make me come”—
she knew he was married
but invited him to the opera;
diving for sea urchins;
the skin of a stone;
“You asshole!”
the nuclear trigrams were identical;
the wing beats of a crow;
maggots were crawling inside the lactarius cap;
for each species of mushroom,
a particular fly;
a broad-tailed hummingbird
whirred at an orange nasturtium;
“Your time has come”;
opening the shed with a batten;
p if and only if q;
he put the flyswatter back on the nail.
6
The budding chrysanthemums in the jar have the color
of dried blood. Once, as she lit a new candle,
he asked, “What do you pray for?” and remembered
her earlobe between his teeth but received a gash
when she replied, “Money.” He sees the octagonal
mirror at a right angle to the fuse box, sees
the circular mirror nailed into the bark of the elm
at the front gate and wonders why the obsession
with feng shui. He recalls the photograph of a weaver
at a vertical loom kneeling at an unfinished
Two Grey Hills and wonders, is she weaving or unweaving?
The candlelight flickers at the bottom of the jar.
He sees back to the millisecond the cosmos was pure energy
and chooses to light a new candle in her absence.
7
I plunge enoki mushrooms into simmering broth
and dip them in wasabi, see a woman remove
a red-hot bowl from a kiln and smother it in sawdust.
I see a right-hand petroglyph with concentric
circles inside the palm, and feel I am running
a scrap of metal lath across a drying coat of cement.
I eat sea urchin roe and see an orange starfish
clinging below the swaying waterline to a rock.
I am opening my hands to a man who waves
an eagle feather over them, feel the stretch
and stretch of a ray of starlight. This
black raku bowl with a lead-and-stone glaze
has the imprint of tongs. I dip raw blowfish
into simmering sake on a brazier, see a lover
who combs her hair and is unaware she is humming.
I see a girl crunching on chips at the Laundromat,
sense the bobbing red head of a Mexican finch.
Isn’t this the most mysterious of all possible worlds?
8
A heated stone on a white bed of salt—
sleeping on a subway grate—
a thistle growing in a wash—
sap oozing out the trunk of a plum—
yellow and red roses hanging upside down under a skylight—
fish carcasses at the end of a spit—
two right hands on a brush drawing a dot then the character, water—
an ostrich egg—
a coyote trotting across the street in broad daylight—
sharpening a non-photo blue pencil—
the scar at a left wrist—
a wet sycamore leaf on the sidewalk—
lighting a kerosene lamp on a float house—
kaiseki: breast stones: a Zen meal—
setting a yarrow stalk aside to represent the infinite—
9
They threw Pushing Upward—
the pearl on a gold thread dangling at her throat—
a rice bowl with a splashed white slip—
biting the back of her neck—
as a galaxy acts as a gravitational lens and bends light—
stirring matcha to a froth with a bamboo whisk—
brushing her hair across his body—
noticing a crack
has been repaired with gold lacquer—
Comet Hyakutake’s tail flaring upward in the April sky—
orange and pink entwined bougainvilleas blooming in a pot—
“Oh god, oh my god,” she whispered and began to glow—
yellow tulips opening into daylight—
staring at a black dot on the brown iris of her right eye—
water flows to what is wet.
Apache Plume
1 The Beginning Web
Blue
