Relationships

1

In the Forest of    Wearisome Sadness,
Where one day I found myself wandering alone,
I met my heart, who called to me, asking me where I was going.

The path was long and straight, row after row of conifers receding
To a horizon that because of   the geometry
Seemed farther than it really was,
Like the door at the top of a staircase in Versailles.

But as if   the forest’ s maker had been offended by elegance,
A pile of rocks disrupted the rows: the forest once
Had been a field. I remember that field.

When I read about the garden
designed to bloom only white flowers,
I think about the Spanish friar who saw one
of my grandmothers, two hundred years
removed, and fucked her. If you look
at the word colony far enough, you see it
traveling back to the Latin
of  inhabit, till, and cultivate. Words

I was passionate,
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.

But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home.

You have a strange pet —
one eye is a cat’ s, the other a sheep’ s.
Yet, it won’ t socialize with felines,
will attack any flock.
On moonlit nights,
it wanders on the roof.

When you’ re alone
it will lie in your lap
preoccupied, slowly studying you
until — on its face — a challenge.

Translated from the Chinese

She dances only in her necklace,
scotch-lit surely. He touches his glasses.

Nightie-less, dugs whipping, hair sprung,
some music inside, out, wet tongue

tip at her lip, no mere palsied shuffle,
both bony feet lifted, elbows awful.

Shakespeare’ s banshee of wailing parts,
a woman with hair, a woman with warts.

He’ s fixed to the floor. Dear Heloise:
do other presumed-sane mothers do this —

wait in the dark after the ball
to strip for their sons at the end of the hall?

I saw I dreamt

Two men hoisted hung up not American the rope
Not closed on their breathing

But this rope tied them spine to spine somehow

Suspended
From the mood of a tree not American they were

African Ugandan Nigerian

Without a license a right to touch
The sin their touching incites

And I heard their names called out Revision

Or Die and You Must Repent
And Forget the Lie you Lily-Boys you Faggots

Called up from the mob

Valentine, valentine you arrive
in a town car with a chauffered envelope,
scattered pieces of you enrolled in schoolyards
like a recess of paper vanity, litter, old
with red-rimmed "loves," red-rhymed lies in lace.

The verses come, rising as easily as long-stemmed snakes in
bloom where swamps settle down and drowse
by dawn, a night of secrets slid out of drawers like knives nesting, a choice of chimes and slums overrun
by bejeweled heartbreakers. What a lovely
winter, almost skipping February.

At nights birds hammered my unborn
child’ s heart to strength, each strike bringing

bones and spine to glow, her lungs pestled
loud as the sea I was raised a sea anemone

among women who cursed their hearts
out, soured themselves, never-brides,

into veranda shades, talcum and tea moistened
their quivering jaws, prophetic without prophecy.

Anvil-black, gleaming garlic nubs, the pageant arrived with sails unfurled
from Colchis and I rejoiced like a broken

I know my friend is going,
though she still sits there
across from me in the restaurant,
and leans over the table to dip
her bread in the oil on my plate; I know
how thick her hair used to be,
and what it takes for her to discard
her man’ s cap partway through our meal,
to look straight at the young waiter
and smile when he asks
how we are liking it. She eats

My throat is full of sparklers
making me a lighthouse
for a loveship that can fly

Our mother monarchy
sweet land paternity

I’ ll eat their offspring’ s money and let you have a bite