August 31 Kaddish
I loved you more intensely
knowing that you were going,
inhaled your scent like sky
in the moment after gale
before rain:
swollen air,
electricity.
Leaves fell
and still your nostrils flared.
You were always the last day of summer, even then—
the immensity of sun on the skin,
feeling the forecast.
(“August 31 Kaddish” first appeared in Sixfold)
Protection
You have my skin, easily bruised
my temper, things you will not
abide.
I want nothing more
than for you to unfold
petal by petal, rising up from the core
like Venus from the sea.
I offer you tools
to sculpt yourself, chisels
with the ends
filed off
so you will not hurt your teeth.
But it is difficult
to pick at stone with metal dull as mud.
This is my paradox
standing guard at the open door
urging you on with one hand on your shirt
hovering
above your choreography
trying to tease out
the you from the me
the definition from destruction
the stumble from the fall.
“Protection” first appeared in Lips
Needles
You breathe open-mouthed
the way horses never do
standing head against the wall
of your shed, leaning into it
because your legs cannot hold you.
I think what is this thing
I am able to do
with a syringe
how to know the very moment
when the needle on the meter of agony
passes the mark.
I have not eaten or slept for days.
When you can move at all
you stumble in circles.
You will not lay down.
Something very old tells you
to stay upright,
not to offer your jugular
to the wolves.
And I cannot tell
if I am the wolf
or your shepherd,
needle in hand,
plunging
bringing the ground
to you.
(“Needles first appeared in Mannequin Envy)
Open MRI
Not a divan on which to slowly lower
myself
surrounded by space,
pictures taken
behind my head,
not a chair
or hiding place
with room to move side to side
or exits within reach,
but two millstones
18 inches apart
and me the grain
laying in a metal stretcher
hockey mask snapped
over my face
pinning me down
raised up and stuffed
between the millstones
metal right above my nose
not open just
a catacomb
instead of
the grave.
(“Open MRI” first appeared in Viator)
Courage
| In this city, the children live under courage like a roof in the absence of roofs in the absence of strong hands that haven’t been battered and torn. Their courage wraps around them like shawls while they breathe into their nebulizers take Ritalin and hum themselves to sleep with their mothers’ palms pressed soft against their cheeks. It serves as blankets and sneakers, holds the paint to the walls and the windows in their frames. They read courage in each other’s eyes like books about childhood, and pass it one to another tattered and dog-eared to the younger among them as they grow out of it like clothes. | In this city, the women live under courage like a roof in the absence of roofs in the absence of strong hands other than their own. They hold out courage like receiving blankets for their children when they’re born, wrap them up in it, drape it over them like shawls. They press their soft palms against their children’s faces as they sleep, rubbing courage into their pores like salve, watching them breathe with the rhythm of sleep until they themselves nod off in the absence of quiet in the absence of safe in the space that they carved out that day to live. |