Last one...

Spring

I know where you will be standing, 

rough on the lawn, half-smiling at me. 

I will walk towards you, holding a fan over my eyes. 

You will try to kiss me like a cowboy. 

Then I will trail your hand across the dried paint 

on the back of my neck until you can guess the color.    

Yesterday, I watched a special about penguins. 

The sun leaves for two months that far south, but the earth 

always tilts back into place. Then the females waddle 

towards reunion, and couples crane their necks around 

in their ritual dance, exhaling the winter air.  

If I did this, my collarbones would jut out 

like gangly pool cues, and my hair would get caught 

in my mouth, and I’d remember how awkwardly 

your Adam’s apple protrudes from your neck. 

We aren’t penguins, dear. But when I see you 

squinting in the sun as I walk towards you, 

I know there will be dancing and clapping of hands. 

Gargoyle Psalm

We’ve come home 

from a museum filled with gargoyles   

salvaged from buildings 

tired of holding them.   

An exhibit of things unwanted 

until gathered together   

like a thousand salt shakers. 

I think of the collector, bending over   

a gruesome stone face 

and clapping his hands.   

I think of him picking up each gargoyle  

and swaddling it in bubble wrap   

to ship it to the museum intact, 

though it’s already broken.   

I know what it’s like 

to be stone.  

Our ruined bodies have sat side-by-side 

in this display case for years.   

Did our backs fall together 

off the same cathedral   

or were we miraculously  

carried to one another?   

Even if we could not speak, 

our stone bodies would cry out  

our answer in psalms.

Your High School

 

It must have looked like a bottling factory,

the kind that uses brown glass

so you can’t even see

what you’re bottling up

or drinking down. You always drink

to get drunk. Once, you were sweating

and buzzed so you took off

your shirt, but you asked first

if it was okay. You looked shy

of your tattoos, but read me the story

of all that ink anyway.

 

Sometimes I could imagine

the hallways and lockers

rolling, lush and romantic

as the valley of Wheeling,

West Virginia where I once tasted

the river air’s Southern twang.

But your West Virginia keeps peeling in,

covering everything

in that pukey pea-soup color

of your bile or snot

or whatever you spit out

after they beat you so bad

against the cold metal doors.

Then comes your blood

sweating brown through the paint.

I’d liken this to Jesus

giving up in the garden, except

you’re no savior.

 

And I’m no savior,

but I could take you

to the staircase where I fell

and bled inside,

my muscles bruising

so bad I could only crawl

away and lie

on my stomach, waiting.

I could force

cold plastic oxygen

up your nostrils, or

show you the last picture

of my father before he

breathed in too much

carbon monoxide.

I could write your name

in Hebrew, fax it

into the anonymous

hotel-room mess

of your sheets and stale food.

Because everything is

sacred in Hebrew.

Even our scars.

Last Chance Riversong III         for Virginia Woolf

When I laid my temple down on my watch and rose

imprinted with time, I thought of your pockets,

 

their stones always intent on etching their way into you.

Here it’s the rain that sinks deep.

 

The worms rise up to keep from drowning,

and I start fearing the things that my skin has soaked up:

 

your stones, your sadness, and all the whale songs

haunting my blood. I’ve heard whales

 

can’t survive without those ethereal currents

of music passing between them. When they sing,

 

they tell me it was the silence that pulled you under,

not the sorrow of the water. If these stones

 

begin to deafen me, I’ll bring a cello to your river and wade in.

I’ll make it hum underwater, and let your echoes settle on my skin.

From the Last Ice Age

Someday you’ll find me, you said, like an elephant in the snow.

You were always mysterious like that, saying things I never understood.

It never snows here, but I still look for you. Last week I held my breath when

I heard they unearthed a baby woolly mammoth from the tundra and named her

Lyuba. It means ‘love’ in Russian, although the man who found her didn’t love

her right away. He accused her of bringing an omen of death. Of course,

later he felt protective of her delicately frozen body. Just a baby after all.

He decided a museum would be a good home for her, but she never got there,

because the scientists loved the idea of her too much to let her go. They came

for her with probes. Frightened by such possessive love, Lyuba disappeared.

Let herself be stolen away by a villager hoping to make a profit. But the scientists

bartered for her and drilled holes through her fur, probing inside her. Blue crystals

in her lung cavities. And mud. She suffocated in it, they decided,

trying to cross a stream. The silt and clay swallowed her up and pickled her,

so her body remained whole for millennia, though gnawed at by time and wild dogs.

The scientists said this was important, knowing the means of her death and preservation,

though as far as I can see none of this will ever revive anyone—especially not Lyuba.

I hope when I find you someday and dig you up from the snow, I won’t make

such a fuss about deciding how you stayed intact all these years. I hope I’ll remember

just to scoop you up in my arms and give you the home you’ve been waiting for

while caked in mud and endlessly passed from hand to hand. 

Alright folks, that's all I have for you right now. More to come soon though...

-Liz