elegy

I.

on the last sunday in april 

during the final black slash between night and morning

speechless, we would crouch toward climb into the bronco.

doors thudding closed and the sudden pitch of the engine

briefly interrupted the sound of our separate thinking and

windows rolled down,  the crisp unbreathed air filled our

sweatshirted universe.

and the scents of thermosed folgers and dewed earth

would swirl around us as we sliced through darkness

without passing any lit window, or other night movement.

leaving town and following our headlights through the hidden hills  

awakeness mounted as the black leeched away to some other hemisphere

and ours sucked daylight from the stars.

we needed to be there before daybreak.

II.

and that sun did rise to above as we arrived.

the oblong lake cliffed in black basalt

and the soaring raptors were also above, and

pine trees threw their spiked scent

and the aspen quaked

as he backed down the launch

as though it were his own self reversing

and we were a small audience watching, waiting

and it was tedium before tedium,

waiting for the open water

and resenting the bright orange life preservers

and then:  the stepping into the wavering boat

and then:  pushing off finally

finally taking off.

III.

baiting the line with red orange yellow salmon roe

or sweet canned corn and

flipping the bail and with a thumb holding the line

and snapping the rod forward from the behind and

releasing the line at the precise moment and letting that hook soar. 

casting is controlled joy:  never whip too hard or you will throw your bait.

and then fullness:

the aluminum hull and water slapped hollow and

birds songed and breeze motioned  the branches and

leaves and needles sounded symphony for us and

our eyes and our hands were tuned for that movement

small vibrations small twitches could be lightly weighted line snagging

or the nosing tentative nibbling of trout. rod tip dipping, heart pounding

wait: to see if it is a hit wait: when it is a strike

and then:  set the fish

reel in, smooth out slack, raise rod firmly and

set it before that hook is swallowed.  if a fish swallows the hook

it is a bad thing.

IV.

delirium.

hold that rod he made when you were born that blue rod he made for you

hold that your first your last rod at a degree, pointed toward the line and

never at the fish unless the line is tight and

maintain constant bend in that rod:  reel in, apply tension, or allow line to slip,

the whirring ripping the noise uncoiling the racing away from death

if the tip ducks let line slip, maintain that angle but

if the fish takes off lower that rod

the one he made when you were born, that blue rod he made for you,  

your first rod your last rod stay in tune

and remember:  the tip section is there to absorb force

and frantic lunges of resistance. maintain constant pressure

strip the line and strip again, reel in, get the line tight

stripping and slipping and the fish will tire but this is play

this is the play this is it

if it jumps, bow to it, protect your leader, prevent that fish from falling back on tight

taught line and careful: a racing fish zig and zag, fight the urge to raise the rod,

play the play the zig

and land it.

get the net under the fish

lift the rod high

pull it gently into the net

flick the net and lift the net: you will rush dance in your head

but never dance out loud in a vee bottomed boat.

V.

you shimmer you cigar shaped bullet shaped twist of silver and blue green yellow green pink, white and black dotted beauty, we would place our thumbs under your jaw and fingers in your mouth and we would break your neck.  we would use short sharp blades so that your pink flesh was not fouled as we removed entrails intact from this created slit.  we scraped your blood line free rinsing rinsing in clean water cold water your water rinsing and marveling your cheeks, and wrapping you in wetted fern we would place you shaded in his battered his wicker his airy creel to keep you most pristine.

VI.

we sought rainbows in the springtime

in that stark stunning

black rocked

landscape, ravaged by epic floods.

magpies glid, and sage perfumed, and

pheasants crowed

in the evening as we drove home.

it was opening day of trout season.

VII.

gratitude. 

lament.

the pugilist

post-tryst and alone, she tried to recall:

               is it the heart that is the size of a fist,
               or the uterus?

                              (and anyway, what sized fist?
                              i've seen some pretty mean hands
                              folded into small neat squares.  the
                              fist could be smallish, or immense,
                              but  is it my heart or my uterus that
                              is fist-like)

this was important.  she needed to know
the nature of her weaponry.




--




previously published in Breadcrumb Scabs, March, 2011.

straddling that new limb

and exhaled warmth
against my wingbones
breathes me from the tree.

transparent in this bed of green,
I try to tame the clouds.

