Fireflies

The Ayahuasca hit her hard
wobbling back down the concrete street,
the Amazon.
They held hands,
the bisexual the Canadian and her,
a silly white gringa with hair sapped maple brown.
She saw worms,
Technicolor worms and worlds
like never before.
The world wasn’t so fresh,
it was strange and black and it was
silhouettes against a starving sky,
lush with lights.
The lights flickered
on and off around her,
more peeping than warning.
Maybe she should’ve known.
She lay on the pavement,
reaching out to hold them,
reaching out to hold their hands,
to grasp at something.
Butterfly.
They called her.
She felt the layers of earth,
the door after door after door of
new worlds below her.
She was propped up,
she was supported by all that stuff.
And then she began to sing.

Hands
Mark’s hands were never as soft as John’s but I suppose that never was the point. John’s were round like pillows against any harm. He gestured so rapidly I suppose the wind may have calmed them, puffed them out like sails blowing towards twilight. They were the type you liked to hold and stroke and touch. John would call it sensuously, electric. They were the kind Shakespeare wanted in his sonnets, not his plays.
Now Mark’s were harder, calloused with climbing chalk and spicy from Cajun music all night. He had freckles and wore rougher stuff. Those were the ones you liked to rub to start a fire. They were the ones you wanted on you in the dark. The ones that didn’t let go so easy.

Age
I live with my books. I sit still all day. I don’t own a couch. I want something hard to sit on, an old chair maybe but nothing to cushioned. I sit with that funny hat on, one hand poised on my cane, looking at my walls, my piles of books, the mountains of dead white men. I stuff myself inside them, teetering on my moving ladder to get to the best, the one I’m really hankering for. I don’t eat much, maybe celery and cold soup, something easy on the palate, something easy for my slight frame. I know where they all are, every one by touch. I run my fingers over the spines of my friends and whisper their names, blind man. I read to her, trying not to cough when I speak. Have you ever read Eliot’s Four Quartets?

Ode to a Pear
You are my loveliest of friends
my role model
my model rotund woman.
You’re graceful and delicate and
greenyellow colored.
I love your colors,
your taste colored white,
most often so juicy and
crunchy too soon.
You don’t know your beauty
so simple,
graceful, you are
in my palm
like a woman rotund.
Shapely,
what does that mean anyway
of any shape,
a triangle has shape,
but you are the essence
the essential
the cosmic
the universal delicacy.
A crunch,
Juice,
Freckles, you are best
with a bit of cheese,
so soft and creamy.
To your golden green skin
the skin
the skin
the skin
the skin
of you
is what I most admire,
but your insides are too
so autumn crisp
bursting with spring sluice
like rain as a solid,
like a woman dancing,
pearshaped ,
and naked lovely to the world
in spring laughing.

Ode to Frances

I’d like to give you something, write you a poem, cover you with Gingko leaves (the crisp non-smelly ones) or soft music notes like rain. I could make you a pantheon of Garbage, all kinds, just for your photographic Delight. We’ll put on our laundry clothes, big sunglasses, have a drink and wander off to eat. We can dress up (banish the tears!) in sequins and you can wear your unitard, and we’ll dance, two crazy women around our toosmall room. I love those nights we find each other Awake or return together, unraveling our winter clothes, shedding our layers of night. We crawl like children into our Respective beds, shove the heaps of clothes aside. You’ll put your glasses back on and read Cribblecrabble from your sheets. Weekends we wake up roughly together and I smile, eyes still closed, as I hear you groping for your glasses, find chocolate instead and pop it in your mouth. I never want to see your eyes red-rimmed. (It’s true, we’ll agree, People suck.) I want to hear only your crazy cackling behind me as I sit at my desk. Never be afraid. Be fierce. “It is our duty to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.” So sleep easy, wake freshly. You told me there’s nothing for discomfort like a new day, a good Sleep. (You are wiser than you trust sometimes.) You can trust in me. I’d like to give you something, write you a poem. I’m all out of chocolate. Cheese is nearly eaten (and it was yours in the first place). My beautiful friend, let’s take a break, Tea time in the afternoon, slip on a little David Gray, (I’ll gather the snow, if you’ll get the syrup) and we can just breathe, missing everyone we’ve ever known Together.

