Wanting leads to worse than oddity.
The bones creak like bamboo in wind,
and strain toward a better life outside the body,
the life anything has that isn’ t human.
Feel the chair under you? What does it want?
Does lust bend it silly, like a rubber crutch?
Tell a tree about the silky clasp of cunt.
It won’ t shift an inch. It won’ t ache to touch.
When his owner died in 2000 and a new family
moved into their Moscow apartment,
he went to live with mongrels in the park.
In summer there was plenty of food, kids
often left behind sandwiches, hotdogs and other stuff.
He didn’ t have a big appetite,
still missing his old guy.
He too was old, the ladies no longer excited him,
and he didn’ t burn calories chasing them around.
Then winter came and the little folk abandoned the park.
The idea of eating from the trash occurred to him
She looked nearly the same
But when I hugged her
There was substantially more
To her — no doubt as with me.
She fibbed as I did at the edge
Of curb under the streetlight
As spiders dropped like tiny
Parachutes — they were difficult
To see. On the periphery
Of good luck, I thought,
Revisiting her quirky habits
And expressions, what I eventually
Found so bothersome. Except
When I glanced at my watch
I discovered I was trembling
Like a small-time embezzler.
I see, she said, you must have
Because I gazed out the window at birds
doing backflips when the subject turned
to diamonds, because my eyes glazed over
with the slightly sleepy sheen your cake will wear,
never let it be said that I’ d rather be
firing arrows at heart-shaped dartboards
or in a cave composing polyglot puns.
I crave, I long for transforming love
as surely as leaves need water and mouths seek bread.
But I also fear the colder changes
that lie in wait and threaten to turn
moons of honey to pools of molasses,
The strings, as if they knew
the lovers are about to meet, begin
to soar, and when he marches in the door
they soar some more — half ecstasy, half pain,
the musical equivalent of rain —
while children who have grown up with one stare
steal further looks across a crowded room,
as goners tend to do.
simmers on the kitchen stove.
All afternoon dense kernels
surrender to the fertile
juices, their tender bellies
swelling with delight.
In the yard we plant
rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes,
cupping wet earth over tubers,
our labor the germ
of later sustenance and renewal.
Across the field the sound of a baby crying
as we carry in the last carrots,
whorls of butter lettuce,
a basket of red potatoes.
With a boil the size of an egg
protruding from her right hip,
she knows what I must do,
and to stall me has locked herself
inside the bathroom, bargaining
for a way out.
But it’ s too late: I’ ve seen
the oozing wounds stopped up with bits
of toilet paper and tape, the scarified
pockets that crater the surface
of her arms, buttocks, thighs.
A mean fix torched her last vein
years ago, and she’ s been banging the dope
ever since, puncturing her body
like a juju doll. She wants to kick,
but not now.
american indian
outside the guthrie
forever wounded
by tributes
high western
movie mockery
decorations
invented names
trade beads
federal contracts
limps past
the new theater
wounded indian
comes to attention
on a plastic leg
and delivers
a smart salute
with the wrong hand
precious children
muster nearby
theatrical poses
under purple
tapestries
castles
and barricades
on stage
with reservation plans
1. a night in the barn
The deer carcass hangs from a rafter.
Wrapped in blankets, a boy keeps watch
from a pile of loose hay. Then he sleeps
and dreams about a death that is coming:
Inside him, there are small bones
scattered in a field among burdocks and dead grass.
He will spend his life walking there,
gathering the bones together.
Pigeons rustle in the eaves.
At his feet, the German shepherd
snaps its jaws in its sleep.
I felt both pleasure and a shiver
as we undressed on the slippery bank
and then plunged into the wild river.
I waded in; she entered as a diver.
Watching her pale flanks slice the dark
I felt both pleasure and a shiver.
Was this a source of the lake we sought, giver
of itself to that vast, blue expanse?
We’ d learn by plunging into the wild river
and letting the current take us wherever
it willed. I had that yielding to thank
for how I felt both pleasure and a shiver.