=====

published in Poetry Quarterly, summer 2012

a happy happened-upon-it moment this morning...

i was drawn to the work of andrzej dragan when i read his comment that, "Some people claim that a good portrait will reveal some truth about the model.  I'm undoubtedly sad to state that these people will not find anything interesting in my photography, which has no such purpose."

people often think that poetry is autobiographical, or in dragan's framing, revelatory about the writer's experiences, or life.  the response to that assertion is complicated, i find.  i don't really know how to answer when people attempt to guess who the subjects of my poems or stories are, or ask me when something in the writing has actually occurred...and they really don't seem to believe me when i tell them i have no idea. 

at any rate, here are some gritty, decadent, voluptuous and beautifully set images of... darkness and lightness?  elan and decay?  you tell me.  i think they belong here.

what do you think of them?

http://www.andrzejdragan.com/

(go to portfolio/personal--top left)

the fall

dampness.

and breathing moss in this gulled city

with this solid mass of gray pressing upon my head,

i fear: if i respond to the unwavering clouds

with their misted

honeyblood whisperings

i will slit me.

slip away, drop away

to night long ago not yet

at the side of some sea

and taste salt in my nose

and feel winded milk push

violent in my flying hair

and those buttered balls of star hover

right     above     my      head

and cold sand packs in my pantyhosed feet

winter between my toes

tick tock tick tock i walk

that watery edge and

around the air, around the waves, listen:                  .

silent neverending. 

hiss,  petrichor

exhaust, smeary glass

too bright green

under ash 

shore away, shore away

and the stainless steel skylid

muttering pewter in my ear.

a prayer or something like it/mother mary

complex angel, gentle turtledove, you sweep my mind free from the snarling silks of convention. you graceful, you sharp sighted, you steadfast and proud, you intelligent queen and confection, you fantastic, you vivid, you light, recall me how mad the attempt to disguise myself or deny myself… .  we are many things combined but we are not shiny trinkets. 

remind me that nature cannot be more:  not outwitted, improved upon, finer.  you beast from whence I do not know, whose aspect is simply that shine, pray with me.



---
previously published in Dappled Things, spring 2011

rural summer retablo

which is the patron saint of juicy limes 
and cool air twisting 

across the soles of bared feet?  

and to whom shall i send my slipping and sighs:  

for these summer bits and for that train whistle calling 

from somewhere to my dreamless night?

with my windows open to the otherwise quiet

otherwise alone

otherwise darkness.



--

previously published in Dappled Things, spring 2011

seduction

dusk and a red velvet dress and bowl of apples and

a whispered secret against my throat:

you will be my wine, and i have insatiable thirst.

you flame in my veins, you claret diluting my me.

single blazing stars in a prussian blue basin, above the silvered prairie

we reach for each other.  moving over the rolling hills and

polished stalks of wheat we become rare, beautiful.

we are a brief galaxy.

fate, destiny, or doom will, uninvited, emerge

and i will not grieve our fortune, or that the sunrise is just.

but breaking day is exquisite agony:  and the shadow

you have embossed upon my white white double white sheets.

rattlesnake love

all day long they sat
and listened to the dog cry bell
and it took until then but then it just was.  clearly:  she saw.

that strong current jumping the gap between sere bunchgrass
and splintered ribs was dramatic.
                      but she's always been like that
and though flashing,
though flamed and rattlesnake
                     she said asshole
the arc was a tremulous, a luminous dust
in shades of driftwood and sad.
                    she left the table and we were just sitting there

she had hoped and it had almost been     
then there was that day spent listening to the dog crying bell.
there was nothing else to be said. 

phototropism

that autumn nature showed its force and he awakened in an empty house,   

cold and shadowed.

and jagged tree limbs ripped from trees rested on his lawns and sidewalks, 

terrible and breathtaking.

he dug deep holes and planted bulbs before the snow came,   

silent 
and the color of bones.

and his first tulips grew, the blossoms stopping small inches above the brown,  

raising toward sunlight. 

the abortion & intimacy ever after

his note read: i found this.  is it yours? 

     

                         “death photograph

       champagne flutes and violin bows and

       kissing closed the gaps.  longtight embraces

       and we shared photographs of since thens

      and then on that page i saw your crushed windows,

      and his blue lips a rusted hole,

      his body a swaddled and torpedoing

      jag of empty

      snagged in that snapshot of his 

      birthday.

