Pretend You Listen When I’m Talking

 

Pretend that I am

two small children fighting

 

and it’s not easy. Pretend

you tell the first child she is

 

lovely and deserving and

paint the other in a field, alone,

with grays and browns.  Call it November. 

 

Pretend the solitary one asks for a V

of geese or a haystack and you say no.

 

I’d love nothing more than slapping you

across the face, watching a red welt rise

 

in the shape of my hand. Pretend

you asked for it. 

 

Pretend I am one child

fighting you.  I throw tantrums in spasms

 

like heart beats and only eyes

can hold me.  Pretend

 

you follow me for one year and watch me

eat, dress, bathe, and sleep and then pretend

 

you never knew me.  Pretend you find

me ten years from now and we are

 

both surprised to find that everything I

touch bleeds gold.  I bled you dry.  

 

You never saw the slinking of your blood up

through my veins, the quiet boiling of

 

my constant solitude.  I’ve feigned

surprise so many times realizing

 

who I am leaves me breathless. 

 

☼ 

 

 

I am the organism that made the fossil that lays embedded in Earth's crust.

 

You say that I am waiting to be unearthed,

but you are wrong and I am not hidden,

but hiding.  I liquefied under pressure

precise and particular that did not crush

me, a heat that could not destroy

me entirely.

 

Repelling preservation

perfectly, I disappeared and  

I’ll give you just shape, the concave and convex

of what I occupied, the splintering,

slate sides of where I used to be. 

 

I am beautiful because you cannot touch

me, ruin me with your bent eyes, turn me over, and terrorize

a story out of me.  The swallowing

 

dark and deep are

still. Suspended beneath a surface,

you, like me, will find you

always wanted not to be. 

☼
 

Forget What You’ve Heard

  

These are the things that are true: the apple lies, masquerading

red when it is white to the core, white like the sketchpad before

the nude, an alabaster vase, salt, warm milk. 

 

Warm milk will not put one to sleep.  Cream brought out

in a lordly bowl killed when Sisera asked for water.  He

saw the surface of his thirst without the roots exposed. 

 

Exposition is a fire and the best way to burn

one’s bridges.  Once the arch is visible, the point of

destruction is identifiable and can be devoured by the flame’s mouth. 

 

Mouths seem simple but there is a wrong way to eat a person. 

We build sense of bones strung on sinews, pretty beads,

black and shiny; we stumble after them like crows. 

 

Crows release the awful noise of the devouring

tongue.  With a full stomach, the eyes consume gently,

pecking away from the soft center towards the skin.

 

☼
 

Cherries Being Red When They Are Ripe 

 

The French call the good days the days of cherries. 

This is an exceptional insight because good days are

tiny and can be enjoyed discretely without harming

the digestive system.  A defining characteristic of

a cherry is its shiny surface; good days begin with

 

shiny suns and fishermen say red suns may

mean good days, so the French have killed two

birds with this cherry stone, cherries being red

when they are ripe.  As one might do when painting

cherries, paint a good day with a firm, round outline

 

and leave white until it becomes stained by the rosy-ness

of your fingers.  If your days appear green, do not

be deceived.  Correct this complimentary appearance

by closing your eyes on a less-then-crimson world.   

 

☼
 

This is withdrawal:

  

God has fashioned nesting dolls ordered

in reverse, each opening to one

 

larger than itself, a more real, more perfect

rendering of the size of our hearts. 

 

To recognize is to shudder and burst, blush

at our brightness.  We are arrested

 

by the equivalence of our gorging

flaws.  Window ledges are for pushing over

 

but you may only line up dolls along its edge. 

 

☼

 

This is a girl who leaves: 

 

Between dusk and dark, the ferry

leaves.  The lights across the lake

are strings of beads that throw themselves

to the water like ventriloquists do

their voices.  Islands are suggestive of

isolation; she loves the way the island hoards

itself, keeps from the mainland.  Object

and reflection are visible from its shores; neither

one is tangible.    But she believes in things

distant and liquid, that deterioration is

the product of contact.  Now, she need not

touch to know. Some silent ringing in her ears

finds room to resonate out here.  

☼
 

Night (one)

  

Small things are sacred. 

Even as a child I loved

 

watching night trip over

the edges of her skirt, tumble

 

down and land at the bottom

of the stairs, her skirt

 

the dark over her

head.  Good things fall into one’s

 

lap.  She fell into mine,

trees against the sky like dark

 

threads on the velvet bodice

of her silvery gown.  Night grows

 

small in spring.  Day, full

of itself, puffing, pushes

 

night into the tinier

hours.  It becomes

 

night-the-precious-

stone, small and light-

 

fracturing, protected and protecting.

☼
 

Night (two)

 

I’ve heard that elements

of smallness create

 

conditions for success and

it is true because planes skirt

 

the trees like fireflies.  Three

planes in a row are children

 

at dusk playing follow-

the-leader. One plane is

 

winning, the others follow.

Their movements are exact, perfection

 

in replication, the art of mimicry. 

This is success: the meat of day

 

cut from its rind.  Perfection is

a tiny tower of poise and

 

posture.  The planes are

perfect in the succeeding

 

night.  I put out my

hands to cup them, catch

 

them.  I’ll put them in

a jar and watch them circle. 

☼
 

Night (three)

  

These are small woods,

young trees that happened

upon a patch of empty ground

 

together.  I call them forest

and there is nothing near to

contradict me.  Qualification changes

 

us.  Forests we can see through

are not forests at all.  Always,

I have only a scrap of trees

 

to make believe in its intensity.

What is the change between your breath

at birth, your breathing now?

 

Something about having

a body makes us believe in our own

constancy.  We are named.   You are

 

small, a thing that happens

while night settles in the trees.

☼
 

Love Song for a Fool 

 

Trees possess a startling

sleight of hand.

Fool birds settle

 

like ash, betrayed

by branches they saw as fingers

curling in a call to

 

come. Now

the black birds are pollywogs

caught in the net

 

of the trees.  The earth is

wise and we are

hoodwinked every time. 

 

She sees a split wide

sky as an invitation

and believes in its love

 

for her.  Poor fool

forgets the storms, skies

 

of green song.  How absurd

to think that

 

we are superior to pollywogs,

larger and any less dense. 

☼