Stunned heat of noon. In shade, tan, silken cows
hide in the thorned acacias. A butterfly staggers.
Stamping their hooves from thirst, small horses drowse
or whinny for water. On parched, ochre headlands, daggers
of agave bristle in primordial defense,
like a cornered monster backed up against the sea.
A mongoose charges dry grass and fades through a fence
faster than an afterthought. Dust rises easily.
On the platter set out in the center of the Matyó-embroidered tablecloth
was the syringe. And around it was silence. My father
gazed at my mother, and she back at him. Slowly,
faltering, he began to speak. I was seized by
an unusual shuddering. I recall that he used the word fate,
and that if I consented to the injected dose,
we could all fall asleep. We would stay together
for all time. And evade the uncertainty in mortifying
desperation. A fifteen-year-old’ s desire to live
cried out in me: “No!” To which
I would drive the pre-dawn dark to stake
my spot to fish for dinner, to numb my hands in the ice
bucket, to pluck, from the neat stack, a herring,
to fit the skullcap and pierce the eye with a toothpick,
the body double-hooked, my fingertips glimmering
with the scales of the dead while the line whined free
from the reel, and the bait arced out over the tidal current
on a point in view of the town where I lived,
What I adore is not horses, with their modern
domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore
is a bug that lives only one day, especially if
it’ s a terrible day, a day of train derailment or
chemical lake or cop admits to cover-up, a day
when no one thinks of anything else, least of all
that bug. I know how it feels, born as I’ ve been
into these rotting times, as into sin. Everybody’ s
busy, so distraught they forget to kill me,
and even that won’ t keep me alive. I share
my home not with horses, but with a little dog
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,
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,
you dream in the language of dodging bullets and artillery fire.
new, sexy diagnoses have been added to the lexicon on your behalf
(“charlie don’ t surf,” has also been added to the lexicon on your behalf).
in this home that is not our home, we have mutually exiled each
other. i walk down your street in the rain, and i do not call you. i
walk in the opposite direction of where i know to find you. that we
do not speak is louder than bombs.
I miss the moshpit pushed to the side of the bed.
The hard and fast rules, the business,
Walking across town the baby’ s hand in mine
Gave me anxiety Rosado barely mellowed.
Who doesn’ t love to hear about anxiety.
You wouldn’ t be too wrong to wake from dreaming
Into an amusement park sluice of Rioja
Eau de post-Auden thanks a lot Timex hubbub.
Those feelings are in their way good luck.
I don’ t even need a communion wafer
To feel the need to broadcast imprecations
Fade like a docent as the hedge fund falls.
