Podcasts: June 2007 Archives

Ghazal

I forgot her face the way men forget the moon.
So many veils, even the sky forgets the moon.

On my desk, a strand of her hair and Rilke’s poetry
illuminated by sunlight. Forget the moon!

She wore a purple cashmere shawl, and when it slipped
down her fine-boned shoulders, all men forgot the moon.

We walked barefoot from Ms. Soni's Guest House
to the mango tree of orange flesh that dared forget the moon.

And her voice sang for two dances in New Delhi—-
our last dance, and one alone to forget the moon.

I remember little—the way her mouth fit mine,
the strength of artists' hands, how to forget the moon.

Timotheos, what is the source of your sorrow?
Did you kiss the hollow night but forget the moon?

Zoology

As for servals, jackals, monkeys,
tigers, lions and baboons,
female chimps in heat
with genitals swollen like
pink balloons, elephants content
in their sad bags of skin, rhinos
set for dinner with their horns
and plates and lips, and the fishing cat
with eyes like Chuang Tzu's—-
all outdone! We humans,
caging our nakedness
in clothes, swearing our long fangs
left under some tree on the savanna, buried
in some closet at home, we—-
most unbelievable
spectacle of all.

These poems originally appeared in the 11.1 (Fall 2006) issue of The 2River View.

Arizona to Nevada: Crossing the Line

I’m astonished
flowers grow from rock.
I’ve seen them in Iceland:
Purple lupine clumped in a crevice.
How does this happen?

The same array unfolds
in Boulder City:
Another purple protrusion
inching its way
along the mountain tilt.

Below, on the two-lane highway,
cars, bottlenecked,
creep in pace.

Below that, the Hoover Dam
jammed the
Colorado River,
as early as the thirties,
bursting it
into an artificial flower
at the bottom of
Black Mountains’ vase.

Before that,
volcanoes sprouted
from Boulder City
leaving a bed
of gravel and sand
for the Colorado
to hose through
planting petals
glittering garnet and gold.

What will become of rock?
Of purple flowers
redeeming drivers,
hungry and drained?

Hanging Clothes

Mondays, my mother would heave
the creaking wicker basket
up the basement stairs
to the clotheslines outside,
wipe them clean,
then with wooden clothespins,
hang sheets—corners connecting—
my dad’s factory hankies, pillow cases, and shirts,
fastidiously pinning underpants on the inside line
to shy away from neighbors.

Clothes hung.
Years flap by, nearly ready
to take down and gather in a basket.
A load accomplished.
It all comes out in the wash—almost all—
except for the awkward haul of Alzheimer’s
she carries inside her cinderblock room
with the slim locker
that chokes her labeled clothes,
no longer able to breathe in the heat of the day.

From lawn chairs on the deck,
my t-shirts crisp
in the dry mouth of the wind
to stand straight as a movie screen
when I pull my childhood over my head
and, momentarily blindfolded,
glimpse spirits,
clothed in sheets and shirts,
fluttering and dancing
to the rhythm of the wind.

These poems originally appeared in the 11.1 (Fall 2006) issue of The 2River View.

Grackles

Autumn in the biome. Our yard busy with grackles landing around the feeder, their iridescent hoods a stylish variation that clerics strive for, eyes bright, insane, their crawk a throat made raw with singing notes too high. They’re stabbing yellow zoysia grass, hopping mad, glaring at chipmunks who have scampered under the drooping leaves of hosta lilies. A cardinal in the umbra of dried hydrangea blossoms, his redness the tongue naked to the air, loosened from its proper place in the heat of the mouth. A wet fear words its way among chickadees, titmice and nuthatches, the speckled lone woodpecker clinging to the edge of the feeder. They rise in a black cloud, the grackles, they’re done, they break up like flak, bit by bit and all around they fill the dusk with thin lament, and squirrels rush for cover.

Spare Parts

They must be good for something, like Homer's ready-cut hexameters, his ox-eyes and winey tide. There were scabs on Achilles' knee that you never heard about, Hamlet's stutter, Ophelia's infected toe. What if when Emma Bovary died, her jaw slack, what oozed out was servitude, sash, succor? All the wrong words you'd ever hear at the post office in Rouen. And the poet thinking of the tyrant's cockroach mustache, what if he picked a flea from Natalia's pudendum and said, grifter, gasp, Garibaldi? Always somewhere a crunch of tank treads. Why not strato-cumulus? Ambling across the noir screen, a boulevardier suddenly modern: Bite me! Try child's rictus, a joy pineal, the foot that Karloff dragged in The Tower of London.

Spraying the Chickens

It wasn't necessary back when the hen kept her chicks close and they pecked at her fecal droppings and they swallowed just the right kind of mother love, a touch of illness, a taste of their own blood, and they trembled in sleep. Those days you could eat them without a care. Maybe even find a dark spot near the pimply shoulder, a piece of quill, the memory of a certain kind of flapping. The farmer's wife wiped her hands on her apron after she put the naked thing in the oven and she wiped the dirt off potatoes and she cut the bread, and you were so happy and hungry you wanted to kiss her hands that kept layer upon layer of so much world intact. And if something of that got into your mouth, it was proof against the evil to come, the corruption of bodies. The cold touch of strangers.

These poems originally appeared in the 11.1 (Fall 2006) issue of The 2River View.