From the Fishouse

Read 'The World'

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:32:29 -0500

For [you], I cast [the world]

–eye level agave
has its own wrapping / is its own wrapping
between the wrapping and itself, nothing but itself
groove the blades make \ embossing self with self

plums jostle clean in a glass bowl of water
leafblade or plum–yes, closer, like that

pale green crown, glass bowl
I don’t care what form you take this time press
here on my shadow
I like it when you touch me there

everywhere casting

Would you mind standing here, where the planet would be?
where reality would be if I let it?

let me list the ways I’d like to [ ]
let me list
let me
let
and now I’ve disappeared.
(what I’ve been wanting all along)
saying it, I’m back
(all along what) I’ve (been wanting)

let me list rustle
your chapparal
divebell your vents

where I was standing—reality to be there

where I am standing—reality to be here

come here, speculative and spinning
come here, you flooded, burning rock

Registry

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:31:05 -0500

You: You hold out your hand to receive it
but it spills over, your hand already full with it.

You: Face to face with it,
you tell it you’re looking for it.

You: You won’t feel it as it’s happening, but friends study
your face for what’s different, ask if you got a haircut.

You: You’ll forget it immediately,
but the interval before it happening again shortens.

You: You’ll convince yourself it’s happening when it’s not.

You: You’ll say it’s not happening when it is.

You: You’ll only recognize it happening to someone else.

Yours was stolen, you claim, and everyone you meet,
first thing you do is frisk them for it.

You: You had it once, you are prone to report,
and over and over you return to the dwindling site
to feel again the phantom limb pain.

You: When you’re “outside,” it’s “inside.”

You: When you’re “inside,” it’s “inside.”

You: You refuse to name it, but everyone turns
their heads together to you when someone asks who has it.

You: You say, I won’t talk about it. But when you do talk about it––
which is all the time–-you call it by a different name.

You don’t deserve to have it, your story goes,
but when you’re around, others say they have it.

You: You’ll go on backburning after the fire’s come through.

Depends

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:30:11 -0500

I decided I’d try them
now—not wait,
shortcut decades
of suspense,
stay right here
at my desk,
instead of crossing
the room to pee.
Nothing else
changed, really.
Out the window, the breeze
continued lifting
each edge
of leaf. At first,
warm, kind of lovely,
so close against my skin;
and for the duration,
a feeling long familiar:
wet, uncomfortable, alive.

Findings from the Spirit Rover

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:29:00 -0500

What I saw last, I’ll give you first: aluminum canister of holy water
On my grandmother’s closet shelf. My father’s written right on it: Lourdes.
Years, it’s been there, above the neat row of hangers holding killer

Polyester slacksuits. When did he notice it once held insect-
icide? Did that, for a moment, deter him? In the holiday hangar, a flying
“Inflatable lady” floats beside a space capsule. Is this dented Raid®

can all he could find? He rattled the patio door, dreamed of the nightraid.
I drag a strand of hair through the bathwater to see if I can stretch water.
My 2nd grade valentine: “I’ve looked all over for you,” (diecut pilot flying

a cockeyed spaceship.) Flannery O’Connor wrote to her friend, Lourdes
was not as bad as I expected, I took the bath, for a selection of bad motives.
We took the canister to the patio to photograph it. I turned killer

to the camera, so what you see looking at it head on is killer,
and if we take the cap to be a clock, screenprinted at midnight: raid.
She tells me, You can’t just drink it, you have to show it some respect,

raising a clear column, offering me a taste of concentrated water.
My hold has come in at the library: Song of Bernadette of Lourdes
on DVD. Of course, the ones who most believe her say she’s lying.

Always a new relic in his flight bag when he came home from flying
missions. Must be my mother made me this natural born speller:
what he actually wrote was L - O - U - D - R - E - S.

Snickers and Mars bars, a chunk of a pyramid marked in pencil: PYraMidS,
Egypt. Ashes from Mt. Vesuv. March 1944 in a glass Alka-Seltzer
jar, days 23, 25, 26, in his hand on the label. Days spent erupting. I inspect

the bottled landscape, sealed 60 years. Tiny lunar rovers modeled after insects–
falling engineered into their stride to manage the terrain, falling::flying.
In one scene: Bernadette on her knees eating mud in her faith for water.

