Double Helix

I
One day it will happen –
Someone you love will die.

II
We came to bury only three things:
Your braid of hair, your father’s watch,
And the birds.

III

As a child I stood in the meadow
Watching the burning carcass of a horse.
Its belly ready to burst with flesh and fire.
Each hair singing from the inside.

III
Imbloc braid bakes in the hearth.
We pull apart the braids with our fingers,
It’s soft center, a miracle.

IV
I expand with cells and membrane.
Fingernails and eyelashes.
It burns orange and heavy.

V
My father tells me to drag the calf’s placenta
Far into field. He watches from the back porch.
I carry it in a plastic bucket.
Bury it he says, far down in to the Earth.

VI
The dog digs it back up and shares it with
The ravens.

VII
Do you remember when we stood erect our backbones aligned in pairs?
We made fire as the birds built nests in our hair?

VII
We came to bury our self.

Natural Histories (revision)

… We should study every kind of animal without hesitation, knowing that in all of them there is something natural and beautiful – Aristotle

Among the pinned dragonflies and brittle stars we search.
You trace your finger down the crooked spine of a dry seahorse.
Crocodile embryos float and bob in formaldehyde jars as we lean heavy on the shelf. Here, this is life.
The success of the others: the cockroach, the scorpion, and the horseshoe crab do not go unnoticed. And secretly we wish to crack open their glossy exoskeletons, to poke around in the spongy matrix of their bodies.
We wish to know.
In the far corner of the gallery the tiny apparatus of Aristotle’s lantern sits detached from the rest of itself, immobile like an unemployed drifter. It’s five-chambered evolution opens and closes like a little porthole, it sings opera and eats algae. This has purpose, but we, we are running out of time. We scamper to the snake and find our reflection on it’s glass, there we unzip our skin, you slowly, stepping out at your limbs. It was not so easy for me, I scratch off the remains with my nails. There is newness, a breeze. Here, we leave our bones, our membrane. Study us, we say, tell us.

natural histories

“… we should study every kind of animal without hesitation, knowing that in all of them there is something natural and beautiful” – Aristotle

Among the pinned dragonflies and spiny crustaceans we search. You trace your finger down the crooked spine of a dry seahorse and then marvel at the waxy crane eggs and the jars of crocodile embryos floating in formaldehyde. We discuss the success of the others: the cockroach, the scorpion, and the horseshoe crab and we wish to crack open their glossy exoskeletons and to poke around in the spongy matrix of their bodies. In the far corner of the gallery we see the tiny apparatus of Aristotle’s lantern sitting detached from the rest of itself, lifeless and immobile like an unemployed drifter ever getting closer to the whole of its being, yet too complex to be fully understood. I’d like to know its secret, its five-chambered evolution, its purpose—
but we are running out of time. We scamper to the reptiles and listen closely to the soft hum of a cicada pretending to be a rattlesnake, I call it an opportunist and rebelliously tab the protective glass that catches our reflection on its surface.

Survival

September means time to slaughter the pigs. The old sow had bore him many. He fastens her hooves and makes it quick. After, we burn the carcass and scrape the hair. The crackle of pigskin attracts the chickens who come to feed on what we waste, which is always very little. Early that morning I remember the smell of the cold fall rain writing its name in the dust. The water washes her hemorrhage back into the crevices of earth. The ice truck pulls up to the gate; it goes unannounced by the dog, who is too busy to bark, harboring the sow’s ear between his teeth.

