(Easy for them to follow was the child's way.)
Love they could never put you on a stick.
They could kill you in their prison
but they could never have you.
They can do anything.
We didn't know each other
We didn't know each other,
only what we ourselves hardly knew,
though they hurt us, every breath,
the holes in our sides,
though they were invisible,
underground rivers, caves—
Touch with your finger
Touch with your finger
the left side of my chest I hunch to protect
the side that holds like a womb your walking
your walking over to us
at our plastic table in the Visiting Area
your hair cut, your chest caved in, your face caved in, your covered-over
silence.
Noon in the Line Outside
The pretty woman with a prisoner number, CDCP *****, written in
ballpoint on the palm of her hand. “You have to give them the
number.” “You can't bring anything inside.” “I'll hold your
place in the line while you go back to the car.” Her clear
plastic pocketbook full of quarters for the vending machines inside.
“It has to be clear plastic.” “You're allowed $30. in quarters.”
I find his number, with the prison pen I write it on the palm of my hand.
Inside
Your red eye—
soap, you said
—injury?
and the darkness
around your eye
and down your cheek
—birthmark? injury?
Close close you drew me in,
Injury—
Your number is lifting off my hand
Your number is lifting off my hand
you are becoming gone
to me but
the cut-out hurts
where you were
behind my eye
around your eye
down my cheek,
Ancient Injury—
*
The Needle North
I had a boat
lost the food
and the shoes
Hollow wrist
fill it with food
fill it with shoes
Some say we rise like dots into the sky
Walking through the snow
the world begins to whirl
from this immortal coil
to that immortal coil
We whirl now into deadwood
but fire inside
dead wood but fire
The Passing
The shimmer
gone
out of what we know
Bells
din dan dawn
but we—down here—you little
Lord
the needle North
and move the boat
In the Burning Air
In the burning air
nothing.
But on the ground, at the edge,
a woman and her spoon,
a wooden spoon,
and her chest, the broken
bowl.
*
She would long
to dig herself into the ground, her only
daughter's ashes
in her nose in her mouth her only daughter's
makeshift ashes
nothing
lying
in the hole in her chest
But her eye would still see
up into the ground above her, still see
the upper air
—Let her lie down now, snake in her hole, house
snake in her hold.
Little house
Little house
clay house
thousands of funeral smell
ground swell
we knew the boat of right action
but the road rubbed out
—water gone!
—the dead girl gone!
(was she pregnant?)
dishes blew by
I searched my hollows rubble
Burnt grass teach me
before I forget you
into a time
when I sit and roar
over the flowers
and don't know them
Notes
NEW POEMS
Page 3, “Annunciation”: drawn from Helene Aylon's Breakings. Page 5, “Occurrence of White”: the first line echoes Jane Kenyon's poem Things. Page 26, “My old body”:
My old body
a drop of dew
heavy at the leaf tip.
—Kiba
Dream Barker
(1965)
First Love
How deep we met in the sea, my love,
My