envision myself walking out the door,
saying goodbye to two children, as if I’m
going to the movies or the grocery store.

“Be back soon,” I say, and saunter
away. Then I saunter back, six months later.
“Sorry,” I confess, “Running late.
Let’s order pizza.”

Forgiven. Exonerated. United,
the “trial separation” concludes.
I’m embraced, as if the only thing I missed
was the prayer before supper.

Sink or Swim

Call it intimacy, nature’s way
of pruning the weak. Call it the toggle
of his need verses hers.
There’s not enough wine

in the world to wash away this one –
not enough tears to cleanse, nothing to
comfort like the ocean in springtime.
There’s only the howl of the wind

now that he devours her with words.
With life and death riding the crest of
his tongue, the blood staining red
all the white of the love they once knew.

Forget she once swam the width,
spurred by this poisoned melody. The spine
of a stingray now pierces the heart of a woman.
She suffers the blow.

Victims of the Massacre

So what of the children of these wars?
Starving for the satisfaction of sweet words,
for the solace of the blossom of
a Bradford Pear in spring,
for the warmth of the clothing
of straightened shoulders and a lifted chin.

How long do we let these children hunger?
How long do we make them dream?

We’re Not Enough

We’ve tried to live, “I love you,”
like dawn and twilight,
always needing too much.

The pitch of night grows deeper,
and silence
flowers more shallow
than the press of the moth’s wing.

But dawn can’t brush midnight’s thigh
with her light finger,
or twilight whisper goodbye
with brilliant shades of cobalt and pink.

So we crush the horizon,
you and I,
with our desire to be the center of everything.

Concerning the Woman in the Window

The light is screaming
when I umbrella my eyes with my palm,
look toward the window, second story

where a woman is cradling a baby
against her breast.
A dragonfly flits beneath the sill.

A finch indulges her aria
while my tears
flash a prism against the sun. The woman stares,

her eyes, hollow sockets, as if two grapes were plucked
before the proper season, as if the day
reigns silent above her.

Retreats

She lowers her lids, cowers
from his stare. Craves the vial.
Thirsts for the knife.

Though he presses his lips
against her forehead, he refuses
to speak the words.

Still, a goodbye is a goodbye
as plainly as
the night is the night,
fulfilling its cycle without
consent from anyone.

Plentitude

Taste
the acidic saccharin moment,

and, within the second,
the eternal want of the starving.

Observe closed lids,
arched necks, pleading for a future.

Infinities,
the exploding covetousness of the hopeless.

Warning Signs

The crow cawed
when I left the first man, caveat
from the branches of a Beachwood
tree. The soil beneath
cracked with laughter
while I played with the toys I’d
collected.

The toys all wearied of me.

So cry now, little crow,
for the games and the losses -
but mostly to trumpet court jesters
on parade.

I’ve Become a Stalker

The tall birches cradle his house
like the circular blood of the sun
at twilight, leaving one window exposed.
Because his drive is not equal to mine,

I manipulate maps
which force me to ride past and stare.
I see him leaning, face against hand,
but not like “The Thinker,”

more like the boredom of a male lion
who has yet to know the scent of his mate,
who may never begin his journey toward me
through the corn-colored stalks.

Waiting for a Ride

The empty coffee cup proved he was lonely,
waiting,
pausing for a ride which never came.
The light of the cigarette flared toward
his pale green eyes, vacant,
fading until she asked to sit beside him.
He nodded,
turning toward the guy surrounded by giddy girls
and strumming a guitar.
Then he leaned his head back as if
there were stars in the city,
as if she wasn’t considering
the line of his jaw, the press
of his chest as he drew in his cigarette.
And when she asked his name,
he pretended he was any guy
approached by any woman
at eight o’clock at night outside a coffee shop
with time to toss like gambling dice.
When she smiled so perfectly,
he watched himself crunch his cigarette in the cup
so he wouldn’t have to look at her again.
And again and again.

The Man in the Mirror

He is the mirror.

Your eyes will twist to frost
when you’re angry –
your fire, to his fatigue –
when you tire of me.
Your laughter will shrivel to disdain,
your chatter, set silent as the evening sun.

Please don’t say, “I love you.”
Don’t whisper it
with fingertips between my ribs.
Don’t kiss it on my thigh.
Don’t lie it to my wrists.

These love cycles –
reflected.

