petals and bees

do you remember

loving me

do you remember

the cloud cover, you called it, to not think of me

do you remember

the house you built to be anywhere else but

do you remember

when the bad weather came inside

do you remember

how to lay on your bed in the rain

do you remember

getting old, one night

do you remember

when love made you bilingual

do you remember

reading me in the dark

do you remember

the first time you said sorry, on your own

do you remember

sorry, as a house, you’ve never left

do you remember

me coloring you in, with my hands

do you remember

the rain, backwards, as a cloud

do you remember

each no it took to say yes

do you remember

your first word

do you remember

your last

do you remember it,

any other way?

I thought I heard the hard soft of your hands,

I thought I tasted the earth roll off your tongue,

We’ll be kneeling when our ten locked fingers break open this lung —

Our love won’t hold on to no one, oh holy woman, be my Amen.

I thought I saw oil under your feet,

I thought I heard the careful clock miss a beat,

When the sun comes up, we’ll break open quiet into this heat —

Our love won’t hold on to no one, oh holy woman, be my Amen.

I thought I felt the braille of your prayer,

I thought my fingers could trace your longing in this cell,

When it’s time to break our hearts, set the table for one lonely chair —

Our love won’t hold on to no one, be my Amen.

You being gone is like finding something that was lost–

I remember! The horror of not remembering!

How did I ever forget where it was?

And all that buried time, still needed, for this and that.

Except –

This and that can’t wait to not remember —

Though I can’t forget –

Exactly where you went missing —

You aren’t there anymore.

It was the end of July when you fruited

inside my fastened, sagittal mind.

You had just divorced your mother – I mean,

your wife – I saw you look at me

eyes as plum blossoms still long

for this world, I looked for a blush

behind the sepals. You had come in from a summer rain,

the kind that swallows, swaying, say it –

eight years of rain later, and a son. I plunged

these burned hands into you since

drinking the end of July dry found me like an ember,

scarcely able to softly touch without reducing everything

to ash. Though I’m much better now, the plum tree suffered

in the heat.

I thank your mother for the hollow she left in you, so,

when you knew not how to ever be full,

you made a vow between two continents, and I thank those

eight rainy years, grafted to a tailspin, for

giving you a son. I thank your boy for growing from that graft

it took a hollow to fill, which took all those

years of rain to bloom your two tender, brave eyes I shyly mistook for not-yet July fruit.

photograph by Silvia Grav.

Last night, I woke in backbend on a large cat. The northern hemisphere in the bowl of my breasts. The cat was me, and I was myself, too. You, you are the dream that turns our cerebrospinal fluid purple to blue, to black as sky. Every ridge top hair holding me erect, like bristlecone branches at first sense of smoke. You, you were the vision that fine-tuned our motor neurons to run, like a string, tightened for pitch. Each shaking stillness. You, you were the light-bending pulse under the earth that brought me closer to night-sky showers on the wild spine of a predator. You, you were my alarm to evacuate. You, you, you, you you you youyouyou

are how I start most mornings.

(Tracey Emin)

Love is cornflower, along the crease of your eyelid

dusty, for me, I hum in your drift, in your ear,

love is for sinners, too. We add on another wing,

so we can hang over the water and catch the white

caps, I love to say this in your dreams, we have time

and there isn’t enough room, even there. So this,

chicken scratch, to find the hypotenuse of your jaw

some angle of eyeblink to eyeblink, love won’t hold

still, long enough to know. Love to say this with my

hands, my bloodline is rich with laborers, the red heat

speaks, love works hard from sun up to sundown.

The white caps are incantatory, a blink of cornflower.

Love you side-sleeping in a west-facing wing. I

calibrate the sinking sun to a low humming orange, I

measure its mantle of light, love falls right through in

small degrees, your jaw is uncountable, hold still,

sorry, I try.

.

(egon schiele)

There is a river as wide as seventy-five bodies, strung together

       face down, unseen.

Its water moves slow and thick like syrup, coughing

       over rocks by the bank where

All the men limp, their women drunk in the trees, fat, fetal children in wheelchairs

        getting too much sun.

We’re all descendants of murder,

       you weren’t there to say. It’s just

That I saw a jet-ski overturn,

       all the while,

Bodies, bobbing. A river as deep

       as almond groves are long.

The distance measured in pink oleander.

Some of our wilderness is as clear as a bad hip.

       Before we brought the nation to eat at our water table,

Before Brazilian citrus

       or Blue Diamond Growers,

Before piece-rate cotton picking,

       before bonanza wheat-fields,

Before gas combines or the transcontinental rush on our

       golden waterways.

A river as scarlet as a barrel,

       measured in fever seasons

Of cholera, someone counted the bodies and saw that none of them were white,

        it’s impossible to tell what came before,

All the while,

       men keep limping; women fall from the branches.

I left my heart in a river and drove away

what’s left lifted by the scavengers

to god on black, flapping wings.

I called in a favor, right off the highway.

I said to god,

how many folks have I brought to you

with this bleating, punched at, bottomless thing?

and I don’t even believe in you but I believe

this foamy, bluesy river has more room than my lived-in

body so send in the birds –

with a sigh the cottonwoods shook from green to white,

five heavy crows dive-bombing the scene loud as a chopper.

I blew god a kiss and started to untie my heart like a pair of old

sneakers   splashes in the river   out it fell

wars I began   interrupted marriages   eyes with teeth

eyes that lie   eyes never saying sorry    moments

when I was neither brave nor good     demons who feed me   family I don’t have

hungry lovemaking       fences with no gates    foreclosure

knives I sharpened to give away     you, who I try to forget

poison   coming back for more      cords I cannot cut

in a word   my humanity –

The birds don’t care.  No crow I know has ever said,

    I catch you on every breeze, you are everywhere to me

god made them to circle and dive,

to take from this world into the next –

It’s a relief not every creature lives simply to

collect memories that amplify pain.

We’re still uncovering the biology of this.

I suspect all rivulets and oceans have an answer –

these wheels have a singular job, to make perfect circles

every time, one lazy lead-foot on the gas while the

sweet, diaphanous lemonade of early summer dusk

swallows me; sneakers on the power line,

catching a breeze.

Our glossy body birds shuffle

on a seawall suffering an angry god

who pisses open the sky

time will turn us into madwomen

with old, sloppy bodies but wings

for all that’s left

we’ve spurned our anatomy, forgot our own flight

to peck lazily at pools of salty god-piss

to feed at the hands of divided men. Look up, sisters, from

the piss filled crack in this concrete dump

War is the feeder that sways from our branches

time will turn us into madwomen

with old, sloppy bodies but wings

for all that’s left

I dreamt up an ocean angrier

than us. Angrier than you – imagine that.

It crashes mightily over me every night

how can it be we are still tinsel trees decked

in totems all day until the angry night slaps me

down so deep our dowry of totems bob furiously above

and madness is a sanity many miles wide,

and quiet,

too

time will turn us into madwomen

with old, sloppy bodies but wings

for all that’s left

time is

only an option

to go crazier, higher

above the trees, deeper,

wilder into the water.

You,

yes, you; I am the sea.

I breathe you in.

You’re naked. Look

at what you hide that

is neither yours, nor mine.

Look at what is thrown away. Remember?

Look, I am here again.

Still, I want you.

Still.