The Death of the Hummingbird

Suddenly the sky (Yes, always yes, since you
were bold enough to ask) is too fast.
The ground too, the twigs and grasses
that reached like children yesterday today
are mad and waving.

You do not close your eyes,
but fall and feel the slowing
of a blurred heart,
and the busy little priests of your parasites
all chant the same last rites.






Uria by Audrey Kawasaki
Hummingbird body from Cassandra Barney

Moving Up

We collapse in the entry way and there find
a bouquet of basil, explosions of Black-eyed Susans. The landlord
has been here. If he only knew
the carnage upstairs--the full, open
boxes; the lilies wilted like old paper,
pressed against the microwave.
We sling the flowers atop the refrigerator
and I touch each blossom in turn.
"Such perfect foxglove," I say.
"And this hydrangea. So blue."
The basil is an island in the shining sink,
and you have set yourself on the floor
where someday the sofa
will go.



photograph by flickr user petr19710

Afternoon Shower

The storm recedes; birds find new branches.
There is wind, not wake, from the cars that pass,
and tremulous shadows spread on the walls. Why then,
my love, is your gaze so clouded?
I point out the bedroom window--look, the robins, dripping madly beneath the misted rainbow--
and hear the hoary creak of my own error.
The rain has returned: thunder rolls
back around.

Prelude to a Black Star

She covered her dresses with pockets,
she filled her pockets with stones;
She'd pause at the edge of the midnight streetlight
and peer into the dark, alone.
And reaching into her pocket,
she'd draw forth a handful of weight
And fling it into the blackness,
listening for the sounds it made.
Sometimes it glanced off a trash can lid,
making noises like you might expect
But mostly she stood, ears widened
and waited for it to connect.



photograph by flickr user fishyfish

Red Velvet

The cake collapsed. It toppled slowly,
so slow that at first we did not hear the thick tectonic slide,
or see the deep fissure emerging.
It had been five hours since we rolled up our sleeves
and applied our baking faces. Sarah was still
hung over from some church festival
or another, and I had spent the morning digging through cardboard boxes
to find the pans. We were wilted in the rising sunlight
but applied ourselves gamely. And here was this catastrophe,
this cave-in, this horror of a birthday surprise. The cake slid sensuously
toward the floor.

I called you in,
like I did when the floor was on fire in our first apartment. “Honey?”
I said. It might not have been urgent enough. “You probably should see this.”
The top layer of cake accelerated and we remained rooted to the spot.
Years ago the old me watched the flames bingeing on linoleum tiles,
my lips parted, my arms slack.



photograph by flickr user in my shoes

House Sitting, Mid-July

My vision swims.
Is this, then, what madness is--doing things
without knowing the reason why? I am waist-
deep in the swimming pool,
half-stiff in my work clothes. The hem of my blouse
darkens with chlorine. Behind me the little black dog watches,
concerned, looking for someone
to notify.

The heaviest lavender buds have fallen to the bricks
on the patio, but the bees in their lustful quest
pass them up.
The sodden bodies of impatiens bob by.
There are no mosquitoes.
In this unknowing moment I am sure
my blood has the same heat
as the sunset air, the bathwater-warm clear water,
the soft eternity.

Gifts for the Dead

It is, I'm afraid, far less noble
than it sounds. The artfully cracked dish
we brought back from Japan still wears
its department-store bow; your grandmother's death
came before Christmas.

And once, ten years after we buried him,
the Yiddish Book Center wrote my grandpa
for money. "You give them these," my grandma murmured,
pressing yellowed paperbacks
into my arms.
Her funeral was only nine months later,
and still the books hang like lead weights
on my shelf.

They glitter, the secret trophies of our failures:
the tasteful sympathy cards we never sent,
the half-finished notebook pages crisp
with expired declarations of love.
We are running out of space.


photograph by flickr user bitzi

I Swear I Love You Only

after Sei Shonagon

I swear I love you only
in my dreams, in these
sweet silver tunnels where so often
I have found you.
I would do no thing so untoward
as to love you
in plain sight—

And yet, having risen,
I find your star still guides me,
and feel the pangs of the closed door
as sharp as if you had left.

