glossy birds pluck crumbs from the grass
swirled like oil spills.
you and i sit lasciviously
stroking petals outside the library.
soon we are going to fall away into our different summers,
our different years, will forget this plunk-
of-butt sidewalk grunt
into the veined throat
of the purple flower,
slender as the neck of a lynx, smelling of vanilla,
spreading its pollen on your hand, your hair,
downy, tear-inducing dream-
residue
touching your sticky lips and cravat
soaked in dew.
legs crossed I dreamed I had buried you
in the guts of Rome
under the heaving Hippodrome,
I shook my head, the magnolias dropped
in spicy drifts
under the buzzard-clear hot, haze-
drenched sky.

May arrives.
You spread loosed seed
under my feet, on the goose-pimpled walk.
We go down to the river-reeds
Where cloud hums like a dark mouth
down to the water.
We don’t talk.
If we open our mouths, our hunger
speaks for us. Gently, gently
we watch the boats unmoor themselves like teeth,
wending their way to the sea.

Going to Tallahassee

The air simmers over the airstrip
hungering for the landing.
how it pucks and soughs, fried
as writhing dough.
I am going to Tallahassee with a five-foot tin tub
and a tale of sorrow unraveling behind me.
All around me young mothers are shepherding
their young girls
their thighs stammer at their burdens,
so much of flesh. So many stunned hours
when the TV murmurs like a tossed
sea. The pressed air in a convex haze
over the grounded planes,
and I feel the burden at my breastbone,
the ache of something falling into being,
a child’s pain in the mouth,
so many pressures of teeth coming to be,
so many wakeful hours, so many new layers of bone.

Step to the tree
under its spread limbs.
The petals cut free
by marauding winds.

Each one slid to the earth
like a deposed bride:
each stamen a birth
that can no longer hide.

At the prow of your body
Need pulses like a nerve.
And you approach it coolly
In the linden grove.

I drink fragrant coffee and feel it swill
into my bones, something is coming
unstuck at my seam, falling
open, like the night does, parting
for the light at each end, rose
gumming up its spine, a dawn
that fringes the yawning blooms,
and to the little boughs that blossom and shed
and still arc thick up to the light
I ask, how can I swallow my dreams
and keep them still where they are
trembling
in the night's black belly?

MAN: I am the seed.
WOMAN: I am the cradling husk.
MAN: I am Heracles.
WOMAN: I am the burning dress.
MAN: I am Theseus.
WOMAN: I am the skein of thread.
MAN: I am Sisera.
WOMAN: I am the cup of milk; I am the killing stake.
MAN: I am a furled scroll.
WOMAN: I am a story told in the night.
MAN: You are as you are. I will pin you in a book. Bind you to a rock. To a fear of the sea. You are the moon. Cast from the earth. Shut in a wall. With your hands pressed to your mouth.
WOMAN: I press my hands to my mouth. When I open my palms—

It's April
I am falling in love with men in sweaters
with the gold stamen in each flower like the needle
in the brooch with whihc Oedipus blinded himself
and with April herself
a girl who hems her dresses with light
and from whose smoke-seared throat issues
a perpetual song of praise
April: I am listening for the sound of my hungry friends
who cry like ravens for a crust of bread
while in the public park the girls in bright dresses
built out of heat, draped in floral flags
dip whole loaves in fragrant oils

April, the violence on this earth has never seemed as sweet to me
the hot night comes like the crust of a dark bread
pressed deeply with signs
I dream that all night my breaths are turning into flowers
dappling the room, turning the air black with fragrance
I wake having dreamt that sleep evaded me
on a black ship gone over a white sea
April: I sleep and I drink and I smoke and sleep again
dying, like a field of poppies,
for the least touch of sun

I step into the dense air of Ben Gurion Airport.
Stunted trees lean down into the concrete,
guttering, undone, between the baggage carts.
And the Jewish year which burns like a candle
with wicks all down its length
is lighting me all the way up Highway Six.
This earth is gathering its wretched in like a kerchief
folded in at the corners
and a woman is singing through radio static
a ululating song of hunger and praise.

