The Crossing

1.
We didn’t make the journey ourselves.
Our families did that, on hands and knees
hiding in the backs of fruit trucks pretending
to be sacks of grain, bodies pulled shut.
On the roofs of freight trains glaring silver
in the noon light. My grandmother pushed her head
out the slit window to see the sun and was blinded
by the sight. When they reached the border
one family turned back. They went home.
The other carried their homes on their backs,
in their bellies, held it between their hands
as they crossed the line into whatever nothing that was promised.
One side looked no different from the other then.

2.
This is a country where they sell meat
in the same place they sell pants.
Meat on little sticks,
meat smoking on the table in front of us,
red meat slivered and shiny with egg.

The pants are for the men. The women
wear diaphanous robes that fill with air
and stay full always. Beneath the robes
they are invisible. Their bodies end
at the neck. Above, faces with eyes
turned down, mouths closed.

There are no women here at all.
Just these ghosts, gliding silently along.

Act 1

The first act: the attic, moonlight at the window,
two poor men dressed in rags, burning what they love
to feel warmth, not realizing that in winter
nothing keeps the wind out. The poet watches his words
take flame and laughs to taste the smoke.
Food is sparse now. Money, too, is low, though time

is not as precious and he doesn’t think to save. Enough time
he thinks, to keep us hungry, looking out the cold window
at snow too thin to cover the dirty street. The smoke
dissipates, the garret turns grey. Any love
he’d once held for the romance of poverty is gone. Words
make only a little heat in this unfortunate winter

and even in the wood-stove hold no sparkle. In winter
they need lit candles to write bad stories in time
to pay bloated landlords that won’t take words
for rent. His friends depart as he stands by the window.
He watches them bicker, dance. Soon love
will turn his philosophy to smoke.

Months have passed since he last smelled the smoke,
the rich unfurling feathers at his nose that winter
steals the softness from. Consumption in love,
he hopes. Lust, decadence of emotion, stasis of time
to delude misery to the kinder sting of jealousy. At the window,
when she knocks, he puts his words

to use, but she faints, and leaves him only words
that on waking make her recall the smoke
that last baron spat into her face. But then from the window,
light enters.  Hands touch, and even in this winter
it ignites. Never mind that there is only so much time
they can have to rest their bodies at the fire. It isn’t love

they look for here at introduction. It isn’t love
that she looks to when she crafts the words
that let him think he knows her. He thinks there will be time
to uncover more than her name, her flowers, more than this smoke
she waves shyly towards him. After all, it is winter
in Paris and two people can stand at a window

hand in hand to forget that time has no affection for love.
There is a wide clear window words are hurled from
but this smoke between them heats. The winter loses frost.  

The Meat

What the men taste they cannot fear.


They have tasted elk and boar and bison and beast.
The skin of the beast turns crispy over the fire.
Its bones, whittled down, make remarkable tie pins.


And the women with their fruit fill their arms with color. Their
fingers have turned black with the dye. Their teeth are always dark,
their mouths exaggerated with stains.


On a rock there is a creature with the face of a man.
It will not die, even when they pull their fingers through its flesh.


This is how we began to devour our enemies raw and wriggling.


It takes time to become accustomed to the way the food feels, 
moving on the tongue and down the throat.


It is a prized delicacy in some parts of the world.
They will charge you just for sitting at the table 
even if you change your mind and opt for the tenderloin. 
The wine is the best in the world -- smell that bouquet.


The men and women drink the wine and eat the meat.


There is nothing more satisfying than this.

The Basket

Your basket, full of stones.

What you carried to breakfast.

The water behind the house is grey and full of bodies.
Stepping stones, bones --
it all feels the same when your foot presses down on it.

The house looks like the houses children draw.
The roof is sound but there are only two windows, facing the sun.
Or the moon, when the moon is out.

You have never seen the moon. 
You wake only when the light is full 
and broken into pieces you can hold.

The basket is not full of light
but you hoist it up and carry it home anyway.

Once, you thought you saw the moon
but it was only a shadow during the day, 
cast onto the side of a tree.
If you saw the moon you would sing to it.

Your basket, full of stones:
Your hand on the handle, gripping it.
Your arm, your shoulder, your back, 
bearing the weight.

You carry it home. 
You lay the stones out in the pot and boil them
until the water tastes like earth.

Poured hot into mugs, you breathe it in.

Winter Sound

Somewhere it’s snowing, and it looks like this:
figures in the house, behind the glass window,
the wind just a distant sound that blows the white on white,
the trees just lighter and darker shades of disturbance.

Here, it is fall, though the air still feels like summer.
Something tells you you should be marching,
though you don’t feel like marching:
every step you take pinches your toes.

It could be that your shoes don’t fit.

But the seasons, too, seem uncomfortable
with handing off the baton. They’re sitting around
instead, having coffee and chatting about
why one is sadder than the other, whose hurts
matter more. When the coffee goes cold
summer stands, stretches and evaporates

leaving autumn staring at the empty chair
that is winter. The silence that doesn’t talk back
even when you think you might want it to.
Quiet that, beaten down with fists and jabbed
with elbows, poked with sticks, stabbed
with knives, remains quiet.

Somewhere there’s a house where the only noise
they hear is the noise they make for themselves.