18. zurich

twitchy jewish saint,

corners soft, rabbit-soft

tassles unfurling like a victory

march, fraying down

to touch my knee.

leaping up from his seat,

stuttering that i have made him

unclean

frothing,

wire beard raking the air.

TRAPPED IN BROOKLYN’S WINTER, STUMBLING OVER A LONG SKIRT’S HEM: a montage

no more than a walnut shell missing its tumor of a brain,

like old alarm clocks that refuse to surrender their tickings,

but ring at all the wrong hours,

i dream that i’ve left the baby at the park.

the homeless men raise her as their own.

that shivering girl on every subway platform,

draped in borrowed men’s coats,

swaddled, swathed, and

trailing like lazarus floating from his tomb.

that girl fit in your pocket,

velvet and born already worn around the edges,

a pale moth who should have shone banner-bright.

child who stays

inside for fear of geese and lumps,

trapped inside a linen womb.

prophesy written on the wall

of a mother’s ear canal:

the seams are splitting toward

the golden of april

when i am the prophet.

visions.

trances.

cherubim.

like the men in italy who steer

boats with sticks, and their stargazers

who float. the gondolier:

“sometimes i look at my wife and say,

‘darling, speak to me of love!’

she stammers, as though she were surprised.”

things are growing. each day lends itself to the egg,

cells tear themselves to shreds, and their splitting makes the new thing:

infant spring.

lilac newborn,

i look through your translucent skin

to a lavender mind. it ticks with the seconds.

you dream of the opera, and may’s birthday, when

the factory’s assembly lines roll,

cranking out crates of clay peacocks dressed in buttons

and beads of gold-flecked glass.

cats’ january coats drift away like cottonwood,

sisters visit and the ducks come home. 

20. home

rowboats on napoleon and

josephine’s pond, fancying outselves

to be gondoliers,

standing and buongiorno-ing

red beer on the street corner

amber beneath the cathedral,

gewuerztraminer deep below

the cobblestones

in the devil’s lair.

pascal’s getaway and the beds of

kings, castle ruins in the distance.

jokes carved into the church’s pillars,

on sculptor laughing at another from

the spire, and atlast holding up the roof.

concealed courtyards, the secret gardening

and the glass bottles falling through a pit

into the sidewalk to be ground and reshaped.

the white way, bare branches like an

old woman’s arms in ever doorway.

little brother’s crowing,

leaping at my cursing,

and my mother’s wondering

how much fault we ought to lay

at my father’s door—

how much will sink him.

my child-self calls me my sister’s name

and hands me a bag of almond croissants.

the boys who once loved us give away

diamond rings to other girls.

cappuccinos under a medieval roof

at the nudelhuesli and the whisper

of a coffee cup on the marble counter

of a silent café.

my sister in a blue robe and my

old teachers losing their hair.

my heart has traveled quite a distance

these three years

but there was my honeycomb, every cell

dripping sweet and crisp and golden

riches gathered up by winged labourers.

the words i’ve not spoken in years, accented,

through the gutters, taken from me and examined,

a coin bitten between teeth and found to be true.

the still hills overtaking the paths,

looming labyrinth of the wolfschlucht

ein traum.

the coolness of a rooibos morning

the orchestra unseen over the rooftop,

the italian eis, tart summer.

the train glides away through farmland,

rising mist, graffiti in red and silver,

back to a place that will never arch at my touch,

a fern curling into itself,

tender, pale, gentle, familiar,

ruhig.

summertime

a conspicuous hilltop

my pink shorts, an inky pen,

a list of old friends to call.

a sunny saturday afternoon,

and a sheath of prayers

for my jaded heart from my

jaded heart. spinning tops.

peacock feathers, a book from

a high school boyfriend, and an

unexpected postcard from

an old crush.

my mexican blanket and the

mosquitoes of may.

vanilla coffee.

the first taste of summer.

it has begun, smoking

cigarettes on the cliff’s edge and

it’s been so long i don’t remember

which end to put to my lips. you

light it for me and loan me a coat.

the wind that blows up from the

midnight valley is warm

and smells of honeysuckle,

the starts dark and glowing like

pencil shavings.