Wednesday Morning in Marin

Frank sat  between the reeds on top of a dune. He looked up from his writing in time to see the tattered sun-streaked man pass. He wondered how old the guy was. He wondered if all the homeless people he saw looked as ageless. Frank meditated on that for a while and wrote it down. A good detail. The sun was starting to bake his forehead and neck as he hunched over his journal. This was his winter project—to write a book, or a poem, anything really. Nothing would come. None of his characters were real. None of them breathed. He looked down at the beach stretched out below and tried to understand the strangers, tried to tell their stories, tried to imagine their journeys. He knew it was crap and he had to be at the market in twenty minutes. He tore out the pages and crumpled them, throwing them to the sand as he walked away. There was something writerly and satisfying about wadding up paper and littering a beautiful place.
The two girls left the hostel when the sun was just cresting the Seus-like hill. The lean, tawny-haired one carried a yellow backpack and wore the blond one’s scarf when she got too hot. The path was smooth and long like a tongue winding through the throat-like valley. The birch woods to the left gathered enough shadow to keep the field glittering with frost. The blonde  stopped too many times to look at crystallized leaves and her friend kept tugging her to move. When they finally saw the dunes she was limping hard, leaning on her tawny-headed friend as a crutch. They climbed the tiny sand hill and down to the golden stretch of coastline. They could see Point Reyes dancing in morning fog, reaching into the Pacific. The beach was smooth and tan like a woman’s back. The girls knew they were alone, if only for the morning, and shed their layers of clothes. They walked down the sand separately, feeling the sun hit their bellies and backs and breasts and faces upturned. They picked up shells and examined small stones. The round blonde was watching the curve of her friend’s back, her slender bird-like body barely making an indent on the sand. When a man appeared on the horizon, huffing behind an eager dog, they joined hands and entered the sea.
The middle-aged man hurried behind his hairy dog, tugging desperately at the leash. He lived for mornings, a chance for peace before the family woke up. His wife always insisted he take the dog with him for exercise so she wouldn’t have to later. He wondered what she did all day while he was at the office. He figured they did roughly the same activities—sitting around, hitting a keyboard every so often, both feeling lonely and reveling in the solitude. The only difference was he took the dog for a walk in the morning, she fed the kids and got them to school, and he got paid for his day. He tried not to stare at the two naked girls splashing in the ocean in their shapeless youth. He remembered how his wife looked before she got pregnant. He remembered how he used to think her laugh, the unabashed raucous mouth-wide-open one, was beautiful. Then he thought of Karen at the office, remembering her subtle smile, how she was always willing. The leash slipped from his hand and the dog took off down the beach towards a small hunched over figure in the distance.
The young women carried the thing uncertainly in her arm. She was too young to have a child, she knew that. She couldn’t believe how small the thing was, its head fitting in the palm of her hand. It felt like a toy next to the ocean, a wiggling breathing doll. Mothers always talk about the miracle of life, of giving birth to a small person, she thought. But this? This can’t be it. This thing is hardly animated. It was born out of consequence. It was strange that she had created this thing from a one-night-stand in Las Rosas but it seemed more like a product of drink than human contact. She tried to remember being introduced to the Pacific when she was that small. She was sure her father had brought her here, held her tiny hand, introduced her to the waves. How had she held on to his hand in that salty tumult? She brought the thing closer to the water, holding it as far away from her body as possible. She didn’t see the dog coming. A blur of gold fur bowled into her, knocking the thing from her hands.
The bearded wind-torn man heard the wailing and howling, some sort of skirmish between a woman and a dog. He smiled to himself thinking this is why people keep their dogs on leashes. He carried his salt-covered blanket over one shoulder. It had been a cold night and the reeds behind the dunes didn’t offer much shelter. His jeans were ripped around his knees and ankles. He couldn’t remember any shirt besides the woolen plaid sweater he wore today and the day before and the day before that. He wondered if he had begun to smell yet, or if the ocean brine cleaned him enough. He hated the crust that built up on his skin, stretching and pulling at his back and legs and arms and neck. He liked his hair all ocean-crunchy but it felt like dried seaweed after a while. He needed to meet up with Glen at the market by noon. It was going to be a long walk but Glen always had some chronic. He fingered the last dollars and coins he kept in his fraying pocket and turned up over the dunes, away from the Pacific.