Escape

I do not fault him for the parts we left inside, for the parts we let out, nor for our barn burning against the blue sky. I think of them in the meadow: mother’s cotton nightgown whipping in the wind, the broken beams of father’s handiwork stirring the night with smoke signals, the field mice escaping like a tidal wave, my brother, a black silhouette, standing in front of his masterpiece like a severed ear.

commitment

So much can depend on a seed: hierarchy, marriage, slavery, ownership, social structure, disease, and war. Then there is Neolithic women, the bread baker. She rounds a kernel between her fingers, pushes it into the black earth of the Fertile Crescent thus changing all of us, forever. I stare at her germating spheres: the masses of hip, head, breast and belly bridging the gap between substance and cultivation as the past creeps up like the weeds in the garden.
Together, we shall think of him, the stranded Homo habilis, our handy man. We’ve invited him to build a stonewall around our nomadic hearts, around the bush, the barley, the lentil, the pea, the flax, and the bitter vetch—
Careful now, he goes about his business. It is a warm afternoon and the tools are heavy—
How such tender revolutions became the trappings of my domesticity.

Tenacity

We drive north with the birds on the bare sky of possibility. One by one they arrange in a completed formation making their way back home. I imagine not one stops to complain about being too tired to fly.

Silence eats its way through the first three hours of our journey. I watch the little towns like a spinning carousal evaporate through the passenger window. “In that red house, over there, a mother is crying,” is all I say. This is all I say because I love someone else.

You reach across the emergency break and take my hand in yours. My hand is a dead fish, limp, the life is gone, the cells have stopped moving, and the bones are fossilized.

Tomorrow I end my childhood. Tomorrow we will sit at the table and we will die over dinner, over potatoes and lemon chicken held together by the round orb of the plate.

Vignette: Conversations with a Drum

We are on a train to Xian— the belly of the country. We are talking of dreams, dreams and broken glass. We stare out the window at the moving picture of white goats sprinkled on top of green hills. She fiddles with the rim of her teacup. She is telling her story. Her eyes widen then fall into their natural slopes. I listen to her, committed. I am in love.
The train stops. Passengers exit. Most are from the standing section. They hold crickets in bone cages and white peppered eggs wrapped in wax paper. A man clutches a roaster with a feathered green neck. To have a seat on the train is a luxury and we know this silently. We are moving again.
“And then what happened?” I ask her. “To what?” she replies. “In the dream, what happens?” I ask. “It ends like most dreams end. In fragments, but it gets clearer each time. Like a subtle click of a microscope.” She holds up her thumb and index finger in a little circle. She leans closer. Her breath tickles my forearm. “After the dream my sister called to tell me my father died on his couch holding the remote. The television was on, the house was dark.”
A man interrupts us to ask for tickets. He rips the corner of each one with a long yellow fingernail and says something in Mandarin. She replies and they exchange a nod. “Most dreams do not end that way,” I say. “Of course they do,” she says.

Mother

I see her now—
There framed in the window.
Her hands wrist deep in dough.
Thick hands, hands like tree trunks.
Hands that carry.

She’s watching off into somewhere,
somewhere other than the yellow house
with the blue curtains.
A rosary in the pit of her apron
dents her left thigh.

Flour wafts up
Like a curl.
She prays for me,
She prays for us all.

ritual

Claudia in the kitchen
Doing dishes leaning heavy over
The mesh of scrambles eggs and sour milk.
Steam rises like a mirror
As her youth dissolves
Through the cracks in the porcelain.

morning coffee

Again, I am trapped inside the four corners
Of the kitchen window, and
I watch the young lovers
Say goodbye in the vacant street
Were apartments are married to the sky.

Only the birds know our secrets.
They speak about us amongst themselves.
And the young man leaves too soon
Into the empty space between them.

I sip my coffee. Hot, envious, and afraid.
I am a thief of moments.
I lean over the sink to watch the last of her
Slip into the yellow morning and
I can hear the creak in the floorboards
Just outside.

I peer through the tiny lens,
A fishbowl, stuck like a gun shoot in the
Middle of the old door.
Maybe she will love me.