oh my sweet carolina,

welcome to the velvet times,

the ferns and bees,

the driving with the windows

down, the molasses months and lemonade,

the sugared times,

the candied hours,

crisp and spicy sweet.

welcome to graceland,

welcome to the battlefield,

welcome to the age of innocence,

and the shedding of guilt.

welcome to the afternoons of

keeping secrets and the evenings

of sharing them.

the mystery of bruises, the

reinvention of the balcony

and its bars, the smokey blue view.

come down to the riverside,

and welcome it yourself:

set down your sword and eat

of the honey tree.

the bees are baring their teeth

and drawing nearer

only to survey and then

return home.

walking through the cemetery,

speaking to the tombstones,

this great cloud of witnesses:

the ground thrums with their

heartbeats. a great cloud

of birthdays.

a haunting

haunted

by the retelling of stories

that refuse to be silent.

some long spoon continues

to slip inside and stir

things up.

layers of wallpaper

that continue to flake

and peel, revealing rings

like the birthdays of a tree.

candles lit,

we sing each time

a new print reaches its hand through

the pit papered in floral,

stripes, mint green,

orange,

the candles burn all night

long, keeping me awake.

forest fire.

my sins and the sins of

the fathers are my cage.

drowning like the white

rats with their red eyes

and aunt jean grimly

dropping the trap into

her bucket.

the riot police shot at my father

as the church burned to the

ground and my baby brother

sat naked in the bathwater

before two guns.

crying down the rhein,

tugboat merry and fevered

as the horizons shot out

before us,

cannons barring the door,

no end to this river.

the second unseen mouth and

its forever hunger

a wailing newborn

the men crooning at my glass door and

wrenching at the handle as i listen

from the sill above, midnight,

is midnight dark enough that

they cannot see the ladder

to my window and its

broken lock? the city lights

shine every bright.

this city never sleeps.

today is mother’s day.

seventeen women raised me, not counting

margaret, ancient woman in the

apartment below, purging detroit’s

hymnals of jazz,

wrinkled, cheeks like baklava,

paper thin, honey sweet.

my heart of jade,

cleansed only by communion cups,

my rudder tongue steering

us toward another iceberg.

the way a wedge in a tree trunk

widens the crack,

so does each of these soot-crimes

slice through my roots in the sky.

leaves yellow and fall,

frail and crumbling,

as holiness is leeched out

like a mineral returning to the soil.

i’m telling the same stories and swinging the same

ax over and over like a music box that

will not wind down,

sliding doors that catch at the heels of

passersby, a tape that skips,

the wallpaper layered so thick

that the room has shrunk to the size of a thimble.

i sag with the weight of the past while

today papers over a new shade of

coral and white

placid and teasing

each creak of the rocking chair

reminds of the next earthquake and

the last earthquake

and the whole history and future of

earth fighting earth and tearing itself open.

i tremble on my still porch,

watching summer’s dragonflies hover over nothing.

red sea

when we find ourselves in the desert,

we are always tempted to return

to egypt.

we rise victorious on the authority of

the most high,

freed not from sin’s face peering over our shoulders,

but kept safe from its damning power.

change reveals your true heart

and this exodus has found mine

scrambling, scrabbling

through the dirt, looking for something

someone unnamed.

pulling up grass by its roots,

digging to find macedonia’s green

cats, barren and stiff,

the house the became turquose,

the pumpkins that never grew,

the riot police,

touching his face when he cried,

communion.

by the wayside

i read a story when i was younger

about a girl whose tongue fell out and

her father kept it

on his desk and used it

to stick letters closed.

no one likes the taste of

an envelope.

the unlikelies

prevention is better than cure,

quotes my april self to my august soul,

keep your heart in a glass display

“we fear fingerprints, do not touch”

a queen’s ruby, shined within an inch of its life:

TUNDRA ME

a casket six inches wide

the white house commissioned fairies in

glass orbs

the future seen in a crystal

ball, their wings caught

up in a tumbleweed

blown this way and that by the western wind.

papa, take me flying, up in

your hot air balloon,

far above

far away

far

next year wings past me,

powder drifting into my hair,

tattered dry.

there’s no space for me inside your skin.

