Golem Dream

A flame burning inside of a chrysalis
but without heat
Both hibernating and exploding

Skitters or scuttles like a badly built robot
wound too tight

Both here and there at once
Capable of asking intimate questions

Sometimes like marbles in a jar
gleaming and even picked at random perfectly matched

Sometimes like a agitated frog

plopping on any available lily pad

Both inside and outside
A coded catalog of sense

references scrolling down the brain

A pulsing colored fog with glittering fingers

The noise that has no origin or endpoint
diegetic and rehearsed
Inquisitive but not acquisitive
A billboard bearing photorealistic painted fruit

As grandiose as a tiny cactus
and as prickly and as rarely blooming

Empty but overstuffed
A flexible mesh glazed in honey

Apology

Failure has black teeth. Gritty with the tar.
They smear it on the ground where it sleeps.

Break the teeth. They are of no use here.
When my mouth opened for the first time

A little noise was heard, like a curtain
blowing against the shutters at night.

But no words were spoken. The last time
my mouth opened, you looked inside:

The speculum held my lips apart in a circle,
Your flashlight left a glitter in my eyes.

I do not know what you saw. But afterwards
You smiled and wiped your hands off quietly.

If you could not find the love I know I owe:
Forgive me. Inside of my own body

A small beetle races around, antenna up,
searching for feeling before falling

Through every absence it finds.

Trees

There is the sycamore, the magnolia, the dogwood, the elm, the oak, the maple.
The cherry blossoms have bloomed and fallen. The street lies under their false snow.
The window is befriended by a tree and its branches. It is waving hello and goodbye.
In some countries, they leave the stumps of dead trees in circles just to prove a point.
I have been inside the hollow trunks of the largest trees in the world. I have lit fires there.
There is the mahogany, the redwood, the crab-apple, the lemon, the orange.
All the hunched over trees are handing out their fruit today for free.
The insects have taken advantage of the offer. They glitter in that sweet flesh.
A cross-section of a tree shows where the worms have burrowed through, years ago.
A plaque shows the man who has given his money to plant the tree.
There is the ash, the shredded paper, the dead fire and the smoke.
I have cut down a thousand trees and burned their bodies on a pyre.
The letters rising from the embers spell nothing we can read.

Dance

The lovers dip and dance
their faces parallel in infatuation.
Smitten, they swirl across the floor
under the dusty yellow light of memory.

The song is Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams.”
The melodies are logical, the harmonies pleasing.

Like humans seen at a distance that upon examination
reveal themselves to be plastic figurines
The relentless upbeat of the music gives way
to the voice, trembling as if tears have lodged there.

What seems to be a quaver
is not a quaver, it is merely song
hesitating over emotion.

Before

We used to sleep skin to skin like one indivisible self.
Between our fingers the electricity glowed blue at night.
There was nothing on your face I did not know by sight.
Take from me this hunger, lay what remains upon your shelf.

We used to lie in sheets so soft we would dissolve.
Your laughter was the jingle of cracked seashells in a jar.
The sound echoed out like radio tuned to some far
City. Now the static hangs sinister, like some gray maw

Singing our torn bodies to sleep. I can’t sleep.
Not anymore. Not since your mouth came to an O
Saying only this: No, no, no, no, no. No
more will memory be the uneasy house we keep

Upright together. What is past is past. And fast.
Tomorrow I will stretch my limbs out wide
And shake my head and dip my face into the tide
And pretend that what has passed is not, is never, past.

After Traveling

I don’t dream any longer of kneeling in the black dirt by the gateway,
Of waking with grimy hands and dust in my beard,
Of new lilies, new petunias, of smelling dead earthworms,
Of turning over small piles of seeds under the ground,
Wedging bulbs between hard white roots. I dream
Of these street lights, the halogen moving in and out of my eyes,
Haloes that flash and meld before I can see the angel slipping
Into a roadside shack with his wings folded back.

Driving at night, all landscape becomes one
Plain strung with unreliable starlight.
I drove this way to forget that I had a direction,
A destination, to imagine it was all one light glinting, suspended
Above roads I would never map, homes and people I had forgotten.

You, at that dining room table so dimly set with blue velvet
(remembering the first time we ate at that table
How nervous you were, cutting stems so short
The flowers bobbed in their vases, lost)
Eating persimmons cut into quarters with cold fingers,
Puckered mouth and all unmoved dust incandescent.

The memories no longer reach into my spine with electric fingers
To tell me that you breathe, that I no longer live in a home spent
In constant conference with unruly children that tip over the vases,
Make you clean milk from the floor on your knees—you thank them—
close to the ground, you thank them.