Trojan Wars

No one ever told me,
when I belonged to someone else,
I would see your eyes glitter
in the blue night
and I would wish, forever wish,
you were mine.

They never told me of the wars
which cause the walls to crumble,
the one’s I’d built as fortresses against
love.

They never told me every glimpse, every whisper,
every trace of your hand would
thunder like a summer storm and strike
the light within me, the light
I’d buried to survive.

And no one has to tell me,
you and I are going to end badly.
That’s the way of war.

Paris. Helen. Troy.
Is anyone left standing?

My Affection for Poetry

I thought I loved poetry
because we sat at a table eating
tandoori chicken
when you first read me Rilke.
Your accent,
Romanian,
not German,
was close enough
and so far from harsh I have adored
Rilke ever since.

Later, between sips of sweet Mango Lassi,
you taught me Hart Crane.
Elusive lyrics.
“Put yourself in his mind,” you
said, “Feel him.”

Then Brent returned to
lecture philosophy.
While his audience devoured his words like
chapati with vegetable birijani,
I remembered the time he laughed
and told me how,
on the coast of Maine, he propped
himself amidst the sour grass
and induced his own melancholia
that he might write poetry.
Then,
fearing depression would swallow him forever, he yielded
his poetry in exchange for
a safer endeavor.

And I remember that he loved me.

You dim as the India sun
on a summer’s night.
But love and poetry are the morning,
and Rilke, and Crane, and Brent.

From A Woman’s Point of View

I could learn from you.
Humble enough to bend when
the right breeze moved you,
your posture lured me first,
then your beard, with its pundit appeal,
your eyes,
which held me firmly as your arms.

Our conversation wove a pattern
from scattered threads
to a union we agreed to call “casual,”
not “complex.” Tell me again, though,
because I’ve forgotten.

What’s so casual about being intimate?

False Courage

I can still discern the flame in the candle
of your eyes illuminating the blackness of the pub.
I still inhale your cologne above the cigarette smoke

and the beer, under the neon “Miller”sign.
Sculpted courageous by one sip too many,
you said, “I fell for you.”

I fell back,
and tilted my head like a curious child
first comprehending the spin of the earth.

If only you’d said it before the stars
carved a new path in the sky, before the moon hid
behind the clouds

in its predictable cycle of hiding.

Between the Lines

If I were you,
I’d read every one of my letters again.

In each line, I’d remember the viognier we
shared and the spice of apricots. I’d draw in
the violet chords of Vivaldi, the cinnamon
of Bach.

If I were you,
I’d wrap a wilted string of clover around my finger,
make a necklace of Queen Anne’s lace
to taste when I was alone. If I were you.

Instead, I read myself a hundred times,
as if Hugo penned my words,
or Whitman or Rimbaud,
as if my letters were meant to endure
like a river made of Shakespeare.

Front Line

Too many cigarettes.
Beer. A glass of wine.

Rock music loud enough to force
a whisper
in the curve of your neck.

Desire pounds like the dawn of war,
the fierce command for years which will hold fast

like the fire-life in your eyes,

the laughter of your hands, the lightness
with which you arch
when my fingers smooth your perfect spine.

Not fading – like the swirl of smoke, or the perfume
of this wine.

If Only

If only our love were simple as
doves in the morning, cooing –
if only our breathing to each other were
what life was about –
then perhaps it could last
and hope could rise, warm with the dawn –
warm with your breath at sunset:
so steady, so faithful.

Alive

Grasping,
I’ve followed the song of the sparrow
above the sky,

beneath the eye of God
within the favor of His smile
into the ocean of you. I have

parted the clouds of sadness,
sung in the center of night,
kissed the footprint of desire.

I know I’m alive.
I’ve tasted your breath –
sweetness of amber, violet, and rose.

Stripped of My Skin

Love’s not about my happiness.

It’s about the urge to resurrect
both of us.

It’s learning to waltz
when walking proved impossible
until you said hello. It’s about avoiding

the slippery grave which waits to yank us back
under, the death hovering to bury the life
we’ve discovered.

‘Til Death Do Us Part

When fifty-three years of serving
the same man is over, will you wonder –
his body, empty, in the casket,
your body, empty, standing beside him –

if service is love, if love is
sex, long since faded, if fading and
staying is loving, if loving means serving,
and if, in the fall, you’ll miss him?