In the strained moisture of my eye, I see
the blurred image of her ascend the stairs.
Focus.
Heat and light blur around her shoulders.
Focus.
Love stands before me.
Focus.
It waits outside.
Focus.
It creates a tight fist.
Focus.
It knock

Cuba

She crawls into bed
Smelling of burnt sugar cane.
Her skin is ruin. It crumbles.
She rolls over me, then
Makes love to my valley
And kisses my people,
Slides into the heavy womb
And builds refuge.

She wraps me gently
Around the corners of her lids,
And slings me on her back.
Together we travel home.
First, to Spain,
Then to Africa, and over the
Yellow waters with their tiny
Curiosities.

This land is shaped
Like a bird’s tongue.

Sin azucar no hay pias
Without sugar there is no country.
Without illusion there is no truth
Without her there is no Cuba.

slicing tomatoes

The thin crack of skin
A dull knife will only bruise
The soft pulp within

Motherhood

The soft shell of egg
An eyelash falls to the floor—
Cells and memories

the poet

Never trust a poet.
They have, of course, a total
Disregard for punctuation; among
Other things.

Never love a poet.
They root their words like a crooked spine.
And their secrets—
A set of Chinese boxes,
Falling and folding into something larger, or smaller,
Depending on how they look at it.

Never open the box of a poet.
Some contain fiction.
Some contain truth.
Some contain them.
Some contain her.
All contain you.

winter passing

The dogwood stands alone undressed

In the yard, out back.

She witnesses the unravelling of our years,

The families favorite fruit,

Even in winter.

Later we go walking,

To watch the peppered sparrows swoop and poise

On the needles of her branches. Petals falls like

White parachutes upon our boots.

Suddenly, I love you.

We talk with smokey tongues

About nests built under moonlight

In her arms.

In morning, spring slices

Through the leaden sky.

Here is the end of winter.

Here is the end of many things.

Afterthought

Ophelia is swimming

In the green afternoon,

I watch her from the trees.

She can burn fire through water and

She is not afraid.

My legs dangle from above like white branches.

I do not jump.

I envy her too much.

And I return in years, in many years

Later. To collect the bones

That stack in piles like memories stack.

Each one is hollowed, the marrow- a feast

For the birds, and the splinters –

Their smooth shell becomes a cream

Colored afterthought.

What to do with such novelties of time?

Manufacture them on strings,

Gather wood for a fire, hope for wind,

And listen to the soft chimes of the past.

The Kitchen Table- Tanka variation

In the house alone

The night is a barking dog

The moon a peephole

On the flat floor board of sky—

It’s time to tend the ghosts

“Hello” ghosts I say

Are you memory or stain?

I ask with hesitation

They ignore me as usual

And converse over dinner

Grey tongued and pleased

They eat the jam and sausage

Cracking the plaster

They are moths with peppered wings

And secretly I love them

Among the loose change

And the hinges that once held doors

I plot an escape

Bury them into the ground

And build a house over them

The house is empty,

Rafters eaten by insects

The curtains are shadow

And the chimney stands alone

In the hollow of the room

The kitchen table

The broken plates, the puzzle

Pieces, The desert

Of the living, and you, a

Four-cornered miracle.

Night Swimming

This is not a place for lovers.

It seems as if God stopped at the side of the road,

To take a piss, leaving a shallow,

Muddy, hole in the parched earth.

Under pockets of sky I tread

Two miles to the waterhole’s cakey rim,

Delivered by wheat and the smell of warm cow breath.

He is here, waiting.

He undresses slowly.

My fingers cling to the oval button of my sweater,

My mouth gapping open in disbelief,

Carved out of wood, a figurehead of ship,

Trapping pieces of moon and horseflies.

Tonight, even Sappho would have wept.

Her tears chart us on a river to where

Rivers all lead to other rivers, leading to the place between spaces,

Between other spaces—

Places, where only love and water stretch

Freezing between cracks to expand new geographies.

And morning will find us.

Like miracle, you will leave me.

The low slung crone of the dairy rig

calls me back home.

And as with all great loves, this one dies.

But the ache is not the death —

it is, the leaving.