Oratory

at the reading

emaciated women
writers and artists
in size 4 flowing dresses

lavishly embellished with
lush flowers women
who look like hungry boys bones

honed sharp with intentional
deprivation grown
women gathered together

to celebrate womanhood
it would take any
three of them to make one me

my breasts alone would break their
backs my hips could wrap
around two looking at me

they see their large fear over-
flowing too much breasts
belly hips curdled thighs thick

flesh old bones cushioned with meat
milk and grandmother's
sweetest autumn rhubarb pie

   

duet

his blue
belief
was sorrow
wild to
kiss the
curve of her
raw skin
to bruise
her cloudy
eye his
harsh hot
teeth sharp with
need honed
on rocks
and bones scraped
her lids
a lash
of love to
cut the
sullen
tongue of her
to bite
the hard
seed of her
heart he
dreamed to
swallow her
whole &
singing
she let him

   

incandescent

you walk through my dreams holding
      my pain in your hands like coals
           your flesh peels back burning I
                lay down beside you my skin
                          peeled back I turn the knife on

myself you peel my fingers
    back you take it from me and
           still I kill you in my dreams
                because you are there (because
                          he is not) and because I

believe you are immortal
    and cannot be harmed even
           though I know that every-
                thing dies especially love
                          especially loving me

   

love, i ask you

if I go out mining
carry my pick and my hoe
if I go out in the dark
morning to dig you up

to dig you out of my-
self the pick to cut away
stone and the hoe to turn my
heavy dirt will I find

you hard and silent just
another sharp stone in the
seedy soil of me or should
I go out in the night

with a flashlight a torch
to pull your night-crawling self
up out of the dark of my
thick loamy skin will you

rise to the bait of the
light? if you do and I pull
you up thinking to pierce you
on some sharp hook and feed

you to another poor
fish will you break in two and
half of you slip back through my
crumbly crevices will

you still be turning there
in the deep dark loosening
dry soil with the slippery
sheen of your body?

   

Mariah Means Death in Italian

The first child, by her naming, split
the family, Italian grandmother
against German

father. Sixteen years now, she sits
in her grandmother's room, remembering
summer visits:

the dark house; her grandmother in
a white slip in the Cleveland heat; the smell
of Brach candies

and Pall Mall cigarettes. The sound
of the screen door. Mariah's grandmother
calls her by her

mother's name. She begs for one more
cigarette, tells the family secrets,
swears Mariah

to endless silence. Mariah
closes her eyes, listens to the murmur
of night nurses.

She hears the screen door swing. The old
woman grips her hand to aching. She breathes
that city heat.

   

tripping

when you
embark
to that place
on the needle
or the glass
or the spoon, or the flame
are you trying to arrive at some particular destination?
is it the voyage itself that is so enticing?
impossible
to refuse?
or you only trying
to

travel
away
from here? when
you leave, why do
we, who stay
behind on this grassy
earth, so frantically, desperately want you to come back to us?
you who so eagerly leave, you who are so nearly
dead and dragging
us behind
you through your stony weed-choked
world

   

While Napping in Alaskaon a Sunday in October

Winter crawls out of the woods
and swallows the town.  Shrews slip back
      to the woodpile.  The road
slides downhill.  Black and white tiles
embrace on the kitchen floor.
      Coffee thickens in the pot
while lunch congeals on the plate.
The planet turns through crowded space.
      Dust drifts under the door.

The dog dozes while the cat
dreams of eating it, one black paw
      at a time.  Darkness rubs
my bedroom window.  The quilt
exhales cedar and mothballs.
      In my afternoon dreams, I
ride a rolling ball through star-
cluttered skies.  Bears climb to their dens.
      My sheets pile up like snow.