The North Vietnamese had a saying: The man in the sky is a killer.
Last night in Grace’s book I found this, and in Bernadette’s letters I read,
Everything is nothing to me—after seeing “the lady”at Lourdes—

Neither ideas nor emotions, neither honor nor sufferings. Even Lourdes water
now banned from carry-ons; I left the canister with my cousin.
Long gone, the one body marked my father. Spirit sent back samples
only of ash. Opportunity, evidence, from its tracings, of liquid water.

Seven Poses: Drawn From the Model

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:51:49 -0500

Now the model is on hot sand. The crocheted blanket digs into his knees. He’s caught, for this moment, his weary course across the desert. No water in sight. Nothing worth turning back for. He leans into it, face turned in against the sharp wind that breaks across his skull. All the weight is collecting in his hands. The blood of the whole body held in his hands.

The pose seeks to catch the model somewhere between where she thought she was supposed to be and where she thinks she is supposed to be.

Pinky ring. Signet. His hand drapes over the edge of the chair. Totally languid, except he’s flexing his toes on his left foot. Is that part of the pose or a reaction to the pose? A leak in the pose? The place where his thought has eddied. A reminder for himself, for us, that he’s still there though he may have disappeared into the five-minute seam that has opened up in time. The ring speaks of a history. As does the path the comb made in his hair before the mirror. The powder along the crescent of his [ass]. The way it whitens the skin there. Eclipse. I can see him getting ready this morning, the back edge of his palm sliding smooth talc along the seam. Preparing the body. Chalk line. Buffer. Dusting. Light snowfall.

Ten-minute pose. Some things have been decided for me: the placement of his palm against the belly of his hamstring; the forward movement of his leg; cant of his head; torsion of spine and ribcage; how much time I’ve been given to study this arrangement. Sometimes it takes your own hand to move your leg forward. (The lead line wrapped around Buttercup’s back legs coaxing her across the paddock. How she hopped her hooves ahead with the pressure of the lead.) Where is the model trying to go that he needs a leather lead
line looped around his leg? Or trying not to go? Where is he trying to stay? I told Richard, You were my guide through the underworld. He said, Where are we now?

Seated pose. Stability of squared shoulders, hips, knees and feet. Dreamed this diagram: a line drawing, as in a dictionary, of a woman seated on a straight-backed chair. A double dotted line, indicating a band, started at her pubic mound (and the word mound was somehow stressed) and ended at her mouth. Alongside it was a dotted arrow pointing up with an animated instruction: one firm swift lap of the tongue straight up the dotted line. All One Stroke, it emphasized. Under the drawing was a brass label: PROSE.

Today’s timekeeper is Hal. He keeps consulting the wall clock, and for each pose, the egg timer rings a good minute before he calls time. It rings, winds down, and then stops ticking. Hal doesn’t hear well, Violet explains. Okay. So, the person in charge of time can’t hear the bell. He does sense unerringly when the timer stops ticking, strangely enough. Each time, the bell rings, then about a minute later, he calls, Time. Now, another reclining pose. On her stomach, ankles crossed. Now the bell again. He turns toward it–but only to get his chamois. Another minute passes, and Time! Ten-minute pose. The model’s cell phone is ringing. A lot of discussion about whether to turn it off or not. The most grievous model gaffe is puncturing the timeless agreement of the pose. But now suddenly I feel more interested in the pose. Avalokiteshvara, in the God realm, holding out time as a remedy. The timer rings again. Not a budge from our timekeeper. We’ve all learned this system, dismantling the strong Pavlovian response to a bell. We wait for the timer to run itself down. The absence of the ticking is what we listen for. The bell means nothing.

The model is lying on her back with her legs slung over to the right and her head turned to the left. I can feel the release, opening of the chest, twist of the spine, stretch along the side. Haptic knowledge. How does the drawing record that knowledge? What are the traces of subjective experience? Yesterday, when we did handstands against the wall in yoga, I loved pitching forward onto my hands, the feel of my legs balancing above my hips, the inversion of weight, the new relationship of blood and gravity. All day I kept replaying that action in my mind. All that was left was actually to do the handstand right there on 5th Avenue. Now my hand is on Louie’s head. Dog of miraculous comebacks. In my hand, all the dogs’ heads I’ve held. Sweet tilt of his face. Maybe Selina can tell the neighbors he would have fewer problems if he weren’t so good at living. Now he’s pushing the full weight of his will into me. Right under my hand, what keeps him alive. Petting Louie has become my drawing.