love poem for the river and for you janice

I am thinking about: you, how much more of your scalp is showing than last year. The leaves are opening quickly as if preparing for departure. I want: aspirin, coffee, marijuana, alcohol, a magic mushroom, a protective amulet inscribed with the name of god, a letter of protection, a golden book, a balm, a pool of blossoms in which to bury my head; an arm, a filigree chain, your promise, your constancy. I hear: the hoarse cry of a goose alighting on the river. I remember the river I visited when I was younger. I looked for the bottom but I could never see it. Now when I dream about it there you are. Covered in mud. Stepping out. Weary and cold. Assembling yourself under the elms. I want to build myself into you like the underside of a staircase. Rivets, planesaws, beechwood, bolts. I want to sleep in your hunger. I want to weave your hairs into a net and cast it over me. I want to build myself out of your body, there, under the sodden elms, under the wings of geese, under the yellow lip of cloud that hangs, open, sallow, lowing, over the whole sky, over the river, over the pretty mouths of the willowbuds poised to moan their little song.

poem for the ten plagues and for you, janice

In the rain dye runs out of an old flyer
a car battery sizzles and spits
the shopping cart on the bank shows its rusted
teeth: we are turning the river red
a kind of alchemy
and I wear the path to your door flat as unleavened bread
coming to you hungry
mortar in my mouth
each drop of rain lands like a black
locust on the step: April is hungry as I am
licking at your lintel
with an armful of red blossoms
i am coming to take you down to the river
where god came to do the washing
and hum his old songs in your ear

I sit here in Kirov
like a bird mouthing sedge from a window-pane.
Twilight—young
night gone pale with hunger—drags
its bony fingers on the slate
roof, the clouds are writing the story
of my future comforts, and the hour
of my death, in spiked Cyrillic, a tattoo
down the spine of the sky.
The birds have woken but the trees haven’t,
yet. A bud or two, a frost-seared
crocus, the dead tulips I got you
from a florist’s, murmuring
my penitence. You sit on the couch
with your feet up, watching a woman dance
on TV, trailing her long sleeves behind her.
That spring portentuous wind
is blowing under the door.
April spills light
like a sack of sugar,
while I grow sere
and black as a cigar.

Medusa looks over her newest stone lover and shrugs. She sighs. Picks her teeth with a talon. Even a Gorgon can’t always be alone. Even in her superb statue garden. Sometimes she gives Jacob (granite) a shoe-shine. Once she kissed Oleg (obsidian) on the head, but it left a lip-print. She paces. Ahmed (quartz) eroding at the knees, Randall (a cheap, loose shale) at the elbows. There was Eugene, forever melancholy, all in turquoise. Terrible things happen when you look your lover in the eyes, eh, boys? she says. Sometimes she eats a sandwich in Marco’s brindled lap. He took everything sitting down, even the end. Morning breaks on a garden of lovers that don’t have a hair out of place (and have nothing further to add) and slithers on towards noon (her hair appointment).

Wednesday is quiet as a blurry photo.
I gather up armfuls of soiled bedclothes.
How many bedsheets dumped in the water
Does the harbor have room for?
Morning and evening greet each other
like blind men; they shake hands
uncertainly, and light passes through their palms.
I am limping through Wednesday,
the lame knee of the week:
a hunter without a map,
a singer without a mouth.

From the battle song of Thorlinda Haraldsdottir

‘I held at my side the glitterer.
Scratcher of men, daughter of fire
and the hammer, sister of tempering winds.
In my belly I held a piece of rage
thin as the moon, and it rolled there,
guttering. Then I took it up
and I opened my mouth. My tongue:
a coiled dragon
born on a windless sea.
I will call you to your grave with it.
Your soul is in your body like a boiled yolk
in a stuck egg, I will pierce it.
Your brow, a cliff’s cave, shelters you: I will shatter it
and I will not stain
my golden armlet.
Though your blood scald it,
my sword, raven-beak, burning
hair of a god, will not falter or cease.’

and now for something completely different... PICK A CURTAIN!

PICK A CURTAIN
a poem/play

AUDIO RECORDING HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khnZfDMKwv0



GUIDE
Ladies and gentlemen, this way! Please ignore the howls of thunder to your right, and the writhing mass of spiders at your left! Enter please, I’m not taking questions at this time, this way, downstairs, and down this black passage, step sharp, thank you! I ask every gentleman presently to pinch a handful of dust from the ground and cast it over your shoulder, and every lady please to spit on the stones, just a little formality, a little libation, ladies and gentlemen, this way, no questions, thank you.

A MAN (peevish)
Were we supposed to bring pajamas? You never told us if we were supposed to bring pajamas.

GUIDE
No questions, thank you.

