1.
The dark socket of the year
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down
and threatens never to rise,
when despair descends softly as the snow
covering all paths and choking roads:
then hawkfaced pain seized you
threw you so you fell with a sharp
cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk.
My father heard the crash but paid
no mind, napping after lunch
We sat across the table.
he said, cut off your hands.
they are always poking at things.
they might touch me.
I said yes.
Food grew cold on the table.
he said, burn your body.
it is not clean and smells like sex.
it rubs my mind sore.
I said yes.
I love you, I said.
That’ s very nice, he said
I like to be loved,
that makes me happy.
Have you cut off your hands yet?
Because I am not married, I have the skin of an orange
that has spent its life in the dark. Inside the orange I am blind.
I cannot tell when a hand reaches in and breaks
the atoms of the blood. Sometimes a blackbird will bring the wind
into my hair. Or the yellow clouds falling on the cold floor
are animals fighting each other
out of their drifting misery. All the women I have known
have been ruined by fog and the deer crossing the field at night.
I.
The empty of stomach
manifests silence
a stillness
that levels
coffee in a cup
and in a respectful manner
allows steam to penetrate
the surface.
Reversal of action
has created my sandstone canyon
rooted cedar and sage at my feet.
This movement is where
a tranquility stems.
Dumped wet and momentary on a dull ground
that’ s been clear but clearly sleeping, for days.
Last snow melts as it falls, piles up slush, runs in first light
making a music in the streets we wish we could keep.
Last snow. That’ s what we’ ll think for weeks to come.
Close sun sets up a glare that smarts like a good cry.
We could head north and north and never let this season go.
Stubborn beast, the body reads the past in the change of light,
knows the blow of grief in the time of trees’ tight-fisted leaves.
I lift my body one leg then another over the cold curve of
the claw-foot tub
Like a walking stick with a colossal cocoon attached
A beast and a mutant I am this
Hooked on the steam of hot water I
Negotiate stretched skin a sore spine the splitting of imminent birth
What do you want
Mammoth a domemoon stomach
Carved by spidery trails former settlement
You in there baby think you’ re ready for this
She always got mad at him
every time he came home in the middle of the morning
with his pant legs wet.
She knew he had fallen in the ditch again.
His legs were not strong enough to be straddling ditches.
He was too old to be walking over temporary dikes.
She wished he didn’ t do that, but sometimes he had to.
She sometimes imagined him falling over backward in one of the irrigation ditches,
his head hitting hard cement,
his body slowly sinking into the water.
Water that was only three feet deep.
I scratch earth around timpsila
on this hill, while below me,
hanging in still air, a hawk
searches the creekbed for my brothers.
Squat leaves, I’ ll braid your roots
into such long ropes, they’ ll cover
the rump of my stallion.
Withered flower, feed us now
buffalo rot in the waist-high grass.
1
song gives birth to
the song and dance
as the dance steps
the story speaks
2
the icy mountain water
that pierces the deep thirst
drums my fire
drums my medicine pouch
3
deep within my blood
a feather in the sky
foam on clear water
Tayko-mol!
4
free as the bear
and tall as redwoods
throb my blood roots
when spirits ride high
5
a valley ripe with acorns
and yellow poppies everywhere
as i stand here
dreaming of you
6
I wear my heart on my sleeve,
or rather both sleeves, since
it's usually broken.
Sometimes when I join my hands
to pray, the jagged edges
briefly touch,
like a plate that fell and cracked
apart from being asked
to hold too much.