My Father's Comb

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:52:10 -0500

Black plastic
raised letters
proclaimed it
unbreakable
and so I began
to bend the un-
relenting spine.
First nothing,
then a little give,
heat at the seam,
blanching
at the faultline.
Half an hour
at his mirror, I
worked at it.
I worked it away
from me and
back. I worked
at the word
until the word,
until the atom
of its lie split,
until the word
broke in my hands.

Interview with the Pear Tree

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 09:36:28 -0500

When did you start making pears?

What is a pear?

(she runs her fingers over one
hanging on the branch)

Mmm. Yes. It began
before I could be seen,
when the great body rang,
striking, for the first time, the earth.
Over the long day, it lay in the sun,
and the birds came, and the flesh
fell away until all that was left
was the seed. Maybe it was
when the moon swelled
the seed, maybe
when the first true
leaf quickened.

Did you always know you would make pears?

I wouldn’t know how not to.

What is your process?

I let the leaves
come to the branch
and when the bee is at the
blossom, I listen.

Is dormancy difficult?

Dormancy?

A period when nothing happens.

(The tree pauses)
I’ve never had one.

What about drought?

I spread my root hairs and wait.

Do you ever doubt?

When the bud breaks the green wood.

Do you ever think of making apples?

What is an apple?

Could you describe the kind of pears you make?

(A ripe pear drops into her upturned hands.)

Looted

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 09:35:05 -0500

You are once again rifling
the sixth floor supply cabinet.
Bethesda Naval Hospital
gyn/onc ward. Late, too late to watch
the babies sleep three floors down.
Your mother breathes with assistance
in a single room across the hall,
warm apparatus she needed to give rise to you
long since scooped from her abdomen
along with other suspect tissue
here and there,
her body’s job focused now
on moving fluid through her heart;
blood to her brain lets her raise her eyebrows
when you lean across the rail
and smooth her forehead.
Let her sleep, your brother tells you
as he dials the room phone.
Things seem pretty stable here, he tells his wife,
See you soon. What you have
is this supply closet:
pink square plastic saline vials
for flushing the port at her neck,
good too to carry in your backpack,
for contacts; syringes
(for making a fine bead of jade glue),
silk suture thread (for sewing signatures).
You can do nothing to slow the thicken-
ing of blood in her urine
as her systems recede, how it pools
like warm wax in the bedside gauge,
but this packet of gauze, you can unfold it
and stretch it thin over bookboard.
You’ve adopted a striped hospital robe as yours.
No one seems to care. The nurses cluster
at their station and the ward is quiet. You listen
for them, but they’re used to your being here
and you know where the apple juice is
so you’re no trouble. You pocket
some surgical tape for gift wrap.
Not an equal trade for your mother,
but it’s something. You think you know
the inventory by now, but here’s a new low drawer
to investigate before padding in these
disposable foam slippers back
to the cot in her room to sleep.
What are these cool white
waffle weave cloths, each folded
into its own cellophane bag?
(good for drawing?) But wait,
why is this one closed at both ends?
Why this long zipper?
Why this zipper the length
of your mother’s body?

As It Will

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 09:31:09 -0500

for Stanley Kunitz

Sometimes between one of Stanley’s Well's
and whatever he says next,

there’s ample space to take a nap –
it’s late afternoon, and the porch is warm

and quiet—I can drift knowing
the front contour of his next word

will retrieve me when I'm needed,

and he will not have lost the thread
of my question. I don’t fret that I’m neglecting

my work when this happens—I suspect that half-
unconscious I can better communicate

with my employer. He’s been contemplating
a passage marked “Continuity Beyond

the Body” for twenty minutes in silence

when he surfaces: We know the conditions
for survival will pass, he begins. Eventually

this planet earth will become uninhabitable.
When the sun grows cold, as it will,

the conditions for life will be irrevocable.
What are we going to do? he asks me.