      ...and a hidden coffin inside me emerged

      and the hotel walls were 

      too thin

      to stop my unearthed guts springing free"

and, i thought:  haven’t we been here together, for all of it neverending?  

and i wrote back:  wouldn't it be weird if it weren't? 

i wrote:  yes.  it is mine.  



-----

previously published in Breadcrumb Scabs, March 2011

i can tell you this

i can tell you this:

unraveled, unraveled,

after time outside time,

i see our wispy crossings of those divides

between what would be and what would be,

and they were tiny roots, tiny buds.

ago were grass and clean air

and not polished mahogany and

ago were bus rides and bicycles

and uncomplicated things

and we chose the possibility of sun

over peonies.

over, over, over, years

we crossed and crossed and crossed, sped and

we crossed together.

and then hot fluid rained down inside and around me

and i was alone again and separate

and lost and robed in ugly,

in brown nothingness nullity brown and chewing ashes i fell

and i fell down in a rumple at your feet.

your beautiful feet.

faithfulness

Then

i thought we were alike in our exaltation

because together we made chaste pilgrimages to the mystical.

believing in the miraculous

and greedy we traveled frequently

and knelt by the injuries emptinesses and 

carelessly pooled aches inside ourselves

that wanted healing: the episodes of twisting limping 

darknesses the lisping songs of passion and scorn.  

we were exposed, and eased.

longing and congress were our common prayer

i thought.

then adorned with scars: we became tidy structures 

graceful seeing fluent and recognized.

and we gathered under fragrant trees 

upon pillows of crushed needles

and were censed with this hot perfume:  of juniper, sage

ponderosa pine.

this aroma sweet and dry

curling about the body of us and carrying it to away.

longing and congress were our common prayer

i thought.

  

Now

i know you will grant me blessings, confirmation and

perform the ritual of sacrifice

and you will offer that holy, that heaven, and clemency. 

those, but not all of creation.  not you.

you are a conduit for the divine

and carefully, completely possessed

of your separateness, your dedicated flesh.

you serve small tender fragments that disappear, become me. 

and  you are one and i am another and we both know this but.

will you hear my confession:  i have failed.  

and you place your warm palm upon me

and i am flooded and

you are promised elsewhere.

ex-lover

you with the pussy willow tongue

whispering after winter that spring has come

How dare you?

after blizzards and hailstorms i take off my bulky things

feeling rather calm

and here you come again

and i without even one galosh

am ambushed by the storm.

i thought you were gone.  or if not gone then at least invisible like the wind.

you with the azalea hair.  yes, you. 

i am invisible like the wind to you and want you to go

rush your tornado up someone else’s bones. 

this bluster, this temper of me is not sinister and i don’t doubt :

you cause hunger and fever and though i always knew that,

when i think it now i think:  he is a beautiful disaster causing hunger and fever

and not in a good way.

thanks though.  i mean, if it weren’t for the blooms of you

dandelion chest, hyacinth brow

i would not know what I do now

if it weren’t for the seasons of you,

sometimes fair, mostly foul,

i would not know what i do now. 

cancer time

hardcold and highedged

snowlight comes in.

in from the outside

and now against this white

wall that paler thing.

sequentially but almost

all at once: it shifts

with

flutt,

with heave

and shudder,

gloss.

in movement

a single beesting.

try it:  try to rein light.

chase color and

speed.  appreciate constantly and

it  slows.  maybe ceases.

moving fast

through the left of

what’s given and knowing that.

it seems so.

so quick

time can

vanish.  or never exist at all.

end or never start.  a matter of

focus.  on the light

at the moment.

and it follows:

dissolution to un.

unforeseen.  unknown.  maybe lovely

the light right now

it's this shimmer.

it's this pale

pearledblue on the wall.

and describing a vein through tender skin

is just passing through

anyhow.

and this is reverence

choosing to ornament herself and

stand still for admiration,

she knows she cannot claim the praise but

revels in it despite that fact: 

because she is only human after all. and

people have limits

adorned with silver and stones:

tender rise,  cloudless hollow

you proclaim a miracle

so do flowers dress the chancel.

illuminated from a source unseen:

lush abyss, supple junction,

you elevate the familiar

so is water consecrated.

there are those who look away.  of course.                   

of course there are the faithless.

those who marvel at the divine

stop in her low cut blouse

because we are only human after all. 