I wonder now, drinking
in the light of your eyes,
if those nights
were all mine, if somewhere perhaps
your sleep-tight fingers
did not uncurl
for me too.

April 21, 1918: Kaputt (Finished)

after Manfried von Richthofen, The Red Baron

It is my love for the earth
That lifts these wings, it is
Your faces so far below
Like scallop shells
On the ocean floor
That buoy me.

It is the bright bead
Of a city in the night
That draws me in, the stored warmth
Of your stone walls that guides my hand.
Miles away my elderly housekeeper
Has finished sweeping the front steps
And she sinks, one hand
On her cooling brow.

The cradle of this sky
Is alive now, with silver reports
From below, tiny messages from the fires
Of night-blind, squinting men.

And now I do as my heart
Commands me, give in
To this pull: of man,
Of earth, of eternity.



The current thinking among historians is that the reason the Red Baron (1892-1918) flew so erratically and irresponsibly during his final battle was brain damage from a recent blow to the head. The brain damage is presumed to have caused his lack of judgment and target fixation. The last word he spoke before he died was kaputt, or "finished."

Valentines

The library did not have the book I needed.
“I’d better mark it missing,” said the limping man,
returning with me
to the reference desk. “It hasn’t been seen
in seven years.”

The radio news is noise in the car. I wonder
where my book is living, on whose
dusty shelf, if the thief even knows she has
what should be mine.

I park across the street from my house, still
muttering about the wasted trip.
The man on the radio strikes a sudden somber tone.
“The Air Force says now that all four men aboard
a bomber that exploded
over Qatar today”
—he pauses—
“are safely on the ground.” I exhale,
having held my breath for these
invisible soldiers,
the men I did not know existed.

On my way out of the library
I passed a Poetry Month table, the volumes
tipped on one end to showcase their slenderness.
The pages flipped fast
and my answers were not inside.
Lying flat on one end of the display,
an afterthought, a push
of a bored finger, Ted Kooser’s Valentines.
I bring it home.

In front of my neighbor’s house I pull
the Kooser from the car and slam the door.
The street is silent and I realize
the imaginary bomber passengers landed safely—
landed safely, only to return
to the incessant emergency
of war.
I realize that even as the NPR man informed me
of my own relief
they rose from their stretchers
and prepared to die all over again.

The library book, glassy in its plastic jacket,
Slips from my fingers
and lands on the wet road.
In that deafened moment my eyes know only
Black street, white book,
red heart.

The Language of Flowers: A Collaboration in Process

Hellebore
Calumny, scandal, treatment for madness and paralysis, highly poisonous

I will love you like loving you
Will cure me. I have seen
The others cast you into fires,
Hissing your name as your legs curled
And glowed; I have heard
What you did to Alexander, who slept
Like any other man, wrapped in your arms,
Great no more.

I have seen your children ground into dust,
Tipped into bottles, pulled in droplets to clapping mouths;
I have seen eyes go black with the force of you.
And when I am yours, and yours alone,
They say your face will open, like a shield of angels’ wings
To bear me hence.



painting by Cassandra Barney

March

So much collides
In these small days. Today
Spring begins, and Purim at sundown:
The earth rolls sleepily into a patch
Of sunlight. We don masks
And crowns.
Tomorrow Jesus will die,
And the moon will fill herself
Full. Sunday he will rise:
Small feet will shift
In ankle socks. We speak
Murder to one another;
Fertility, salvation. Birdsong.
We are wrapped
In the sky-blue skirts
Of holy women and heroines, and red forgiveness
Runs down the aisles. We will hide our faces
And plant eggs
Like they were seeds. We will all
Be reborn.



photograph by DeviantArt user planetkat

Tanka for My Mistress

after Sei Shonagon

I.
Her tears slide like rain
On rice-paper walls; I find
A comb for her hair.
My mistress’ dog has died,
And the rain is no comfort.


II.
The small pink blossoms
Beneath her eyes have faded,
And a voice like a cat has
Taken them. It matters not
To me either way.




