hyacinth

He had a taste for cornflakes
Evidenced by the
thin ribbon of milk
Spilling drop by drop to the floor

the sight when the door slowly silently opens
that morning

and then the sound of cornflakes under his heels
leaving a trail

and the smell of hyacinth in the air
the light flashing in his amber eyes

Thinking

Take my breath
Erase the moment
when the cold blue light of morning
floods the room
This early Hooper morning
Two figures on a bed
my hands of steely blue
The light turns your brown eyes a cool blue

I tripped the first time
The second time I fell willingly
like Alice down the narrow tunnel

Fearing the forgetting
Thinking of nothing

selection from my dissertation

Photographer

Hidden interiors of houses and buildings exposed in the glimpses as you pass. The door opens, the lighted interior spills out. The human inhabitant moves from couch to lamp with the monstrous shadow of his bowler hat flaring on the wall.

His hand pulls the (bone white) curtain shut. Ambient light of streetlamp and moon highlight the building’s skin, erasing the pits, dents, and chips. Through fences and shrubbery, one glimpses a yard.

The back yard, a secret, is obscured by the well-maintained turf and hedges of the front yard. Pass through an alley and peek over the fence to see the soul of the yard: the sagging empty clothesline, scattered toys, a forgotten car tire.


The photographer moves through the street with fingers carefully balancing the camera, strap wrapped once, twice, three times around his fist.

A stripe of celluloid caught under the heel. It drags clicking behind him. It unrolls, It unravels, Trailing behind him for many yards. It engraves in the concrete, in the asphalt, through the turf and dirt of alleys and yards, the line of his wandering vagabond journey through the city.

The photographer moves through the street.

He passes a small boy following a red balloon. And a small girl, whose pigtails flare out at 90 degree angles.

His shadow is caught, dancing around the buildings to the left. The movement caught in the stilled camera.

The next day, he quickly climbs out of his bed and runs to the drawing board. He traces the lines of a building across a site map. The site map is covered with the layers of debris and history. Each line is a weight of the years and the accumulation of people. He draws the line of the first wall, a wavering line that will be made from brick and mortar.

The door, the window, the frames onto the passing street and the passing leaves of autumn.

He has built himself a darkroom in the corner of his studio, a building which rises like a corkscrew from the corner lot. The lot that was once an drycleaner, a tailor, and a butcher shop. The wafting orders of the past drift through the vents at unusual times, like when he stops for a cup of tea, memories of his grandmother.

In the darkroom, the negative is damaged. A water spot from the years past. The negative immersed in the fluid of red light. He places it gently o the frame in the enlarger, correcting the focus and the exposure, balanced on the paper.

The light floods the image.

The strips of paper.

Pathologist of butterflies

He induces the surgeon to carefully separate the layer so fat from the belly.

While the pathologist sits to the side creating a salad of orange segments and mint leaves, freshly snipped from the garden near the dumpster.
He mourns the lost antennas and eye lashes
Of the monarch butterflies
Who trace their path from north to Mexican shore

The pathologist scribbles a few words
Then discards them

When he meets the photographer they join hands
Momentarily distracted by the flock of birds
Rising from the white oak tree

of china, cats, and cookies

The scenes with him were these chilling nerve wracking moments of waiting. Followed by a complete twist of expectation.

For example, one day she came home to see a tin of cookies sitting precariously on the magazines she had gathered over the months. The cookie tin was red. The lid was silver. They didn’t quite match.

She put down her new purse, a yellow purse made from PVC and picked up the tin. The lid was tight and she tugged at it but one corner would not move. She could open it just enough to see that the first layer of cookies were those sugar cookies with a bit of strawberry jam on the top. They were slightly melted, sticking to a layer of tissue paper lining the tin. When she yanked harder on the lid, the whole tin went flying, flipping past her legs, and lying on the floor. The lid rolled away. Somehow the tin remained upright and only a few cookies fell on the floor. She picked them, shook off the dust and laid them carefully on the table. She sat on the floor, and rearranged the cookies. Inside were the jam cookies, a layer of plain sugar cookies, and few long rolls, like biscotti but with white sugar over them.

Sitting on the floor, she slowly ate the fallen cookies. Then standing up, she stepped backward and stepped on her purse. She heard a loud crack. She had managed to break the latch.

Then, he walked in.

"Time to talk of china and cats," he said,


"China?" she asked.

He nodded, putting his camera bag on the cookie tin, crushing the remaining cookies.

She watched the mail slide to the floor.

He nodded. “ The cat broke the last dish."

So, off to the store.