Maybe I’ve been thinking too small,

calling around this morning trying
to find him a ride back to New York

in September. More mischief
sparking his voice this time, What

are we going to do about this? he presses.
I say, We'll have to find another life

form to inhabit. I say All we can do

is live fully until the sun cools,
and I remind him a lot will have happened

in the meantime, and there are other suns,
other stars. They’re a long way off, he scoffs,

scattergaze not fixed on any one thing.
And then through the screen, a sharp shift

of light—a wolf spider quivers its web,

and though I’m never certain
what he’s hearing or seeing, I know

it is this glint that has called him back
five-and-a-half billion years when he says, Look.

Upon Your “[Un]consolable Sadness”

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 09:13:38 -0500

“No creature ever comes short of its own completeness”
—Dogen

un-? or is it in-?
let it be un-
because it is animal
living outside the tent, stalking

un- or in-
is it (you) or (I)?

un- because it is also just a cloud, and you know it

which is the fear? the un-
or the sadness itself?

Sadness, that won’t kill you

but the un-,
to skid into that un-
and believe it, call that
crawlspace “the world”
maybe that’s the only fear worth entertaining:
convinced to venture no further contact

I want to split it apart
un-un it of itself
two letters,
mirrored inversions

You say that word
and unspring the consoler

Upon this un-
I lay this quick reflex
(foolish, habitual)

Upon this un-
I lay this wish
for your head in my lap
consoling in degrees
, at least,

with small amusements,
what I can muster
to make a case for the world—
some facts about mammals:
this one lets half its brain sleep at a time
this one makes two kinds of milk,
one for the just born
one for the still suckling, or

who even needs so many cells?

Listen to this description of a protist,
and then try to say unconsolable:

“some possess a thrashing tail
or fine rhythmically beating hairs,
while others contain packets of chlorophyll…”
I could go on,

or let’s add a few more cells
and we have the volvox:

…a hollow sphere, where the wall
is made up of cells,
each with a rhythmically beating hair
appearing like a tail.
The movement of the hairs
is coordinated to move
the entire sphere in one direction.

Okay.

Doesn’t even that single beating hair
kind of cheer you up?

Ruiyan asked Yantou,
"What is the fundamental constant principle?"
Yantou said, "Moving."

See?
See?
Or something planetary in scope:
kneel here on this test-site soil
and here and here
wildfire and nuclear war, whatever sludge
you can point your tired finger to
move your finger away to find

:grass

Ask it: it’s not so bad is it? Being alive?

[whispered]
Did you know…?
Have you seen…?

Or little word jokes
Milena: How do you spell D?

until your smile taps
with its prospecting hammer
the un’s rockface

moraine rent with a small white flower

slip my hand under the un-,
find where the un- gives

How about some formal puzzles
like on the NSA diagnostic test:

The top row of boxes follows a sequence.
Which box comes next?

—consoling by giving your genius
something to do

Among the rarely bored
boredom can be mistaken for sadness

Yes, I know: Picture this object
rotated 45 degrees
what color is the side closest to you?

but the object is missing

It is, sometimes

but what about when it’s there?

What happens

if you let it be there?

be subject?

Or, or,
We could try some
yogic breathing
that should do it

[V, at breakfast: “I just wanted to get you breathing again”]

Again, I see myself
wanting to make you see

You or I?

Until you pull the un- over your head
like an old sweater
or take the un into you
as the nudibranch swallows poison
and turns it into color,
take your entire height
into the un-
let the letters roll off you
until you can breathe again

let the un-
stormsurge your slopes
let it uproot burned manzanita
let it all crash the guide walls

Who is being consoled?

And now?
Now what’s happening?
And now, consolation sloshing
back onto the consoler

And now, hydrophobic soil
forkscored to receive some of it

There is nothing that can’t be consoled
even if the last consolation registered is death
which asks nothing of us, only that we’re here for it

not this shed, burned to the ground
not this melted lawn chair
its webbing one solid mass

in-? let it be un-
I want some animal left in you
[like when you said, simply,
about my complaint of quaking:
well, it’s primal, the fear of death]

The person who,
when asked to name a fear,
holds out this:
actually I don’t have any—

lodging the sofa in front of the door—
I would never entrust
a burning building–my body–
to such a person
but when you said un-
unfurling each finger
as in Ramachandran’s mirror box
opening to flat relief the “good hand”
my clenched phantom fist
could not help but open too
finally
when the good arm
is doubled and lets the brain see
what relief would look like.

