Earth holding earth

My young daughter asked me on a cliff edge
what happens when we die. People believe
many things, I said. That we fly off as spirits
to God, or are reborn to live a new life,
but the only thing I know for sure
is that we go back to the earth,
like the log we found becoming dirt,
like the little trees sprouting from its core.
I don’t want to become leaves and soil, she cried.
And I cried, rocking her in my arms, earth already falling through.

When I sit quietly and you

When I sit quietly and you
aren’t there so rush in suddenly, more,
nothing is quiet in my heart, or the quiet is so large

it pushes water from me
in a resounding wave of joy:  I won’t
tell you.  It is mine. Telling sucks the wave back to sea.

I would rather feed you
what the wave does to me. Kiss it
upon your shoulder in a grocery store, share it

in the larger bite,
breathe it upon your cheek at night
this wave that carries me always to your shore.

Carry me at your hip

A long strapped
Soft leather purse,
Or Guatemalan fabric bag.
Whatever you prefer.
I’d even be blood red
Polyvinyl Beijo* for you.

Reach into me
For keys.
This one opens
Your backdoor eyes.
This one
Your front door smile
This one
Your Cadillac heart.
Maybe pink. Guzzler
Of liquid word dreams.

Lay me down
In the passenger’s seat.
Drive slow,
All around
the town of Fort Metaphor
and Outer Suburban Simile.
You, the mayor
Of polysyllabic mystery
Inspiring your holy citizenry.

There’s a mirror in me.
Here, study
Your pores.
Shake the cold
From your hair.
Glide this shine
On your lips
And speak.

*Bay-ZHOO: 1. A kiss  2. a lawful kiss, never worth as much as a stolen one 3. handbags designed by one mother for other mothers, many with a singular pearlescent finish.

Dedication Prayer

May any good that walks
through the three
doors of me

walk toward
your three doors.
And yours.  And yours.

Once we leap over
stones of who we were,
are, or could be,

burn through clouds
of clench, shove and sleep,
may we quickly wake

the inter-nestled light
of our three prism bodies
where we are less than one,

more than three.

~with thanks to T.W.R., who taught me

Pronunciation and Conjugation Lesson

Volver means to return,
to come back.

Don’t drawl it with an American v:
vawl-ver, like revolver.

Or the Hungarian v:
Wole-wear, though this makes me kiss you.

The v is a soft, almost b,
the love child of b and v.

Top teeth on lower lip,
yet lips together,

say it: bowl-bear,
soft bowl, soft bear with a rolled r.

Vuelve means you (formal) return,
or yearns: (beloved, please) return.

Say bwail-bay, bwhale-bay
Go easy on the (wh)y.

Vuelve , mi amor.
Vuelve the way you do.

Vuelve, vuelve,
with your eyes

like a starved bear’s
looking for spilled seeds,

licking them from
the soft bowl of me,

volviendo,
returning.

May 2009

because we grow up and down

A woman
dreamed
of no one
needing her
breasts or
words or
wetness and
the dream drove
beneath her,
a blind root
feeding
the fruit
she gave.

another love song

That is not it at all.
That is not what I meant at all.
I drop the shawl.  Turn
from the window, my water
eyes to yours, and speak, tell you
what you missed, my arms,
downed, lamplit, reaching around,
palms cradling the bald velvet
of your head. I will roll
my silence toward your dark
question, a shining ball.
I am Lady Lazarus, come back
from the dead to tell you:
there are no words at all
in the mermaid song
you’ve strummed in me,
how you give me fins
in a black sea, become
shore to my drowning.
Come, walk near the waves.
I will roll your trousers,
kiss your legs, save you.

With love to Eliot and Plath

the yogis have a word for it

In me where I sit,
where you started
that spinning
and the spinning
wound around
my spine like a staircase
past unhinged belly door,
around forgetful  heart,
past empty throne
of my teeming
honeycomb head,
the door found its swing
and fast, let you in, my heart
became a ticking metronome
for your songs,
the drones found
their rightful queen,
and now the whole
place drips honey.

Speaking in tongues

Speak tangles of god and ungodly
Gibberish I won’t understand
And I will watch the creases and
Plains of your face form delicate shapes,
Minute electrical arrangements
Only muscled lips can make.
What hidden impulse of lip and tongue
On teeth sculpt the sound of please.
Even the navel strains to speak, subtly
Sinks, pushing air to rub against the throat

And somehow, in concert, these liminal ministrations,
These libidinal deliberations become speech,
Become an orchestra of fleshed breath,
Striking every pose to mean, to mean.
I mean, even my hands love the work of tongues,
Fish for unmouthed words in skin and bellymind, drag
Them out with purple pen to feed you looping
Lines that travel from my eyes to lettered keys
Into metallic neural net, cables underground,
Superhighway air to ferry brain sound. How
Many ways does the tongue translate its need
Into matter all to connect you to me.

the evolution of literacy

we are making
the evolutionary shift
to sitting
hours a day, hunched
over keyboards and books
like vultures
pasty skinned
backs forgetting the shape
of straight,
shoulders in attitude of stone

remember our ancient
grandmother, shifting from all
fours to feet? they ached like this.
still, she walked
and reached into trees.
our bodies resist change,
but cannot resist it,
the need to write and read
and learn to knead
each other’s necks.