I Am Here

I am nestled in my blankets with the fresh and heavy dampness of my hair
around me,
Hearing the refrigerator hum, and the ticking of the pink-rimmed clock that I've had almost for as long as I can remember.
So those old memories pulse like the colors in my closed eyes,
And tingle faintly, like the numbing roughness of my singed tongue --
How I used to scribble in my notebooks,
                                                  I am here
And longed to be remembered for each moment as I lived it. God, put this in Your photo album, tuck it in Your pocket. Let me just say I recognize I am. Right now.
And tell me how You savor days like candy in the corner of Your mouth, for the long ride home.

Maybe I desire because I can't understand, or maybe very transience is beauty.
Maybe I just want to know that I can be delighted in, as I delight in You, this wonder.
One thing is clear: time is only lengthened by points of meaning.

The Yard In Winter

Face down to resuscitate the earth. Breathe the frost away, smell the fertile spring awakening under warm breath. The milky bitter grass. The scalpy smell of roots, the death. The life,
And the sweet content of the ground beneath, heaving like a chest in sleep, and me upon it.
Resting, a child on its mother's breast. The heartbeat of the world beneath my cheek. And gleaming
In the skies, there is my father, and through his eyes there winks the spark of stories. There connect and intersect the paths of slaves to freedom.
Follow me north.
Did I know each nest? And now I kiss your neck, your fingers, you who whisper, Shall we say love us more? Or love us less? Which shall pain you more? I sigh into your dry and smoky skin. Your sleeves are fringed with lichen. And I am leaving you already...
For the same sky under different branches.

And I said You never change. But change the way we understand. To know You.

Hunt

Lisping on the edge of words unspoken,
And shifting from one tender foot to the other.
In the darkness, I suck condensing air with a shallow gasp.
I am hiding because I want to be found.

If I plunge my hands into the softness of your stomach, will I find you real?
Are you only a silhouette on the damp grass, testing sounds and fighting tears?

The Memory of Birds

I reached her house and saw her sitting cross-legged in the front yard, in the shade of the big maple tree. She was looking up the street, so our eyes met at the same time. She smiled, but she didn’t get up. I smiled too, not knowing what to say, and ambled across the lawn to her. There was something small and brown in her hands that quivered slightly.

I felt tall and awkward, walking up to Eliza sitting there in the grass. She didn’t say anything until I was right in front of her, and then she asked,

“Would you like to hold him?”

I grinned and said yes. She told me to sit down. Then she placed the brown fluffy thing in my hands. Geoffrey adjusted his stubby wings to regain his balance after the transfer. I wasn’t prepared to feel how light he was, how fragile, like a handful of grandfather dandelions. The queerest thing was the sensation of his body against my fingers; I could distinctly make out his breastbones beneath the down. That surprised me. There seemed to be nothing but airy fluff and a thin membrane of skin between my fingertips and his ribs. But below I felt his round belly, warm and moist. It swelled in and out. His little feet clutched at my skin in a funny way, so I laughed, and Eliza looked at me, enjoying my initiation. I felt like I should say something.

“How old is he?”

She answered that he was probably about two weeks old. She said she knew this because his eyes were fully open but he still had baby fluff.

I was always impressed by Eliza’s solemn knowledge. Maybe that was why she charmed me like no other girl I’d ever met. She was a child, but her mind was sensible and probing. I still don’t know what she saw in me; I was such an overgrown excuse for a teenager. Maybe she sensed how I saw meaning in things, the way she did.

I gazed back down at Geoffrey, who was blinking and rustling his little sheathed wings. I bent my head to inspect them. Each feather was growing out of a semi-transparent tube, made of quill material. The tips of his feathers were free and fanning out, but the roots were still tightly bound in tube-sheaths.

With my face close to Geoffrey like that, I smelled him for the first time. It was a curious, delicate smell: eggy, sweet, with a hint of urea. I didn’t find it offensive, and leant there, inhaling for a moment.