For Emily

Morning in a square window-shaped glow, sun’s anti-shadow thrust against the blue tapestry and half of her sleeping face. She’s worried, even in her sleeping there’s a tightness I can feel about her curled clutching, her thin-lined lips.
“I am doing something I learned early to do, I’m paying attention to small beauties, whatever I have—as if it were our duty to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.” She wakes up blind groping for her glasses, finds chocolate, puts it in her mouth. She came home crying at four am, I was too asleep to soothe her. I lost it yesterday, dropped my basket in the snow everyone around me.
She wakes up blind groping for her glasses, finds chocolate, puts it in her mouth. We fought when we finally started talking to each other. I lost it yesterday, dropped my basket in the snow everyone around me. It was a betrayal, deserted again. Abused and undeservedly.
We fought when we finally started talking to each other. She was easily swayed, too malleable.  It was a betrayal, deserted again. Abused and undeservedly. Now she’s hurting and I kiss her face at lunch.
She was easily swayed, too malleable. She came home crying at four am and I was too asleep to sooth her. Now she’s hurting and I kiss her face at lunch. “I am doing something I learned early to do. I’m paying attention to small beauties, whatever I have, as if it were our duty to find things to love to bind ourselves to this world.”
“Goodbye,” I whisper, shutting the door a little too loudly behind me. It’s winter outside, I know it but I’m always confused to see sunlight and icicles wet in the same day. It’s melting and it sounds like rain. Will she wake to puddles or ice?
Warmth

I hunger for warmth and I can
Smell it.
I woke up to his body smooth beside me—
Warm.
We tugged and pushed and pulled on each
Others bodies and
Filled the room with
Warmth.
I thrust open
The heavy window and lay
Spread out
On the flannel sheets,
Soaking in the hot sound of
Rain in January—
Warm air cooling my sweat.

I hunger for this spot of sun to
Continue.
I smelled mud on the wings of
Morning today through
The second
Floor
Window thrust open to the
Warm rain
Cooling my hot
Body watching all the
Warmth we had made
Escape
From the room.

I hunger for warmth
I am insatiable.

Recipe for Loneliness

Open all the windows
Close all the doors carefully
And without a sound
[silence is paramount]

Sit like a noodle
Spaghetti limbs strewn limp on the floor
Paint seven toenails,
Three on one foot, four on the other.
Paint them green with willow branches
[Extract]

Replace your sheets with crisped old roses
Lay on the bones of your back
Let the winter wind rustle your bed.

Put on your mom’s old nightgown
[the one with the soft pink tulips]
Sing that lullaby,
The one your mom used to sing,
Hum it through your nose.
Count every goosebump
[with disinterest]

Swallow the mugs on your desk,
The bouquets of dried Ginkgo leaves,
every photograph,
your seven sweaters,
your refrigerator of cheese and maple syrup.
Swallow your vitamins,
your weekly pillbox,
your letters,
your iron supplements.
Swallow every one of your purple-green-yellow-red-little-black dresses,
your houseplants,
your fan,
your tapestries and boots.
Swallow the blender,
the flask,
your scarves,
your backpacks [all four],
and the ceiling.
Swallow Tate
and cummings
and Whitman
and Thoreau
and Collins
and Berman
and Blake.
Swallow spring mud and summer heat,
inhale autumn and let it frost to winter
on your lips.
[eyes open, now. Don’t blink]

Now swallow the ocean,
Every drop.
Feel the thousands of tuna churning inside you
The whales groan, squeezed in your throat
And the dolphins are whining and clicking in your ears.
Let the sharks chatter your insides,
The sea urchins poking and sucking,
The oysters clapping your heartstrings.
Now drown
As the waves retreat.