                                                                       photo by Markus Hutnak--Thank you! 

an important rock

before we were immense and solid,

in some epoch and eras ago

before time counted,

you and i were plain matter

clear flat rumblings of the underneath

of all that would be.

then fiery rush,  forward flow

cascade and cool and on that one summer day

in a dusty space, woven curtains drawn, yellowed dim with no glare

it was sudden and familiar:

a deep plume opened and

we were.   a dark and fine grained thing

in some brave flooded basin, rearranging mantle.

aboriginal.

jet in a high golden desert

fast among wind tossed brush

banks towering over the rise and run of a snaking river and

we had no idea:

we could shatter we could ablate we could be rubbed to small

and then away

this science of forces was the frail underlie

of our separate everlastings.

the aweless are not careful.

ancient stacks rounded down

settled apart,

we are the color of faded straw.

but induration is not temporary and here is the proof:  far away,

you see me in the sea floor and in the curve of your cheekbone

when you look in a mirror.   i see you in fertile fields

and the flour dusting my hands.

remember this:  we burst forth sharply and with commotion

and confusion and

lived burnlessly brilliantly, and glowing.

we were substantial.

remember this:  in the cold lava flow of us and

in that space in you, in that space in me

where now only God is

we are blessed.

old love

it is not baroque and
shine.  it is
lightning in
corduroy clouds.

     not
     cloisonne
     cloisonne,
     lalique or lalique or
     that thinly sliced ivory
     inlaid
 
it is plain.  
a plain heat.
blind flashing
in
corduroy clouds.

fall and rise and be seen/some kind of genisis redux

now.  a fragile hesitant provocation,
at last and trembling                look:

this is a small feral thing resting here in my opened hands, newly hatched, wet and wispy, hungry.  see this tender, this terrible disclosure:  a pale and hairy ripening, a forgetting to breathe and then breathing, a potential, a smooth skinned warm wonder and this.  it is an uncommon it is a sharpened honed smudge of me.  and if you greet

always this shy this narrowing course of rush and recoil, stuttering through spaces left between us, soothing, smoothing the receipt of broad blank backs,  aspiring to squared shoulders by looking in, or elsewhere.  for that yes.  nothing is this void nodescript and though there are no simple translations for treasure or debt, describing circles around them is, would be some kind of admission.

silence echoing doubt echoing silence and trying to adopt that foreign tongue means choking because Yes.  a Force raw ragged enchanting.  an Infinity.  against the poison wordlessness, venom silences this petition, this offering, this sweep kaleidoscopic will not stunt.  and worn down or built up finally endlessly:  Look.  it is quite plainly here.  and now calamitous

now:  clarity can come after the momentary mess of this moist white straight splotchy dry red holding open of the very palms of me, and bright eyed in this bared, this finely lined universe here now is everything.  facadeless allness and something inarticulate and transparent is being revealed.

will you glance, or gaze upon this will you cast your eyes toward suspension, or toward that wall will you pause will your hearts race will you recognize sweet merit

or will you see burlesque.  you may be so jaded.

this history of betrayal.

treasons can be small freeings.  ruthless unfoldings.

dulcet lullaby

After all:  Forsythia is flowering, and the assurance of absolution blossoms also, now feverishly, just as the landscape flashes after long coldness into a blaze of yellow.  This is grace.  This is:  renewal, lightness, and hope.  This is remembrance of sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins.   This soothing, this sting. 

After all.  Divinity is not something we can ever achieve, though we may strive. 

After all: though we’d had our era of ice, your eyes shone in their triangular blue fashion when we came together again.  And we were lovely.  Soon then it was the end and you died valiantly, denying mortality and working until you coiled up one morning in bed and surprising: took a last gasp.  The architecture of you emptied:  I entered the swirl for the first time, dipping slowly to assemble our us.   And then I left, to gather the disbanded.

After all: I treasure the broken prop from your boat motor; the rusty oyster knife you gave me and never accused me of stealing; the Styrofoam cooler with a “FISH ON” bumper sticker slathered across the front, once full with ice and Hama Hama oysters; and memories I swear are real.  In time, cleansed, peace came here to bloom.

After all: exoneration, merciful love, these are of grave import.  Watery recollections of winks, warm square hands on my wedding day, and our talk of the weather were consequential.  And then: a familiar signature pressed onto paper well after our détente, which demonstrates a lack of faith. In me.  How weak is my twisted conviction.