Instead, a girl that pulled back the coverlet the same way you did
Without wrinkling the sheets. But she smiled with whiter teeth,
Not your shine and sweat. With my hand on her jaw,
I pretended this was comfort, that she was alive as I was.

Strange to discover that any two bodies will fit together,
That any coverlet will pull back so smoothly
To reveal these pale sheets.

Even here, wet forsythia drips into the highway,
Yellow leaves cling together, translucent in rain—
Spring, despite the chill.

Failed meals

1.
An egg in a pan
Blackens and stinks.

The spaghetti is hard.

And you are sitting in a dirty room
Surrounded by things that were never yours.

2.
In the castle, Don Carlos and Rodrigo share
A red flank of venison, sheared of the fat.

They dig their fingers into it.

In Flanders, they are burning the fields,
And the screams of the cattle
Are like the knives sliding on the plate.

3.
The cardboard threads
Of packaged noodles
Plump with lukewarm tap water
Until they are almost elastic.

Buoyed in the orange water
They drift like dead jellyfish –

Behind you, the uneven drone
Of the empty white refrigerator.

4..
Sliced potato in a ring
Turning brown, smoking.

Red onions in a bowl.

Glass Dream

In the dream – it was a dream – we had glass faces
And our mouths were cracked, they only made glass noises –
Like birdsong sent through a dark funnel, shrilling between us.
It was a dream – how do you know? – because our hands were limp
And could not hold anything with their still fingers,
Because when we moved them they only floated, helium-bound
Drifting upwards into the air towards the one window.
When we put our mouths together, the kiss hurt me,
So the dream changed – but why did it hurt? –  Your mouth was cold. Your mouth was hard.
The air was dry in my chest and I had no lungs
But what I tasted was soot and lavender.
The sky was still and cloudless as if snow
Had just fallen on the earth and covered it white –
But the heat rose from the pavement in wavering streams.
Did I see you there? No. You were absent,
Dancing alone in a gazebo on a wooded bank, arms up.
The dirt fell apart into aggregate clumps and signs
And the breeze picked me up and carried me over the city
And I saw you moving, your eyes were closed but I had no tongue
And did not call to you. I saw the green of your grove
Like a bright blot against the gray land.
What did it feel like to fly?
I never feel anything in a dream. But in the morning
I remember the broken bits in a wash.
I didn’t know I was dreaming until I woke,
And then the red light behind my eyes gave way
To the whiteness of the sun on the books
And my own hands wrapped around my own body.  

Stars

Why are there more stars everywhere but           here
What have you to do with this           absence

Ripped places           as you get closer to them you can see the light
is not escaping         It has pried open as much space as it needs for flight      



The little things are of no object           Their eyes are like stars
in that stars most closely resemble bright holes in the sky.

          In some places of the world
          the stars are so dense            
  
                                            that late in the night
                                                       the sky is almost white --

Condition

What remains of nature But this
The table with its thin film of ash and crumb
The floor beneath The translucent shells of the insects
The single plant twirling its long vines against the wall

No noise like true wind
But the fan, turned outward, muttering
as we sit by the window
watching the sun light up one cloud, and then, the next

We close our eyes What we see shimmers in colors
that warp from red to blue and briefly Silver


The meat that sits on your plate exuding its thin pool of blood
Will taste less like flesh than you expected. It will taste good.

As you swallow the first bite you will feel the chewed gristle
proceed at a leisurely pace through your gullet

When did you last kill to eat? No, it doesn’t matter
You have never killed to eat And you never will.

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.

The Hippopotamus

they are said to be the most violent animals in the world
their jaws can close over a man’s head and snap it off
their bodies move unusually fast as if they are smaller
but they are not smaller their mass is extravagant
when they move through the water

          the water moves aside

not for religious reasons but because there’s no place to go
but aside when a leathered tank goes slopping forward
you will go left and you will go right and you will go away
their heads swing open like jewelry boxes
but there is no jewelry inside, only teeth the size of small fists
not pointed the way a panther’s fangs are pointed
blunt, even, but when the jaw swings shut whatever’s there
is riven into pieces -- what is inside the mouth and out

what is inside swallowed whole what is outside left to rot

still, i confess that i love the hippopotamus, with its tendencies
towards unwarranted violence who has not wanted
without reason to destroy everything
that was unnecessary to his happiness? who has not wanted
a jaw so vast it could fit the head of an enemy between its grasp?
who has not wanted to force the river out of its bank?
to be feared by the clumsy? to jostle muddily around?
who has not wanted not to be afraid?