Stand to one side. No, over here with me:
out of the light but out of darkness too,
where everything that is not odd or old
is gold and subjugates the shadows. There,
now you will be no trouble and behold none —
anything but trouble, at first glance,
last chance to see what I say is worth a look.
Even as the sun with purple-colour’ d face
Had ta’ en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek’ d Adonis tried him to the chase;
Hunting he lov’ d, but love he laugh’ d to scorn;
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-fac’ d suitor ‘gins to woo him.
She sat on his lap for hours
pressed his face to her
large pink breasts her hands
moved through his hair
like fond snakes
she gave him curls, cleft
hooves beneath the flesh
marvellous flesh, and smooth shoulders
she taught him
how to use his tongue
to shape a heart
from a piece of ice.
I love to watch them sheathe themselves mid-air,
shut wings and ride the light’ s poor spine
to earth, to touch down in gutters, in the rainbowed
urine of suicides, just outside Bellevue’ s walls.
From in there the ransacked cadavers are carried
up the East River to Potter’ s Field
as if they were an inheritance,
gleaned of saveable parts,
Branching the way blind fingers splay across
The face they’ re reading, trees trace the backyard
Ditch sop that their shadows drop off into
Space,
an abyss where I hear a neighbor boy’ s
Voice cursing an exhilarated, out of its mind,
There is no Rescue Mission where it isn’ t freezing
from the need that created it. The lost children
distill to pure chemical. Where Good is called No-Tone
it’ s the one who cries out who doesn’ t get a coat.
The children fuse colors because they don’ t want to
separate. Daughters shot off of hydrants who cut
each other in the neck and gut, don’ t care
which one of them will end up later in surgery.
All hail the crumbling stone monument
to the Battle of Bad Axe, the wooden helve
long rotted and burned, the short walk to the river,
where we can bathe in its brown,
where a steamboat ghost huffs out
a stream of bullets. We are invulnerable
to their spectral lead, descendants
of fur traders (beaver, ermine,
skunk). Our lungs are clean and pink. Let’ s visit
the saw shop, the greenhouse with bluff views,
the pines and stacks of firewood,
the Blackhawk general store, named for
It doesn’ t matter
A damn what’ s playing —
In the dead of winter
You go, days of 1978 —
79, and we went
Because the soldiers were beautiful
And doomed as Asian jungles
Kept afire Christ-like
In the hopeless war
I did not go to in the end
Because it ended.
Is this what you intended, Vincent
that we take our rest at the end of the grove
nestled into our portion beneath the bird’ s migration
saying, who and how am I made better through struggle.
Or why am I I inside this empty arboretum
this inward spiral of whoop ass and vision
the leafy vine twisting and choking the tree.
O, dear heaven, if you are indeed that
or if you can indeed hear what I might say
heal me and grant me laughter’ s bounty
of eyes and smiles, of eyes and affection.
1.
The contours of the girl blur. She is both becoming and fact.
A rancor defines the split. Rip into. Flatten the depth of voice. That
urgent flex peels off the steady layers. A girl, I say.
Girl. Gu-erl. Quell. He. He — unbuttons before emergence.
As in yard rake pressed to roof of mouth. A fragrant rod.
Suh — sssuh — ssuck. Insistence. Lips go lisp. Our brutish boy.
Having not ever been whole. Or simple. Or young. Just split and open.
Not of it. For it. Born a cog of hard wheel at five, six, seven...
