Once in a vision
I walked across deep
land to clothe myself
at the mirror.
Who I wanted
was reflection of me shadow of me—
for her to thread the body
through the needle of waking life—
now
salt from the bone of memory gathers,
clouds behind the eye.
a love affair
You sat at the table
turning wine into sweet grapes
and I gorged myself on your voice;
it was late.
I followed you to the canals,
saw only your footprints, you
forgot my name and
I was happy.
Happy! Bridges spoke
with mouths agape while
strangers made love in windows
and you were just a shadow
by the water, under the streetlamp,
whispering words I’d never heard before,
in a grammar that still spirals my tongue
and teaches me to be concise.
Or how you said sealable for “syllable”
and suddenly we were in bed together,
hoping for the flood
that threatens this city, breathing.
I wanted to write you letters,
cut my hair short and
bury the braids in your mattress for winter,
but you opened the window
and closed the window
and slept on the ledge
among the gardenias.
Abandoned, I watched from inside—
an echo of myself.
I would not see you again,
oh, except in dreams;
I packed my suitcase full.
invocation
If I am to write, then
page, fold into small windows
and river of ink run up it,
in this broken mirror
I see my face.
The wooden ribs of a house
are scored with teeth marks,
braille of swallowed prayers—
you’ll find me in the rafters,
palms pressed against the echoes.
marina tsvetaeva
She sings and then
cuts through thick salt air,
wakens the children, who think
they’ve heard the crash of waves.
It must be — the taking
of water into water;
the taking of line
into line.
Dash on the mountain,
red sheet on the clothesline —
she is watching from the well,
mouth full of rope.
Because here flows even some hope from a bottle,
he drinks to a wooden table all his evenings.
Now the window opens to breathe;
the music hangs around him
smoothing his brow when he is all shadow.
On the stairs, behind the light, under the portrait,
he will drink himself out of the pool of memory,
he will carry a folded letter writing to itself.
Tasting honey, he screws on the top
but the bottle is broken
and he waits, dawn scratching at the window.
This is the dream: home is a lost child.
The cobblestones, streetlamps, from dusty roads
they erase themselves, while the windows
close their shutters against him.
Sinful women.
Always unbraiding the night.
Leavened breasts hurry the dark
and the light of daybreak whips
at lovemaking but
something hums against the silence…
Oh girl.
I should have told you.
There is a balm to stay the hurt,
to ease the swelling, but nothing
for those hollowed eyes,
that plaintive hum.
Oh girl, my girl. Listen
to the mournful women,
meet the quiet eye.
They said to love
was to own was to steal—
But what of leaving?
how I was
no one’s,
the snake’s skin shed,
curling on the floor.
Blouse unbuttons and I have fear.
Surely the heart gives us away,
with its stutter of feeling
so fast broken it slows all else.
You must see me shaking —
the smallest ripple
somewhere began.
It feels like a folding,
a foolish unpacking
of myself into you.
I have a bed not a desk
with windows that look while I sleep.
If you had asked me
in the morning
what did you see?
I would have told you
that dreaming you
is seeing you
not through the window, but in it.
It is a slow memorizing.
First the eyes.
Brown swallows brown swallows me.
Now I am ever searching because
to what can I compare them?
Nothing is lovelier.
Lashes rising to meet — my gaze.
Heavy with — not love —
but a wondering.
You bring me to darkness.
I don’t even know your face yet;
the distance from your lips,
parted in smile, to your lashes
will take a lifetime.
To learn you would be
a heavy thing.
To kiss you would be
a real thing.
Haggard swollen teacup,
chipped at milky edge,
carried for only the morning—
our sister’s breath on porcelain china
cooled in an instant the tea we heated.
Tired, watery, unseeing,
her bluing eyes
unmade the old photographs
of swaying to the music
under the shade of the lindens.
Young, blind
from crying aloud as one,
we lifted up the stylus,
as if she was listening through a veil
one wall beyond our room.
To Nastasya
How thick the cloth is
that covers your body.
He didn’t know why
he pierced such skin.
Your name, I wake with it
on my tongue, it slips
through teeth. How can one
believe in your name?
His love was no horizon.
It stretched, limitless circle,
across his chest, digging its
talons deep to cool down love.
I saw you through the window,
my hand was in the flowerbox.
The fortochka, unhinged, loosened
his cries into the street.
To tell of the violets climbing
your bruised back would be
an unkindness; dark constellations
against a pale sky.
Take the knife back to the garden,
cut the black spot from roses,
trim back the camellia,
let them grow again.
When the sky folds into itself,
at first with hunger, greedy,
devouring color, now gently,
lovingly, until unclothed, when
night spreads its mourning veil —
I walk.
Thick from sleep,
my tongue murmurs
some love song given to dream’s ear
by waves — they whisper softly,
hug the curve of shore, sigh,
and fall away.
Yesterday’s rain has cooled everything,
even my ardor. Now,
stripped of swollen august air
that makes love thick, too thick,
I see you clearly — a man
on the river’s edge, uprooting grass.
About love, I know nothing —
only your fingers in my hair,
loosening morning’s plaits,
lips relieving my neck, so
I barely remember to think
about how you kiss her.
The pail is full of rainwater,
so it is already dark outside.
Leaning forward, I touch my face,
reflected, and it scatters.
It is in this way that I first
hear your footsteps, soft
as if the ground reached up
to meet your feet and guide
you forward.
I would’ve lived with you then
in a house with swollen eaves
to hear the swallow by river of rain
and your voice through hollowed walls.
And in the house, afternoons
hug spider web corners, there is an art
to the folding in of things.
You look so small, asleep on the ticking.
On the wall — a pietà.
I touched your face in sleep
and it became my face.
I found the suture, loosened the stitching,
a mother-of-pearl
asleep on your tongue,
I laughed.
You write a line, burn it
and in the brief light there is
no reflection in your eyes,
only greedy darkness folding.
