You’re wearing that sweater I hate again,
the one that looks like it should be out to sea, the brackish air
rushing against its cotton fibers until the salt
wears rough holes in the shoulders. You’re breathing heavy too,
like you can smell the canvas sails five hundred miles away
and you’re aching to sing like a sailor again,
leaving me with only a knotted bracelet made of rope
too softened by the ocean to hold anything of substance.
On days like this, you stare out the window for hours
until you finally look up and ask for a glass of water.
I open the window and cup my hands in the rain
until I have enough in my palms to wet your mouth
or pour over the curls of your hair. I know
one of these days you’re going to drown, because
it’s always what we love the most that kills us
slowly and softly, like Madame Curie cradling a vile
of toxic radium. For Houdini it was escape,
the sheer thrill of drowning himself and living
to brag about how many punches he could take.
A college kid took him out with three, while Houdini
reclined on a couch modeling for an art student.
Too surprised to flex, he took the blows to his appendix
which oozed around inside him a while
before knocking him out during his last disappearing act.
I don’t know how the sea will take you out,
only that this storm sewer looks like it has a temper.
I wouldn’t walk over its rusted grate or stomp
any puddles with those shined-up boots of yours, dear.
It’s the same for me, the way I shouldn’t speak
any more, lest the words turn against me and swallow me up.
At least I know how dangerous it is,
while you walk around or stare out as if that expanse
won’t suck you in one day, turning your molecules
into blankness so you become the sky, become the waves.
I know someday every inch of you I was never allowed
There’s a boy on a bicycle holding a hamster cage.
I can see the hamster panicking with each sway,
trying to move to one side to balance out the deadly tilt.
His weight doesn’t shift the cage and this terrifies him,
makes him claw at the glass like a sad little mime.
I’ve cut my fingernails too short to claw, so I can’t
tear at my life like I think you’d like me to.
They say you have to be strong
to drown yourself when you can swim. They say
you were brave to walk into the river, the world swaying
so dizzily around you. But didn’t a thrush sing that morning
and remind you how warm a voice can be? How do you know
what can be recovered and what can only be clawed out
like a crow’s nest in the heart.
Illinois Ache
Before planting an apple tree,
sleep seven days in a stranger’s orchard,
then roll over and lick the ground.
The stranger will become your lover.
Peel a lifetime
of apples and let the seeds
fall on the kitchen table.
When you scoop them up
notice how your hands look older.
When you touch your hands,
notice how some apple peel drops
from under your fingernails.
Place this skin under your lover’s bed,
and the wood will speak
in its usual creaky voice:
A husband stands on the same dirt
for sixty-three years, holding an apple
in his outstretched palm.
Throw away the apple seeds and leave
the knife on your stranger’s kitchen counter.
Wander thirty days, then return
to the orchard and curl up in the dirt.
You’ll be craving something sweet
Love Is The Rope That Lassos Tight
My love wakes up thirsty,
his eyes dried and caved like he’s lost
something, and I can’t find it.
I fill a glass with water
and pour it over our heads.
I dream we’re hungry,
eating up the Oregon trail and pressing our bodies
against the hot canvas of our covered wagon
just for the sting. The sting is like love,
and my love is so golden, tangled up
in my hair, reading to me.
I see a papercut on his thumb,
and I want to kiss it,
but when I look back he’s gone,
sucked inside a pillar of dust.
I have no lasso to pull him back,
and my hands are empty
except for my hair,
so I start to braid.
I cut the ropes from my scalp
with a pocketknife
and throw them into the void.
* * *
When I wake up again
two hours later
he’s on the floor,
vomiting into a baseball cap.
I never liked the Yankees,
I joke, but he’s silent, closing
his eyes slow and heavy
like plaster’s being sealed over them.
I’d circle my arms around his torso,
but I’m a worn-out lasso
with all this silence and excavation
inside us. Instead I curl up
on his side of the bed
to keep the sheets warm
for when he crawls back.
No comments:
Post a Comment