Confessing My Ignorance
Perhaps the cello meant
to be broken the moment
you wanted music.
Perhaps hog-back hills
meant to obscure
some incredible vision.
I can’t say what tree
drives us mad in the distance
when we strain to see the heart at work.
Something moves, worms
of ghost meat under the moon—
can we learn from what we
see? Did those crows
teach Van Gogh anything?
I don’t know
just what this is
that begs
to heal the earth
under each footstep
or what pulls me back
to innocence like the tongue cut out.
Mistress of Commonsense,
perhaps it’s meant for me
to swing open night’s door
& catch you naked
at the mirror
trying to shake hands
with yourself.
1938
The granite-colored gulls unlocked
their wings & the door to a wall
swung open. Ghosts ducked through,
disappeared, so much spinal cord
looped & curved into spider darkness
hacked out of a calcium tomb,
where water screams back into you.
Each night became a red machine.
You were cornered in Paris, in the granary
where the raw brain snorted
like a blue horse & a moneysack
of hunger growled. Where shadows
of trees pulled your face down to kiss
stones. Each day murdered the black clock
of your voice, each day, each depravity
a pretty woman might throw her arms around,
knifed your shadow, Vallejo.
Death wore out your boot heels.
S & M
“Tie my hands, hang me up
by my gorgeous feet,
braid a rope-ladder
with my hair—a corsage,”
you say. For a moment I am
a many-headed beast
embracing a pretty woman
in her sleek black get-up.
Spike-heeled habanera.
Take me away from myself
& don’t make me look.
The blue mouth
begs for what it needs.
Lover woman of the cat-o’-nine tails
there’s a man wounded
in your bedroom
no medicine can cure.
You whimper, you
come like a buttercup
opening darkness.
Stepfather: A Girl’s Song
Again heavy rain drives him home
from the cornfield, washing away
footsteps & covering tracks.
For years his eyes undressed me.
There’s a river in his stance
sweeping me away.
He comes into my bedroom
around corners of moonlight;
unexpected, he catches me
in his big arms. An ancient music
at the edge of my mouth.
He looks at me slantwise, warns:
“These hands whipped a mule crazy
& killed a man in ’63.”
My hands are like sparrows, stars
caught in tangled dance of branches.
He raises my clothes.
An undertow drags me down.
His mouth on mine, kissing my mother.
Stepmother: A Boy’s Song
Twenty years step between
you two, only five between us.
Unbroken woman who walks nude
out of shambled wheat, my heart
a pocketful of thin mirrors
throwing your names about.
You cross the threshold
& beg me to flex my biceps.
Remember, you can’t wash down suburbia
with black coffee & tantalizers,
neighbors
