Body, Out
(From Voicemail Poems)
There is a freshly-made bed next to mine,
that I don’t touch. There is a hum in the room, a hymn
in the sky. That evening two animal gods stood mountaintop,
and I sat below in the sunset, my body rooted, theirs extended,
all precision and color; hoof on mountaintop, bone and rock,
fur and mane; curve and wish, the desert
is nothing but curve and wish, the shhhh of air, the hush
of morning, of waking, of speaking to a silent room,
to an unbearable angel, to a movement not unlike birth,
legs open, body out
A Sad, Private Place
(From The Way Home)
This is how I imagine it would go if I did not prick my finger, if I did not stop growing while asleep; if it did not matter that, in these years, you lived and grew beautifully, independently. This is how I imagine it would go:
I sweep my fingers across your shoulder, following the curve of your collarbone to the place your skin dips. Here, there is no bone to catch skin. We are in a sad, private place. It is not dark, it is not light. It was never a question of dark or light. Instead it is a question of sound, waves of noise thinner than needles. Here, in my imaginings, you cup your hands onto my shoulders, square my bare body toward yours. You say we will never find the way home. I say we are already there, even at times like these, times when death cannot see that she is birth, that she is animal, that she is flower. I lift my chin, tilt my head to the left, stretching my neck. Inside, we are screaming one great wall. Inside, there are mouths full of clean teeth, ready to tear it down.
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author of The Way Home (Dancing Girl Press/The Writing Disorder) and
For The Woman Alone (Ampersand Books).