you wouldn’t last one minute in the city

a city of six-inch caskets and flawless glass

displays.

bundle up your hair and start afresh.

the wash blows white

on the line, things

remembering how to flutter.

plano

texas,

no dusty wasteland,

but long shaded streets,

deep green trees,

sweet mexican cola,

sun beating down

through the leaves,

and four bicycles,

red, silver, blue,

whirring in a line.

jubilee! the

seventh year’s freedom

steps toward golden

steps over golden into golden

seven times over.

the broken lock: 395

the crowds cheer for malcolm x,

the last year’s neighbours

holler and scream

as he speaks on the teevee screen.

“down with the white devils”

jesus was a black man.

white bitch, what the hell you

think you doin’ in our grocery store,

white cunt, snow white,

what the fuck, baby,

you got a problem with me?

you got a problem with talkin’ to me?

prettiest blue eyes i ever seen.

malcolm, your boulevard is one

block over one

block up

from my house

from my neighbours in their house

child, you don’t talk to her,

you don’t ever talk to that white girl

hey girl, hey snow white,

why you walkin’ away from me?

you think you can turn your back on me?

malcolm, i forgot what it was

to be hated until i heard them

chanting your name.

to be hated and afraid,

and afraid of my own hate,

planted, growing, watered

freely every day.

but it’s bed-stuy,

do or die. 

wright

the man underground sees

the earth by its roots:

pale and fine-haired,

long shafts of wells

shooting toward the earth’s core,

syringes drawing its fire

up to the sun,

the crumbled bricks of

damp cellars, damp

with the breath of the soil.

graves, mouldering, the sleepers

pale and fine-haired

looking up at the world

through its own shadow

the crumbs caught beneath the

tablecloth, dull pennies

under the rug in a

rich man’s house.

old woman, i’ve seen the blonde

slip-of-a-girl

living beneath your skin.

the one who raised five children

in an unheated london flat

with the man she loved least.

old woman, i see you now, stout

and grey, sitting in a pew

deep in the desert

of your forty years,

you have only twenty more to go.

young man across the way,

breathe easy,

your mind is your own, and if you’ve

lost it, i will hand it back to you.

climb up from the basement and

brave the front door,

the open, soft-tar road.

old man, crying over your dead father

old gem, chipped dusty and glowing

ruby-bright, crying for me:

“girlie, you’re just breaking my heart.”

fly, girl, fly,

but don’t forge too deep,

to the breaking places,

to the crystal mines.

keep yourself eggshell meek,

don’t trade your coral for anything harsher;

buy a soft

winter

coat.

waxing and waning below the earth’s crust,

in the wraith-world where all is

pale and fine-haired. 

SHIBBOLETH

the test of allegiance

and of holiness.

an accent, a lotus on my shoulder.

an accent gives us away.

restless, nomad, orphan,

untwinned,

posturing.

but my water has become wine, it’s

spring time.

i dreamed that peter learned to walk.

and i demand that it be so, because he can’t

steal from his own father.

you can’t steal from your father,

because what is his is yours.

we inherit the earth.

panopticon:

my soul’s curtains wrenched open.

the eighth crime

i killed milosevic

with an angry word

the serbs and the angels

look down on me and cringe.

falling fastly

i always be falling for the ones

i can’t be having. i pluck a caterpillar and

thistle from the hillside.

you twin rhymes.

crumbling

again

the witches pass the eye amongst them

and stir the pot

treacherous seas of soup, swirling,

and a hunger for more than cake.

my heart, longing to honeycomb,

tornadoes once more.

tears the seams of its foundation

with the toothy pop

of snapping threads and

cracking teeth

and all the assumed fraying

that goes along with it.

CUPID THOU LOATHSOME CHERUB

I DESPISE THY PLUMP, MAGGOT-

LIKE, MEDDLING SOUL.

dido, build me a pyre.

job 40:7-14

my own right hand

ought to be

lopped off and

buried in the backyard

with everybody else’s

right hands.

anne

the funeral,

february’s funeral.

few mourners were present.

anne frank may have been

there… she doesn’t discriminate

against the seasons.

anything alive,

she has loved,

envious of their

pulse.