After all:  you died skinny and bismuth yellow and without parting assurances.  Humble:  it caught you.  Ugliness and earthliness and, even as it ripped rage to the surface, its violence too reminds.   We are minor.  We are the unsplendid.

After all.  After all:  bathing in the memory-clotted gel of time, back and forth and back, years of circling through the wet, immersed in the teary sea that swelled after your death, I realize finally that what I was kissing was your yawn.

And how can this happen now, with the forsythia blooming around me, when we cannot kneel toward each other and hope?  


----

previously published at nancy kiefer art/diva creativa   http://www.nancykiefer.com    april 2010

thinking of loved ones this morning redux

in those sitting on branches moments
those thinking of loved ones today mornings
she lolled she reclined in that generous, verdant scaffolding.
and she was cradled.

and she could see clear her place
those olden those smooth rubbed blonded bones
fragile bones hollow bones of the bird she used to be.
and it was suffocating.

step-arachnid

arachnid one dressed fancy
in haired pants of sewn up lies
jigging on his gravestone
which is only in my mind

octobitch is laughing with eight
worm red globe red eyes
my father got the cancer
you were his vile bride.



---

previously published in Mad Swirl, summer 2011

family reunion/dead babies III

that fluted champagne and those voluptuous cries and
kissing closed the separations. and exchanging sincethens
and we were landless we were floatingtogetheragain and

later in that album on the table in the hall i saw crushed windows. 
a torpedoing jag of empty, the blue lips a snagged a rusted hole and
silent.  a never an always in that photograph of one birthday sincethen.

those lush and creamy 
those hotel walls they were too thin
for the sudden springing of
my bared my unearthed grief.

passing the time (for those who know, with understanding)

upstairs at night
i pray
for your cold tongue
on my skin

and even so, i'm in that black slip, alone.
you and your rubik's cube.  why don't you come upstairs?
and i think of those who keep lovers and then
tell myself:  some things are not relative.

(nervously then:
not the abortion
not the looting
and what about taking the lord's name in vain?)

so i just pray on
for your cold tongue
for you to solve the puzzle
and for forgiveness.

dead babies II

fluted champagne and voluptuous cries, and kissing.
closing the separations and exchanging sincethens
we were landless.  we were floating, togetheragain

and later in that album on the table in the hall
i saw crushed windows, a torpedoing jag of
empty, blue lips a snagged a rusted hole and
silent.  swaddled.  embraced.  one photograph of
a never

and those clean and creamy hotel walls
the were too fine to house that sudden springing
of the bared my unearthed grief.

dead babies

fluted champagne and voluptuous cries, and kissing.
closing the separations and exchanging sincethens
we were landless.  we were rolling down a grass hill and
counting stars, looking for deer with flashlights.  floating, togetheragain

and later in that album on the table in the hall
i saw crushed windows, a torpedoing jag of empty,
blue lips a snagged a rusted hole and silent. 
swaddled.  embraced.  one photograph of a never

and my heavywellstowedlid slipped aside.
and the clean and creamy hotel walls were too fine
to house the bared the springing the gusts shoving
loose from that unearthed tiny coffin inside me.

transportation

such a pretty thing
watching knife fights and rats scuttling
through the emptied train station and then
spreading on boulders at the edge of salted azure:
that campari stained sky and
that mars and
the morning a fried egg bleeding and
being awake.

full bearded.  and sharp curves came
when it was night, with sealed black air to breathe
and falling off the roof of that bus
and rolling down unbroken
to the dark embrace of that ditch
until daylight rose and else could be seen and
until then, careless sleeping.

and those deep hot kisses against airport walls,
sockless afternoons
and being unclothed fish somersaulting in icewater
at the top of some mountain here, or there.
long curled hair and sawdusted floors
and that one fiddle bow slicing
thin and straight.

shrieking between questions and questions.
our wildness was such a pretty thing.

louise

recently she left

the she spinning from mere observation
and fingertips
the webs and iron spiders
that straddled chasms,
she left.  she sewing
buttons on doll clothes and
sculpting men from mud.
confronting and living
like she, she left.

and without her
we are only us
with spidermares
and dolls dressed off-the-rack,
and poverty.
our poor unseeing eyes.