Vegetable Soup

Now I smell you on my fingers, my neck, my chest, like hot onions and steaming red vegetable soup. I can hear you. You are sleeping and sweaty in your bed. I feel you, inside and out. That kiss that always unravels me. Suddenly I’m feeling pale. I sit close to my food so I don’t have to look at you. Your so-soft skin, your every thousand freckles. Your sweat. You wake up smiling and squirming grumpy like a child. I can see you a mile away. It’s making me sick.  Your eyes are brown under purple doe-lids. You’ve always been a fruit, but probably one of those fruits you think are vegetables, like tomatoes or avocados. I know your smells. Every low voice sounds like yours. You laugh from the next table, you whistle behind me walking. How it stays around me, rubs off and melts on me, like onions and hot red soup. I even taste you. You are juicy inside and stubborn. I sit close to my dinner and shovel the mashed potatoes and buttered bread into my mouth, dripping red vegetable soup down my chin. Your wet tongue like plums when you haven’t seen me in a while. Your skin is smooth and hard. You’re distracted and terse.  I’ve tasted every mood of you. You discard me in a glance that makes the soup curdle inside. Your bouncing walk and that yellow backpack and curly head. I’m trying to look engaged and focused on my food without appearing beastly and gluttonous. It’s a too-big feeling rising like a sick tide, filling my throat. This smell of onions, the salty buttered bread you dipped in my smoky red vegetable soup.

The Moore Table

You pull up to a small duplex, a one-story slant-roofed house at the end of a cul-de-sac, hidden in rotting gnarled oaks. Park your car in our used car lot—you’d think from the five cars and a dumpster an enormous party must be rumbling inside. Walk through the glass front door—no need to knock, no one will hear you, and we have no doorbell. Tread carefully through mom’s Museum Room, no children allowed. The tiles that grandpa laid down two decades ago are orange and warm from the in-floor heating. I don’t know any other house that has a heated tile floor. The whole room is vaguely peach-colored, the only place with a theme. Strangely Native American, you would think.
Then you’re in the dining room. It’s just a table in the space between the new kitchen and the T.V. Our house is practically made of glass so you watch mom’s garden and lawn while you sit down to eat. The whole family is home for a change. Ryan has moved his seat from my side, across the table beside my mom. I can’t remember when this happened. It was probably sometime in middle school to remedy the fighting. It encourages a different dynamic—now we could exchange glances across the table, secret smiles and sneers.
He sits on mom’s lap and leans back in his chair like he used to do when he sat next to me, against the big window. Mom would scream, “Ryan! Don’t do that! You’re gonna break my chair or fall through the window!” Ryan would laugh, rock hard back to hit the table then pick his nose and wipe the boogers on me or mom or the table to make mom huff or his sister squeal. Now we sit adjacent to each other, ganging up on dad’s bad humor and poor jokes with such ferocity you would be uncomfortable. The Moore family table is a battleground strewn with many a good man’s ego. Only the hearty and strong-humored survive. Don’t worry, as a guest we’ll play nice to you, but don’t expect us not to tear you apart as soon as you get up to go to the bathroom.
Mom sets the food on the table and brings the salad plates to everyone, drinks are a personal job. Dad always makes some sappy comment with ugly pleased groans, “Jen, this is company food.” Mom rolls her eyes since this is what he always says, whether it’s meatloaf or coq-au-vin. As the meaty silence fills the table mom will start, “Okay, now everyone say one nice thing that happened to them today. Michael?” My dad will grumble, “nothing,” and play lumpy eeyore. Ryan will share some nasty event or act like he didn’t hear. And my turn? I am always bursting with exciting news to share. Sometimes I’ll be a little disgruntled because a teacher didn’t call on me. When my mom asks how many times she called on me I’ll have to admit four, but my hand was raised many more times. My mom tries to cut me down to size so she doesn’t raise a smarty-pants.
Dad will steal bites of food left on mom’s plate and mom will playfully swipe his fork away with her knife. You’ve gotta be quick at the Moore table or you can kiss your food goodbye. For Christmas one year my mom gave my father an extendable fork as a joke. After one meal you wouldn’t be laughing. When everyone’s sat back in their chairs mom will ask, “You’re already done? You’re not gonna eat your asparagus?” When I tell her I’m full dad will reach across and switch our plates. Mom gives him a you’re-getting-so-fat look which dad deflects with a grin he thinks is charming. Ryan and I call him the vulture, the human trash-can. He doesn’t like that very much. He does indeed take a lot of abuse. You’d pity him, I think. If you got to your food quick enough.