We’ re all pagans and shamans and clap your hands now we won’ t stop the beat
We believe in divine healing and we hate to see that evening sun go down
We know when the sight of our women dressed in white each ritual night, is touching, hypnotizes
The animals blush and split for us as revival, as revealed to themselves
These are triumphant women.
Even Sister Fame hiding out in the alley turning tricks and singing verses from the undid scripture, is touching
As we sat at the feet of the string quartet,
in their living room, on a winter night,
through the hardwood floor spurts and gulps
and tips and shudders came up, and the candle-scent
air was thick-alive with pearwood,
ebony, spruce, poplar, and horse
howled, and cat skreeled, and then,
When we talk about when to tell the kids,
we are so together, so concentrated.
I mutter, “I feel like a killer.” “I’ m
the killer” — taking my wrist — he says,
holding it. He is sitting on the couch,
the old indigo chintz around him,
rich as a night sea with jellies,
I am sitting on the floor. I look up at him,
as if within some chamber of matedness,
some dust I carry around me. Tonight,
to breathe its Magellanic field is less
painful, maybe because he is drinking
a wine grown where I was born — fog,
Eros scrabbles to rose and rage
to gear or gare, as in Gare du Nord,
where I trained in to Paris from not
smoking pot in Master Mad, I’ m sorry,
Amsterdam, with its canals
called grachts and clocks
that bonged my homesick hours
at different times. Which is smite
for you violet types, a flower
that says “love it” if you listen. Me, I do
and don’ t feel it matters that evil thrives
in live, that we tinker and smash
everything down to bits and then
try to patch a path back home, it’ s our lotto
We keep trying to kill it, split it, hack
It to itsy bits. We suspend it
On the wall where we can see it
Passing. We hang it around our necks
Or wrists, laying pulse next to
Pulse as if each might like
Company. Ba-bump, etc. Rising
And setting has everything to do
With it. In the afternoon we feel so
Lazy we try not to close our eyes
And jerk awake, wondering what has
Passed, and where did we go
For that suspended hour,
And could anything keep us here.
They took my body to the forest
They asked me to climb a ladder
I did not want to climb a ladder
But they forced me to climb the ladder
If you don’ t climb the ladder
we will bury you in the foamy mud
I had to decide: should I die
by hanging or by burial
I climbed the ladder and they wrapped
a belt around the thick limb of a tree
And then when I could no longer breathe
they tossed me into a stream
And I floated to the edge of the village
where someone prayed for my soul
Bubblegum lip gloss kissed, Our lifelines, our mirrors,
I was never a singkil princess These are Luminous Mysteries —
Knuckle cracking, polished toes, Our notebooks, our language,
I was never a Santacruzan queen To witness, to make way,
Black eyeliner, push up bra Our thirst and our wedding bands —
I was never a curtsying debutante To fill stone jars with water, to wed,
Midnight’ s merely blue,
but me, me, me, I’ m
through
and through
sloe, cracked soot-
on-a-boot,
nicotine spat, licorice whip.
You can scratch, scratch, scratch
but I stay underskin true
to ebony, ink, crowberry, pitch;
hoist me up by my hooves
and shake till I’ m shook, I’ m still
chock full of coke, fuliginous
murk.
O there’ s swart in my soul,
coal by the bag,
cinders and slag,
scoriac grit, so please
come, comb
through my fleece with hands pallid
Such green, such green,
this apple-, pea- and celadon,
this emerald and pine and lime
unsheathed to make
a miser weep, to make his puny
bunions shrink; these seas
and seas of peony, these showy
tons of rose
to urge a musted monk disrobe,
an eremitic nun unfold;
such breathy, breathy moth
and wasp, such gleeful,
greedy bee to bid
the bully hearts of cops
and bosses sob,
to tell a stubby root unstub, a rusted
hinge unrust, the slug unsalt;
to stir the fusted
O, she says (because she loves to say O),
O to this cloud-break that ravels the night,
O to this moon, its mouthful of sorrow,
O shallow grass and the nettle burr’ s bite,
O to heart’ s flare, its wobbly satellite,
O step after step in stumbling tempo,
O owl in oak, O rout of black bat flight,
(O moaned in Attic and Esperanto)
O covetous tongue, O fat fandango,
O gnat tango in the hot, ochered light,
O wind whirred leaves in subtle inferno,
O flexing of sea, O stars bolted tight,