Then Eliza shifted beside me and I saw her pick up a recycled yogurt container from beside her leg. She pulled out a small worm, took it between her fingers, and methodically tore it into three bits. They wriggled and exuded guts, but she placidly laid two of the pieces on her bare knee, and leaned over to feed Geoffrey the third. I watched in silent admiration. As her hand neared Geoffrey, he lifted his head, beak open, and flapped his tiny wings, letting out a series of sharp, shrill chirps. I could feel his whole body straining up toward that bit of worm. With the writhing morsel safely in his beak, he bobbed his head and swallowed it, his eyes pressed shut.

“Don’t the parents sometimes regurgitate the food for their babies? I asked. “Would spitting on the pieces help Geoffrey digest them?” I hoped this was an intelligent question.

Eliza leaned back and squinted for a moment in thought. Then she turned to her knee and picked up a second bit of worm, saying,

“Bird saliva is different from human saliva.”

I nodded. And I watched Eliza carefully feed Geoffrey the rest of the worm. His body was warm, and my palm sweated, so his down feathers stuck to my skin. When I gave him back to Eliza my hand felt cool in the air. Eliza took him in a motherly sort of way, and I felt something like a father. Protective, and proud, and a little in awe.

As I walked home I brushed my nose, and smelled Geoffrey on my hand. 

Forbidden

When I was nine, I drew spaghetti straps with blush on my shoulders and back,
Anxious to see how forbidden styles looked
On me.

That night, though safe in the black of my room, my cheeks burned
When my Dad came in to rub my back goodnight.
Could he feel the pink paste on his fingers, sense my guilt?

Silently I hoped he couldn't tell, and resolved never again to test the strength
of the gates of hell.

We Are Separate Flours

Grow me a garden of this kind of nothing,
Draw me a picture of this kind of fine.

Tell me why I can't sneak back inside
After playing school in the yard until midnight.

You hear me scratch at the window, and turn your head.
We are separate flours.
Together, we'll make bread.

Dancer in the Dark

It was a blessed film over my eyes, enough to make me crumble,
Or make me cry.
I had to pause last night before I broke what was thinning inside.
But I danced in the dark and prepared my heart for today. For what always makes me girlishly tired and afraid, meek and white and smiling.

Lying still and trying to forget the only thing I feel while all the rest of me is calm:
A pinch, a chill,
Spreading from the top of my taped right hand toward my elbow. Dripping,
a tube. I close my eyes and image myself tearing at the cords that feel so foreign,
Attached to what should be whole flesh.
But I breathe deeply again. How like a child I feel.
Mother, gazing out the kitchen window, washing dishes,
Papa, sealing envelopes downstairs.
There could be soup and cornbread on the table in an hour. I'm only resting
In bed.


This gown is a humbler of humanity.
I am glad though, that it's flannel, and long, and large enough to fold around.
Powder-blue dancing triangles on a white background.
I feel more like a princess somehow. No show, I'm just myself.
I'm in a space made by cream curtains. The woman to my right is giving answers to a nurse. She takes a pill once a year for her skin condition. She considers vitamins solid food. She isn't anorexic anymore.
Humanity. The man who laughed when asked if he had piercings or tattoos (saying, What, at my age?!) is trundled by, grinning, with a weathered patchy face.
Quiet.


It takes a while before they are ready. I am wheeled along with all my attachments, but hardly remember.
Drowsy even before I was drugged, I smiled over my chin
At my doctor in the hallway.
Cheryl (or Cynthia, perhaps?) wore purple. Diane wore pink.
Cynthia. Diane. Did I laugh inside to think of those romantic names?
Hyacinth Claire. Cordelia Fitzgerald...
We played the game of making conversation before I went under. But I started with thin shoots of oxygen that smelled like a new shower curtain. I turned on my side, a white towel under my left cheek.
Rembrandt and the Dutch Masters...
(Vermeer)...
We have a print downstairs. He looks older, and broken, but really a man..
Are you feeling it yet?
Yes.
And I made sure to murmur his name as the last on my lips
Before sleeping.
Jesus.



Credits: Names,"Hyacinth Claire": Elizabeth Gaskell, "Cordelia Fitzgerald": L.M. Montgomery. 