Heian-era paper doll kimono by Liana of Paperdoll Blog

Noli Me Tangere

after Mary Magdalene

Later you will write
That he didn’t mean it, you must
Have read it wrong,
Have mistranslated.

You will light him gold from within,
Reopen his wounds, soften his cracked lips.
You did not hear the hoarse whisper,
See the hard line of his back,
His oil-softened hair.

You will not know how brief that moment
When his eyes stepped into mine,
How my heart rent seconds later
When he turned to the tear-tracked dust.

He had changed, those three days
In the dark, had grown taller,
His jaw firm.

You did not watch him sway
As I did then, his legs locked
To fight the pain, eyes closed tight
Against the sun.




detail of The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene by Alexander Ivanov

Overactive, Daughter of the Pantheon

She opened her mouth wide and pushed the disk of the moon in,
held it on her tongue like the body of Christ.
Last week she had hit a cat with her car,
and as she buried its cooling heart commended
its soul to what gods as would find it
and weigh it properly,
and its body to the mounds of earth
just off the Post Road.
As the first drops of rain spotted her cheeks
she felt her feet growing together,
silver-scaled like armor.

Mummified Cat by Cassandra Barney

Thistle

Hard work, love that endures hardship, defiance, protection

I never saw my mama’s feet sleeping.
Mornings they trod a triangular path:
garden, fire, table.
Mid-day she walked in circles sewing,
mending our dresses as we read our lessons.
As the sun set she strode through the fields,
barefoot among the thistles to bring the cows in.
When the stars made pinpricks
in the black ocean above, her heels creaked
a half-moon of floorboards around our big bed.
I dreamt every night of fragrant weeds and grasses,
and knew that when I woke
the footsteps below would always be hers.


Thistle by Cassandra Barney

Small Sides

1.
Not silver needle, not jumping black blood,
not small white spot of fire inside her elbow, but something,
something made her crumple every time.

2.
They had leapt in front of her car for years,
waiting in the night to surprise her with their deaths.
She kept us from watching Bambi,
said it would give us the wrong ideas.

3.
Ten years of mornings, battered shoelaces through the
same number of eyelets in the sneakers, same distance
from black canvas ankle to red star to rubber heel.

4.
She sat in the half-dark, waiting, hearing the popcorn
around her. Only when the last lights dimmed
would she joyously allow her hand to dip
into the red-striped paper bag.

5.
The oral surgeon sat back, his eyebrows
perfect tildes. "Your teeth are fine," he said.
"Just two years too young."

6.
The bunsen burners had given them an idea.
They walked to my seat at the lab bench, brandishing
yards of rubber tubing. "Witch."
I could hardly believe
the word I was hearing. "Make sure you
clean up after," said the chemistry teacher.

7.
She opened the pink plastic box,
saw erasers shaped like citrus-colored stars.
She held one up to the light, knew it was stupid,
and put it in her mouth.




tagged by P of what possessed me. P, please remind me to never attempt this again.

Plums

Independence, Privation, Treatment for Weak Hearts

He looked her blue in the eyes, searching,
and told her he loved her. She murmured
indistinctly and thought not of the flush
in his cheeks or his wheat-colored eyelashes,
but of ripe plums.

In the biting January wind, in the heartless
blinding sun off the harbor waters,
her mind retreated to the surrendering depth
just beyond the taut, tangy skin of the plum.

As his hot hand reached for hers
she longed for the shady release
of cool juice on her lips,
black fruit in her hand.

Three Seeds (Persephone)

"Before you go," he said, "Eat these."
His palm was rough, black with soot,
and three rubies glittered there, perfect drops
of blood.

He would not meet my round eyes.
I assumed grief and accepted his gift; the hot winds
of deceit had never known my petaled face.

The earth opened above us,
and a golden arm came through
to draw me up.

I closed my mouth, bit down
and felt all my convictions
running down my throat.
I swallowed.

Separation Anxiety

She was twenty-eight when her twin was born.
They brought the baby in and she could not speak,
could not form thoughts,
only wanted to cry.

Twenty-four years later, the baby
cannot breathe.
Across the country her twin sees the x-rays.
The phone rings.
"I'm fine," she says.
"We're fine."