How to Begin

To Annie

Sometimes we spill the milk

and it looks like the moon.

How it’s all over the place, how

my dad yelled so much in kitchens

but still taught me how to chop

peppers, digging out the seeds

like a pumpkin. Add more sugar,

but never tell, he said. Sweet

spaghetti sauce, our specialty.

The secret is always to be tender,

to let yourself crumple in the water—

unfit levee because love was always

meant to knock us over every time.

These horizontal days, we can only

find someone warm and begin

to give everything up again:

the ties I saved after my dad’s

funeral, the newspaper clipping

of the man I loved face down

under a bottle of perfume,

bell peppers I carried home

from the market, carved out

and chambered like a heart.

If you can hold them—if you

can make something sweet

of them without cutting out

the bitter parts—you can keep

all of it, nested in your arms.

Cranes

To Annie

Wrecked clean through, I am

all ache these days, thinking of

my friend who tried to hang himself

with his coat and a shower curtain rod,

how glad I am that men are

not made to be shower curtains,

that some things can’t hold our weight.

How he said come over and I prayed

in tongues all the way there because

sometimes our language is stolen,

and we need a spare. Because

even words break down: migraines

fold into a migration

of cranes, paper birds sharp

in my head and unable to find south.

No compass or stars. Blind creatures

with only edges to speak of.

And me, groping.

There are so many war poems

about the body—cancer or

heartache—but how

to write one for you

when love is the landmine

I can’t stop trying

to set off. How to speak

against breaking when birds

begin there, hammering

their heads against eggshells

until the sky cracks open

bluer than anything.

Annie Poems (Pt. I)

So, I'm writing a chapbook with the oh-so-lovely Annie Pittman, and it is a wondrous thing, full of grief and love and family. Here's a few excerpts for you to chew on while I revise my India poems:

[Dear Annie #1]

When you tell me your mother

is in the hospital, I begin the hunt

for bad omens: onions left to burn,

oranges given to mold, sugar

leaking into the cabinets. Because

a bruised peach is no silence.

Because it can be weighed in the palm

and sliced to pieces so inconsequential

you could put them down a drain.

When my father died, my mother

only had to say, It’s Daddy, and I

could fill in the rest—the way he

dragged the patio furniture into the garage

and turned both cars on, the swell

of his body as the gases started working.

Because there is in these moments

a soup-can telephone between daughter

and father, humming with secrets.

Because I can’t tell you when

we stopped being part of our parents’

bodies, but you can still feel

the blood clot inside her

and hear the nurses’ shoes clicking.

Because love, too, comes this way.

I’ve left the bread out in the snow

just so I can give you something

to dissolve in your hands.

[Dear Annie #3]

Today you and I are listening

to a man read about angels and how

heaven is filled with distance,

my hands clasped at the bone

he calls the wild iris of the body,

yours resting on the word joyful

embroidered on your skirt.

Crisis, he says, is a threshing,

a way of separating covers

from what can be made into bread.

In some places, farmers scatter

their grain over country roads

to be pressed open by cars.

Some days you are part of a crisis

and don’t know it, driving

with your windows down

until your phone rings and the air

is too much to listen through.

Other days, you wear bells

around your ankles so nobody

will lose you, so they can

hear the noise of your day

coming through the field.

John said Julie’s tumors

were little bells ringing

inside her that he could hear

even after she died, her body

so unquiet in the ground.

Some days love is a microphone,

a way of speaking across

the great spaces of heaven

and earth and everything

you aren’t ready to hear yet.

Chapbook Poem 6

[This one references several of the poems I didn't include here, but hopefully the language will speak for itself.]

Bring back the river, bring back

the Taj Mahal. I'm ready to leave

this behind, send you a postcard

from Lourdes, that grotto

of miraculous healing. The whales

will carry me there, past Hawaii

past miles of train tracks,

and spit me out at the feet

of the Virgin, her eyes

downcast, still looking

for her son in the ground.

I will take her hand

and lead her to the spring,

she doesn't know she's blessed.

I will wash her feet, like the son

she's missing so bad,

and ask his forgiveness

for how much tenderness we need,

she and I thirsting

for a water that can hold us up,

for a well deep enough

to drop the stones from our pockets

and never have to pick them up again.

And you, dear friend, you

will be one of the saints,

perhaps your namesake,

patron saint of wives and the abused,

who died longing for Africa,

for a space all her own,

rich black earth, wide open sea.

Wander across the land and don't stop

when you reach the second coast. Don't stop

until you find what you're looking for.

Chapbook Poem 4

My mother keeps a list

of everyone she wants to pray for

stuck to the mirror in her bathroom.

All our hurts spelled out

on green post-it notes.

I'm sure she'd added me this week,

my name dashed with his.

I feel her prayers in my ankles,

which have been sprained and broken

enough to know what healing is.

To pray for my mother,

for all the thistles

that have passed between us,

I would have to cover

my walls with her name, a name

that means beautiful in a language

I don't understand. I only saw this grace

after I made her cry

like a river had been broken

inside her, swelling with love

and disappointment,

all the things that make us human.

Chapbook Poem 2

In my dreams I jump into the sea and am swallowed

by whale after whale. I've learned that Jonah

means dove in Hebrew. And doves can be dirty,

obstinate sailors. Mourning doves

used to sit outside my window and coo

incessantly. I ran through the yard screaming

to scare them away. Then all I heard was

the wing whistle of takeoff.

What I want to do is flee

from where I'm asked to go. I want to test

your patience with me, to swim

right into the whale and hope

you'll come in too, to sit with me a while.

We could have such laughs,

echoing our voices against giant ribs.

We could sing hymns

and wonder if the whale could hear them,

could understand what a soul is.

We might never want to be saved,

to be spat out from the warmth

of the one place where even God

lets you hide.

Chapbook Poem 1

I'm writing a chapbook with my friend Monica for workshop, which means we write poems back and forth until we arrive at something of a collection or conversation. I won't be able to post the whole thing, just snippets here and there. Here's the first poem I sent to her.

A girl standing on a riverbank. This is how

it always begins for me, has to begin. Today

she doesn't know what to do with her hands.

There's so much water, so much washing to be done.

It would be easier to wear all the dirty clothes

at once and wade straight in. It would be easier

to erase everything between thirteen

and sixteen. And canoe away from all this.

The day I learned how to lie without blushing,

the other girls at the lunch table were spelling out

swear words in broken pretzels. Keep a straight face

and you can get through anything.

Wear a high collar so the red on your chest

doesn't show through. This

is what I'd tell my daughter, if I had one.

To you I can only say that there are two ways to die,

too much water or not enough, and you

don't get to pick which one. You can wash and wash

and still be drained from the neck with one slice.

You can wander through the streets at night, lonely

from loss and know a river in Egypt

is more like home than this will ever be.

Swallow these words like you would a pill.

Don't let yourself be consoled.