Misanthrope

Find me in the woods and I will feel your intrusion like a lovebug
In my pizza crust, a maggot in my rice.
But maybe you will be around when I am lost,
In which case,
You are welcome to flavor my sauce.

What Is Precious Is Not From Us

What's the trouble with these training wires,
Oh, I want family, inspiration...
These trellis lines, binding into tidy forms to try to bring to life?
Can living come from trying?

These tenderest things you can't truly make, can't create,
Can only be or not be as you are given, as you give.

Can we truly cultivate, or husband this healing flower, this winding vine,
Now strengthen my hands...
Or do our greenest thumbs damage every thing we try to grow?
Can growing come from dying?

Only the brave and gentle know,
If planted seeds can, of the vulnerable kind we sow.

Wild

Stripe me like a Bengal tiger,
Spread your wet paint brush across my shoulders, down my back.
Stroke your lines in daring arcs, and smack
Your hands in two palm prints against my cheeks.
Release
Your feathered thoughts in plumes of blue,
Beak your way to preen in grease,
Sheathe my arms in papered tubes,
And grow me wings where once my fingers grew.

Wild II

Stripe me like a Bengal tiger,

Spread your wet paintbrush across my shoulders, down my back.

Stroke your lines in daring arcs, and

Smack your hands in two palm prints against my cheeks.

Release

Your feathered thoughts in plumes of blue.

Beak your way to preen in grease,

Sheathe my arms in papered tubes, and

Grow me wings where once my fingers grew.

Bruised Leaves

I.

Kneaded, pounded, steamed, thumbed,
Pica for tree bark or the flesh of my arm,

The crackling of oil, the spitting of fat,
The splatter of rain on the tempered glass.

You won't mind my voice if I sing quietly,


Rosemary, laurel, lemon, thyme,

Balsam, yarrow, yew.

II.

I have blistered my arm with my own little mouth,

And left bite-marks along it in childhood.

I have nothing but skin to hold myself in,
At least leaves have release, when they blood.

You won't mind my arms if I hold you lightly,

Rosemary, laurel, lemon, thyme,

Balsam, yarrow, yew.

III.

Tie up my ankles and hang me, after,
I flower, aromatic, from attic rafters.

I've waited two years if I've waited an hour,

To rake where I'll nest, to bring lark song and laughter.

You won't mind my leaves if I love you rightly,

Rosemary, laurel, lemon, thyme,

Balsam, yarrow, yew.

The Ends

Sometimes I can trace to the ends of my hair,
To younger years, when I danced with my blanket wrapped around my back,
When I asked for stories from outside bathroom doors.

Today I read aloud from the other side of a shower curtain,
And I danced in the edges of a pond reflecting the moon,
With a shawl around my shoulders, my feet plashing softly.

The shadows of trees tell me I am old,
And the moon tells me more:
I am not wrong to love and be drawn,
Maidenly, to aspire to tender hopes.

Experiments in Poison

I will fold myself in grass, and you will tumble on my lap.
We will pick oats, find strange homes, make maypoles of trees.

And if, behind one wall, you find ashes and experiments in poison, I will tell you a lonely one lives there,
And we will clean house for his return.

Ask me to dance again and I will not be ashamed to be seen spinning;
My arms must learn to lift.


I do not kiss you to make to think of kissing
I kiss you to remind you of what matters more than this.

The Alamo, San Antonio, August 9

I like talking to hotel room cleaners. Especially this kind: friendly, helpful, and humorous. It’s like instant accommodation when you wheel about a sweet lady in a chair. You can squat your car anywhere, use “out of order” bathrooms, kneel in parking lots to administer cold blended soup. People open doors, give up seats, smile. Or look surprised.

But I leave her for a while with her husband and walk off alone down the block, past Bonham Street to the spreading trees and clustered people around the church-turned-fort-turned-shrine. Lookers shuffle around glass-covered knives and a coonskin hat. Leathery men sweat on the scaffolding, repairing dusty, bone-colored walls.