Birthday Poem

And there she climbs up the roof
a cup of tea in hand
watches the spiders carve a small world in webbing from the silk of its spit.
on the gouged silky wooden window frames

the red light of dawn
catches in her eyes
she blinks away the light
until all is dark
but the glimmer of the silk wrapping her fingers tight

this morning

White light
Burnishing across our faces
As in Hopper' s hotel rooms
My hands on your chest
stark white
to your cinnamon mocha
The few minutes
we have
burns through us
I whisper
You turn
to say goodbye

Of Buildings between Angels and Monsters

Of Buildings between Angels and Monsters
In the year of the Iron Rabbit
On April 114
She witnesses the chance encounter on her sewing table
of an Umbrella
and a Butterfly

folded Angel wings
forgotten lying on the floor like petals
thrown from the fire

she dreams in Bones
splintered eaten roasted and melted dished up for the lost Children
strolling along the boulevard

bleached by the Sun
skinned and splintered into jagged edges
jagged edges bent backward into her fingers
her elbows broken
a shard under the sewing table

treatise

If a woman wrote a treatise
it might be woven from
dryer lint
then cured and pickled for
the Lenten holiday
or swept away during Passover
or perhaps ground up like old soup bones
for sweetness in the mincemeat pies

What to wear to the revolution

What to wear to the revolution:

slender tiny shoes made of red felt

a thick leather belt ( useful for tourniquets)

an old sweater bought in las vegas

spare pair of sunglasses tucked into your sleeve

full skirt made from burlap with three pockets



but never your wolf’s teeth
Use those as a rake
for the burying of dreams

Thinking of Anne Sexton

thinking of Anne Sexton

The rusted bone

Its edges frayed

left in the ashtray

after the party

where she watched

him flirt

And then later overfilled her glass

with gin

In the morning

the fine lines by her eyes

were longer

she saw as she lifted the mascara to her eyelash

Quetzalcoatl

his dark eyes
Cause a fire of magenta sparks

his hands
Generate a wave of magnetic force

Such that the plumed serpent appears

God of the wind

Then it was I dreamed that I was entwined with
The feathered serpent

God of the dawn

Rattling the heavens
Renting the air with his screams

And when the tip of his feathered wings appear
Dancing over the red earth
produces an earth streaming with blood

But then the gentle rains fall
under the amber flash of his eyes.

God of the morning dawn

One morning to see your eyes
Before we are consumed by divine fire,
ashes turning into birds
and our hearts, the morning star.

for B.

shock

the sheer blinding light

a flash
as a car passes
there the curve of your shoulder

our shadows on the wall
fall silent

fingers on my mouth

a car passes
there the line of your hip

your fingers hold my head
in a silent kiss

silent screams

your fingers brush my mouth

in stillness of repose
we watch the moths fly through the torn screen

stolen

He stole from my hand

my Soul

Sinner and Saint

he unwrapped my soul

Now

Dripping from his mouth

like sweet chocolate

Spilling from the edges of his mouth

like a bit of dark wine

Bleeding from his fingers

like molten copper

Falling to the ground

Like desiccated leaves

Imagine

Two scenes. One: he is waiting for you alone. He hugs you lightly, and then reaches out to take your hand but instead of holding it, he takes your luggage. Outside, he stops briefly to light a cigarette and you stumble a bit, almost tripping over his heels.

In another scene you arrive alone at the airport. You exchange money. You find a taxi outside. You croak out the hotel address to the driver, who doesn't understand at first. You hand him the address, hoping the hotel is not too terrible. The flight was very long and despite yourself, you hoped he would be there at the airport. You call him each day, carefully at different times, but he never answers. Somehow you manage, walking the narrow streets, and having cake and coffee for lunch. You catch yourself stopping when you see a tall lanky man with a ponytail. It is never him.

A third scene is also possible. He is at the airport, but she's there, too. You find yourself crammed into the backseat with your luggage and his camera equipment. She's introduced as a friend.

In the first scene, he takes you to his father's county house after seeing how crummy your hotel is. His room is small and in the attic. You promptly hit your head when you stand up from the bed. The other people in the house speak only Estonian. You nod and smile, practice a few hellos. You get a few phrases like “she’s pretty but old, " and "Is she rich?" He responds to their questions in such a rapid Estonian that you cannot follow it. When everyone laughs, you assume he has made some joke about you. At night, when you ask what he said, he doesn’t answer. He holds your hand but doesn't touch you until the last night.

That last night, he starts circling your arm with his fingers, dancing lightly on the skin, and then stops, asking you if you would to wait for him another year. He has to recover from his divorce. You say, yes, yes, of course. He stops touching you, turns over and sleeps.

In this version, he also asks you to marry him as he drives you to the airport. He asks as he tosses his cigarette out the window.

But it is none of these. Yes, there he is waiting, but he has no flowers. He's alone, but he's off to an editing project. He drops you off a few blocks from your hotel, leaving you to struggle along with the suitcase. He'll pick you up the next day so you can drive out to the countryside. And on this drive, you'll pretend nothing has changed. You will listen to his music, and watch him light seemingly endless cigarettes. You count twenty or thirty in the three hours you are together. You feel that you have worn the wrong clothes. Not feminine enough compared to the small skirts and high heels worn by the other women here. You brought too many clothes but they are all wrong.

It is a long day and he drops you off at the hotel without asking to see you again. You have to ask. He hedges, muttering something about work. The phone rings, he glances at it and frowns. Work, he says.

But he says the next day you can meet. He’ll take you to his father's country house.


Or perhaps it is the dream which is he spends each night with you, holding you in his arms, making love to you over and over. He spends each night with you in your hotel room. He whispers lovely words about you in the night, thinking you are asleep.

Or it is none of these because you live still in the United States of America.

untitled

ah! the red robin in the bamboo

glimmers like

his dark eyes

catch

the faintest taste of cinnamon on my lips

his lips on my neck brush this taste down to my collarbone

he catches the scent in his teeth

then looks at me

with the very slightest hint of terror

all this i see in the flash when he appears at my door.