On a rainy morning, walking east
on Bleecker, I held out my arm
for a cab downtown to see Mark,
disappointed at everyone dying—
convinced of that—
but what about this rain? how it sheets
down that window, suggesting to the glass
a way to yield without shattering,
how a small surf crests on it (!)
And what am I to make of this cab driver
his sudden kindness, his swiftness
pulling over to me. Come in out of that rain.

All that only made matters worse
because I couldn’t make sense
of my “forsakenness,”
and the relentless kindness
how I felt one room over from it all
could hear it through the wall
but not be part of it.

And I sat in Mark’s office
and even before his—
how do you say?—
beautiful—face,
I could still say, I feel inconsolable.

Inconsolable? You do?
Even to hear him repeat the word
consoled me. And I couldn’t
offer you even this.
When you said un-
I stood there silently
though everything in me felt called
toward this consolation
leaning into it
neither could I just receive it
without wanting to swoop onto it

as how whenever I see you I can’t speak
and so I speak too much

or I want to strike the bell
with too much force
and so, barely touch it

Molt

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 09:12:23 -0500

There was one moment
I was certain he loved me
by loved I mean could see
:
my pants
on the bathroom floor
in a heap, legs up
socks still holding
the form of my feet
waistband open against the tile
slipped off in one piece
and he came in to pee
as I stood under the shower
and then he stood over my pants
and asked me
pulling back the curtain
How did you do that?

Brothers, in Succession

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 09:10:59 -0500

one from behind
one from below

one seldom combed his hair
one folded his underwear

one was prone to orations
one clever at spatial relations

one had a knack for acrobatics
one a keen mind for mathematics

one angled three degrees to the right
one liked to try on my tights

one said I talked like their mother
on one, I performed the other

one made a habit of afternoon naps
one fancied the snug fit of straps

one conjured intricate tales
one once on deck watching whales

one in the barn
one on the train

one would do anything if shown
one night one made me drop the phone

one whispered technical terms
one down among mosses and ferns

One inquired Who hurt you more
One taped threats on the front door

28 MPH

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 09:23:54 -0500

—This morning I read in the Times
the Book Review section—
—the average speed of ejaculation

is 28 Miles Per Hour—
—How fast must thoughts come then?
I hadn’t even finished the sentence—

III

—and already: every detail perfect, I’m testing
a working model—
—all that velocity in such close quarters!

Why did I think of you then—
—That you could have that much speed in you!
I wouldn’t want to be in the path—

—of a Volkswagen at that speed
and you’d get a ticket if a strict cop clocked you—
—at that clip in a school zone

why did reading that—
—in an instant deliver
one more way to want you—quick coalescent liquid you?

Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:38:12 -0500

(after Grenville Kleiser)

It’s sweet, really, how you arrange them
alphabetically, as if I could go to your book,
seeking precision and find something
there under, say, “M:”
Memory was busy at her heart.

You have this notion
that phrases, used correctly,
could actually do something useful.
It’s right there on the cover, useful
uncomplicatedly predicated of phrases.

I want to believe you.
Browsing the chapters: Significant Phrases,
Impressive Phrases, Felicitous Phrases,
I feel your absolute, complete, unqualified and final
confidence that fifteen minutes a day
more effectively than an hour a day of desultory reading
will equip the reader, me
for a life of clear expression.

We just need to read the phrases:
intimations of unpenetrated mysteries
dark with unutterable sorrows
days that are brief and shadowed

find where they fit,
and our conversation will sparkle.

Striking Similes
you imagine we might memorize,
the perfect clothes
for our ideas
as silent as the sheeted dead
all unconscious as a flower
like dining with a ghost.

I have to ask you,
What is your pose on perfect expression now?

Say any one of these phrases.
Say three in a row.
They fill the air for a moment
and then they are gone.
Like dining with a ghost,
but in reverse:
the food is disappearing;
you can see it happening,
and you are left, across the table.
Something has been transacted.
The plate is empty. Is someone there?
Did someone say something? Did anyone hear?

Maybe in Conversational Phrases,
I could find something to say to her, now
after a long unaccustomed silence:

but who could foresee what was going to happen?
or
Will you have the kindness to explain?
or
It’s a difficult and delicate matter to discuss.
or
I hate that you fucked him in our bed.