Strangers walk the pavement where a battle took place. On the concrete path a skittering catches my eye, and I turn in time to see a green anole, subdued to brown, crossing to a bench’s shadow. Recognition cheers me in this strange and sweltering place. A friend from my old home. I can almost feel his white puffy mouth, fine rows of teeth, on my finger. A drop of blood. Like my grandmother’s cat, anoles drew me inexorably, and left scars.

A century old live oak bends and sags and beckons. One bold youth in red clings on a branch. I am not impressed.

And for all that, John had no last name. A freedman, remembered, but stamped in history with little but the color of his skin.

We drove home and he used my father’s word to describe the way I did my father’s work. An excellent job as navigator.

The Memory of Birds (Older Version)

I neared her house and saw her squatting in the front yard, in the shade of the big maple tree. There was something in her hands that quivered slightly. She was looking up the street, so she saw me at the same time I saw her. She smiled, but she didn’t get up. I smiled too, not knowing what to say, and crossed the lawn to her.

            I felt tall and awkward, walking up to Eliza sitting there in the grass. She didn’t say anything until I was right in front of her, and then she asked,

“Would you like to hold him?”

I grinned and said yes. She told me to sit down. Then she placed the warm, fluffy thing in my hands. Geoffrey adjusted his stubby wings to regain his balance after the transition. I wasn’t prepared to feel how light he was, and how small. Like a handful of seedpod dandelions. The queerest thing was the sensation of his body against my fingers; I could distinctly feel his breastbones beneath the down. That surprised me: there seemed to be nothing but airy fluff and a thin membrane of skin between my fingertips and his bones. But nearer to his feet I felt no bones, only his belly, warm and moist. It swelled in and out. His little feet clutched at my skin in a funny way. I laughed, and Eliza looked at me, enjoying my initiation. I felt like I should say something so I asked,

“How old is he?”

She answered that he was probably about two weeks old, but she wasn’t sure because she’d only had him since Friday. She said she knew this because his eyes were well open but he still had baby fluff.

I was always impressed by Eliza’s solemn knowledge. Maybe that was why I loved her so. She was a child, but her mind was sensible and probing. I still don’t know what she saw in me; I was such an overgrown excuse for a teenager. Maybe she sensed how I appreciated the meaning in things, the way she did.

I gazed back down at Geoffrey, who was blinking and rustling his little sheathed wings. I bent my head to inspect them. Each feather on his wings was growing out of a semi-transparent tube, made of quill material. The tips of his feathers were already free and fanning out, but the roots were still tightly bound up in their tube-sheaths.

            With my face close to Geoffrey like that, I smelled him for the first time. It was a curious delicate smell: eggy, a bit like mild urine, and sweet. I didn’t find it offensive, and leaned there, inhaling for a moment. Then Eliza moved beside me and I saw her pick up a recycled yogurt container from beside her left leg. She reached into it and pulled out a small worm. She took it with both hands and methodically tore it into three bits. They wriggled and exuded guts, but she placidly lay two of the pieces on her bare knee, and leaned over to feed Geoffrey the third. I watched her in silent admiration. I had never known a little girl to be so unconcerned with such things, and I wanted to say so. But I didn’t. As her hand neared Geoffrey, he lifted his head with open beak, and flapped his tiny wings and chirped. I could feel his whole body straining up toward that bit of worm.

“Don’t parent birds sometimes eat and regurgitate the food for their babies? I asked. “What if you spit on the pieces to help Geoffrey digest them?” I was hoping this was an educated question.

Eliza leaned back and squinted for a moment while her mind worked. Then she turned back to her knee and picked up another bit of worm, saying,

“Bird spit is different from human spit.”

I nodded. And I watched Eliza carefully feed Geoffrey the last two pieces. He was warm, and my palm sweated, so his down stuck to my skin. When I gave him back to Eliza my hands felt refreshed by the air. Eliza took him in a motherly sort of way, and I felt something like a father. Protective, and proud, and a little in wonder.

As I walked home I wiped my nose, and smelled Geoffrey on my hand.