(Mentholated smoke begins to fill the passage. Snifters of brandy fall softly from the ceiling, into waiting hands.)

Ladies and gentlemen, brandy’s on the house, and inhale deeply, trust me, you’ll thank me. No questions at this time, ladies and gentlemen, but one more request: if you could write down the names of your children or other earthly heirs on the slip of paper at the bottom of each cup, if you could write them down and swallow them, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. And now we come to the curtained chamber, and here I’ll leave you, ladies and gentlemen. Here’s my brother.

(ANOTHER GUIDE emerges who is identical to the first.)

GUIDE
Gentlemen, may I ask you to please step forward! Ladies, you may remain behind or step forward as you like, but keep your skirts smooth and your noses clean. And now, for your delight and delectation, the game of PICK A CURTAIN! The game where you ab-so-lutely HAVE to pick a curtain!

Behind curtain number one… a lifetime of imperturbable beauty fueled by boatloads of cocaine!

Behind curtain number two… thousands of green plantains with portraits burned into their skins!

Behind curtain number three… a small village explodes in an effulgence of light!

Behind curtain number four … a bottle of wine so big you could almost drown in it!

Behind curtain number five … a fifteen-year-old girl on her knees!

Behind curtain number six… 11:45am at a Chinese food buffet … forever!

Behind curtain number seven… no more war!

Behind curtain number eight … perpetual war!

Behind curtain number nine … tasteful and discounted furnishings!

Behind curtain number ten… all the admonishments you’ll ever receive, given to you now, now, now!

Ladies and gentlemen, the universe awaits your selection in total silence! The time has come to PICK A CURTAIN!

(The sound of heavy breathing begins all around. The loud, bass, cartoonish ticking of a clock begins, thudding time. It gets louder, then crescendos.)

(The curtain falls. Silence.)

What the earth can’t hold the river takes
And bears away in its black arms.
The trees bent under it, or broke
in numbers, severed at the nape,
and bore down on the street with broken joints…

I remember when we sat by the lake
in Georgia, stunned by light,
gorged on sun and wax-papered croquettes--and murmuring vignettes--
Like my mother, I whipped yolks into a froth,
and earnest as a cake-dish, I sat where the waves
lapped at the waves, sanguine,
and fed you from a deep tureen.

Now nothing is as it was,
Even the oaks turned out to grasp feebly
at the earth, and swooned on their bellies,
bled too black even to protest;
wind opens the doors of the old house
forcing a cry out;
turning the dishes up like silver crabs,
turning the kewpie dolls in solo waltz,
turning our letters loose into the air
like a set of dice that will never come down again.

Sobeska Hlava

This is a woman with skin like an onion’s
and lips closed tight as a preserve jar.
She would darn patches in the clouds
if she could, weave herself a skirt
of straws that hang from the bales.
She disapproves of winter—only because
frost chips at the lindens, their colors grow dull
and meld together. Sister of wool-skeins,
handmaid of the yoke
that keeps the oxen neat
Sobeska wants the whole world under her feet—
Not choked up in her hands like a throttled goose
Or up above her head where the sun hangs loose
Casting its favor carelessly
Over the suffering linden tree.

Ten days of rain shatter on the holly
that guards my window.
Its lucid buds stay on the points like stars.
I’ve been wishing so long
To be washed out with the tide:
The river will rear up, and call me its sister,
and the geese that gather
in vulgar prayer beside the water
will gather me too;
at first bowed, the misshapen daughter,
I will rise up, borne by the river's arm,
which holds in its palm
a hundred cups of sun.

In August
I pressed seeds into the earth
I ground them in with my heel
And the heavy seed-wheel
Hungrily out of the bitter heart
They thrust down without art
sucking the iron earth up
into their yards of gut

Little garden,
I am like a ghost here,
I take what I can from the air
and I go where I would:
without a nettle to my name
or the least idea of good

drunk. but still writing.

Outrages of rain
Slide between the bars of the gate
What is coming upon us is a shudder of water and of silence

Kostya
When I loved you
And when you ruined me
Even the white buds bared their teeth at me

Even their stems have sun in their blood
But I am all darkness
Not the loam
That waits in darkness for a life to sprout
And not the potent darkness
That takes the light into its mouth

Only a solemn darkness
Stern and parched with want
Kostya
I have become my hunger
And even the streetlamps
Condemn my hands in suffusions of light