I browse the book, every page a distraction;
what I find are my own formulations,
the consequences of an agitated mind.

Something made of language is gone
even as it’s spoken.
I dreamed I was rinsing words from a sponge.

I’ll show you some useful things:
a hammer, a tent, a compass,
even the paper this poem is printed on.
I swear to God
I was walking home at midnight
and had nothing but a draft of this poem
and I had to use it to clean up after my dog.
I felt the warmth spread through the paper’s grain
and it wasn’t just an idea of warmth.

I look to you.
I entreat you.

What could you say in answer?
Tell me, “I have a secret: a whole chapter of blank pages.”
Tell me, “I had my moments when my faith flagged. Here, look where I throw it all away
and just say “some” instead of reaching for the loved particular: ‘as quick as the movement
of some wild animal’ or ‘The earth was like a frying pan or some such hissing matter,’
as much as I despised the indefinite. Or when I just repeat myself: ‘slender and thin
as a slender wire.’ You get the idea, don’t you?

Read the phrases aloud. Listen to that space where one phrase ends and another begins.
Big expanse of space. That’s what I say now.”

And my mother said You won’t find me
in code. Don’t look for me
in the words of your child.
She, who filled our house with talk, told me:
Listen. If you want to know I’m there,
just make yourself quiet.

A task for you: Try to describe for me
how this dog arranges her limbs on the couch,
how one paw has slipped between the cushions,
and something about how her ribs expand.
Let me see the slope of her skull. Oh, and
please include how the couch is almost exactly
her color, try to show me that color,
that of the couch, and the difference between the two.
See if you can delineate the fine articulations of her spine--
and try to do it without asking me to look at something else.

Tell me,
even your name fails you. Grenville?
I’m going to call you something else,
you don’t mind do you?
Spirit of Capture, Hope, Faith.
What is there in your name,
its initial consonant cluster, its word-final liquids
that has anything to do with you?

And so, I’m sure you won’t mind
if I just call you, say, Byron or Sebastian,
or why not even my own name, Genine?

I want to ask you
Could you stand the shifting?

Just today on the street
I thought I heard hatred in the contour of a vowel
a wife leaning into her husband, lowered voice,
Did you see him, there, that one with the purple towel?
I tried to track it, in the falling intonation,
the twisted arc of her sigh.
And I had just seen him too and what I mainly registered
was a luxury of skin, a graceful body walking alone
except for his dog, and he had tied a cloth
around his hips so it sloped to a knot,
which I have since slipped open over and over
just to watch it fall. And it was private;
I had no one to tell, so he remained for me
without language.

But I felt, even as I passed him,
the urge to assign some words.

And I can bring this before you now,
this detail: his puppy tumbling,
five steps for every one of his, the leash taut.
I had to admire the precision
of the draping, the assertion of his long stride
through the cloth’s steep gap.

I could have just received it, but gorgeous and sweep and oh and
I think I actually drew in a breath.

And when I got further down the street
and saw them leaning in, I knew why.

And I wanted to tell the woman
It wasn’t a towel. Have you ever seen a towel that size?
Or would a towel hang with such elegance?
And, could a towel come to so fine a knot?

But she denied you
your promise; she did not pursue
the right word,
as if the imprecision put her at a wanted distance from him,
and her husband listened and nodded as if he understood.
I wanted to tell her no it wasn’t a towel,
but I didn’t even want to name it.
Sometimes I wish for no language;
I want my whole job to be seeing.
But let’s say the word is sarong.

Now we’re in the marketplace;
we’re off his thigh,
in a bright noisy store, packed with racks, all one price.
And if I do say sarong,
I’ll say it mainly for the pleasure of feeling
my tongue arch along my palate. And I’ll know
that what I saw is already in the past
the second I try to put a word on it anyway.
Just look.

But she didn’t even give him that.
Maybe she didn’t like the idea of him,
his valent body,
the confusion of signifiers.
Skirt with no shirt, and then the sigh.

And still they stopped walking
to lean into each other.
I took the permission of the street
to stand there next to them,
nothing to do but listen,
long enough to hear her skid
to the end of her sentiment
and her sigh said, That’s no son of mine.

I imagine you were happy
in your dream of precision.
I am touched by your faith in the alphabet.

