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.