And you’re long gone
and I address you here, what’s left of you,
in your binding.
There is some use in that, isn’t there?
Just the idea of your book was enough
to make someone buy it new in 1918.
And then again, eighty years later, I could find it,
and I admit it was mainly an amusement,
but I was curious.

I want to believe you; can you show me again
the part about how ideas can be clothed?
And I’ll show you how it’s all drag,
the moment it passes from thought to form.

Look, you know I loved finding meadow
when my lips grazed the surface of her skin
where her jaw meets her throat

and I know I loved
how having a word for it right there
let me tell her this, let me whisper it right there
where my mouth was
and bring her into the sun-bending grass
in the darkness of our bed.

And I have heard you, you tell me, speaking in a garden at a memorial for a friend, younger
than her mother was when she gave birth to her, whose numerous tumors crowded the cavities
of her body and wrapped her aorta, diminishing her before her own two daughters’ eyes.
And I have seen you visit her there on her couch and you thought she’s a leaf blown against
a sheet of glass, and somehow thinking that made it more manageable.

And yes, she told her mother, “I want Genine to do something.”
And I took that to mean, “I want Genine to say something.”
And yes, I made sure when I spoke
to the group gathered in the sloping shade
that I said radiant when I related my dream
of her dancing down her narrow street
because wouldn’t her mother want for that moment–
as long as it took to say the word–
the sun to be blasting all its light on her daughter
now that she couldn’t wet her child’s mouth
with water drawn through a thin straw?

And didn’t you listen with me
when an M.I.T. syntactician
told the tale of a dying warrior chief
who possessed a word capable of killing,
and needed to pass it on before he died.
He gathered the children of the village
around his bed and gave them each a baby chick,
then told them
“Now, crush it in your hand.”
And all but one snapped the fine bones
easily. And that one received the word
because he could manage its power.

And I was soaked in that belief.
And I wanted to be that child.

And the coat check clerk told me,
“Describe it and you can have it back.”

So, it’s not as if I don’t see your point.

But in your stockpile of expression,
can I find a way to get the gist
of this white peach I’m eating?

And for example, most of what I say is lost
on my dog, and she seems fine.

And what about there,
right at the end
of my mother’s life,
when she finally
stopped talking,
when she stopped
loading her breaths
with language
and we exchanged breath
like conversation,
reversed
from my birth
when what I did was gasp
for air with no words available.

And you say,
See, there? See the child trade breaths with her mother, and then when the one stops,
the other waits, and when nothing comes, watch how the child takes her first breath
again, alone.

And haven’t I taken a word on my tongue
and held it there waiting
for a breath to come carry it away?

You know I want to find a way to capture
the grace of his stride,
the exact quality of light on his skin.
I want to go back onto the street
and find the moment frozen there
so I can get it all down, better this time.

I want to see my own face in seeing

and disappear into the telling
so that you can see through me.
And even better if I’m glass
and if what you see is slightly more,
if there’s a little refraction, more heat.

Willamette Meteorite

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:30:15 -0500

(Rose Center for Earth and Space, NYC)

All day children
they touch me without stopping
their questions and chatter
They touch me and their questions stop
Their hands all day inside these cavities
and for a moment they are silent
annulus of a wave
then their voices begin again
I am a shattered remnant
of a planet, nickel iron core of a planet
here I have length and height
I have weight: 15.5 tons
Here, I am a specimen
I am rare and important
I should say, metallic iron meteorites are a relatively rare kind here
Imagine, traveling this far, and for so long
First the main shock of shattering,
then two subsequent shocks
one of which knocked me here
I’m among the largest meteorites found
Of what was never found I am not the largest
not the smallest either
These cavities –- don’t think that’s some kind of
outer space thing That’s local rain, and oxygen
That came from sitting in one place, exposed
The first ones dipped their arrowheads
in the water
collecting in my crevices
They’d drink it spoon it into their sick
Of course it changes them
makes them more like themselves
Once, I never stopped moving
I didn’t have these edges, or anything that might provoke a name
It was pure contiguity, then fire
One day a tiny dog
wriggled from a handbag cold salt nose and before anyone could see
he peed on me I liked it, actually
Otherwise, no rain no fire
Why do you insist we are different?
Here, put your cheek
Put your hand here
just above the solid part
float it there
without touching Do you feel that hum
in the sponge
of your bones?