| Praise for Stilt Walking at Midnight: |
Horse's Head
When first you see it
you cannot say it,
and when you do say it
it stutters from your mouth
in a terrible Morse-Code
that no-one can decipher.
Your brothers smirk, your father stares,
your mother offers remedial mugs
of hot milk, the promise of bed,
But you stand resolute,
trembling, stupidly mute until,
reluctantly they follow you back
into the icy dusk.
You need them to know what you cannot tell
How you stumbled there,
how it blazed
startling and white
as a meteor
beneath the black water,
the flannelled nostrils, the lashes,
the pleats of the muzzle
already rimmed with an etching of algae.
And the single eye, wide open
staring up at you,
the jaw clenched tight...
Walking through the snow
you pass your own footprints
slurry in the setting sun and running
in the opposite direction,
and you know then
it will be too late,
that the thin skin of evening ice
will seal away the secret
that no one else will see.
Already your father stands bellowing
at the edge of the pond, his breath hanging
hot against the freezing air,
yelling
There is nothing! Nothing there!
And what kind of person would do that sort of
thing?
What kind of person would hack off a horse's head
and throw it in a pond?! Tell me! What kind of
person?!
And you want to tell him
It is the kind of person
that held the hunting knife against
your own white throat
and made you promise never to speak
of the other things he had done
and would do
and would not stop.
Horse’s Head, by permission, first published by Quarry West
35/36, Poets and Writers of the Monterey Bay.
A Woman's Look at
Writer’s Block
Message
Every night I stand at the
border
And call your name into that
country.
I know you are there,
I have heard the music of your
fingers
Singing the guitar,
And once your voice, speaking
In a foreign tongue.
Though I listened long into
that darkness
I couldn’t understand.
Always, I bring my offerings;
Photos of our children, lock
of hair,
A note you once wrote,
And pin them to the concertina
wire.
In the moonlight they flutter,
resemble
Small white flags signaling
Surrender against the opaque
night.
You do not answer.
If you could hear me
I would tell you;
That you have chosen your own
exile,
But we are the displaced,
The disinherited, abandoned
Amid the wrack of
Your restless need.
I would tell you
that we are hungry.
That we have gnawed too long
The hard gristle of hope.
There us no sustenance left
In that splintered bone.
I would tell you
That I have heard
The aching voices of our
children
Whisper prayers across the
border
Of a country
They have never seen.
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Elegy for Angels
“Don’t for a moment believe He
was killing the young. He was costuming angels.”
---Jean Cocteau
Oh! These angels have no
intention of huddling on the head of a pin! They are far too rambunctious
for a place pastel as heaven, prefer the primary clamour of my kitchen,
where they hover above pots and pans, begging for tapioca, Dream Whip,
white rice.
One has dipped his wing
into the soup, and it sits perched on the toaster solemnly preening.
Another finds
fascination in the egg timer, twists, the dial, tilts its ear like a cup
pressed to the wall, listening to the murmurs from the other side, the
small clicks of eternity ticking. While the baby nestles in the breadbox
round as a loaf, a fine sift of flour dusts her delicate wings.
The little one, barely a
toddler and still clumsy in flight, is fond of the black-tongued parrot
and is learning a filthy vocabulary. ‘Dirty dawg!’ he shrieks, ‘swab the
deck you whoring wench!’, he mimics like a miracle.
Though when I try to
teach him the simple word of Mama, slipping syllables through the birdcage
like an offering, he turns stubborn. Insistently mute or suddenly
screeching in a voice shrill as chalk: Manna! Manna! His small mouth
working fiercely like a beak, and clutching a crust of bread in one pink
fist.
We are fervent as yeast
in this kitchen, until twilight spills heavy and dark as Original Sin, a
stain that clings, drags them back to that limbo where they dangle, upside
down, like white bats or misdelivered prayers.
Where they hang head
first and just out of reach, curled and fisted. Awaiting, like small
poems the moment to be born.
The Lie of the Land
You cannot gauge the lie
Of the land. It is
angular, convoluted,
Disjointed as an arm twisted
Behind your back. It
juts out
In unexpected places.
The names
He Murmurs in the dark are
nowhere
On the map he has given you,
And the fine needle of your
compass circles,
Circles, like something wild
searching
For a scent. You rifle
through your memory
Trying to recall the final
landmark.
Where was it? How many
miles
Back? How many miles
from the moment
He last touched you, held you
close enough
To feel the heat of your
bones, yearning?
How many miles to now,
This wilderness without
referents.
Even the Northern star
conspires,
Illuminating nothing but the
quick-sly
Glance of women on the
streets, and
His returning smile, a wink of
secrecy,
The harsh glint of sudden
desire.
You cannot survey the lie
Of the land. The terrain
is treacherous.
There are chasms of shame
No sextant could measure.
Lost,
You settle in. You
gather up tinder and
Camp there, in the region of
his deceit,
Waiting.
Though when he comes to you,
When he lies with you,
Still you are surprised.
Amazed to find he is
weightless,
And glimmers.
Like a mirage on the furthest
horizon.
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Lamentation for my Son
Child,
I would build you a shelter
With my bones,
Would mix the mortar
From my own marrow,
From my own blood,
If only I could give you
refuge.
No child should live in the
fallout
Of love’s difficult demise
But already I have seen you
wear our grief
In the sorrowing curve of your
spine,
In the soles of your feet
stepping
Softly as shadow
So you will not be heard.
Beneath the weight of our
Rage,
Our Shame
You are growing smaller…
You are trying to disappear.
Child,
I would bandage your wounds
With my body,
Would offer the solace
Of my own skin.
I would award you 10 Purple
Hearts
If only I could heal that
One
We have so casually
Broken.
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Last Supper
“One can’t build little white
picket fences to keep nightmares out.” –Anne Sexton
Do this:
Press your ear against the
stove
And hear the singing.
There are canticles, And
something else,
A secret murmur that implores
you
To kneel on the linoleum,
Open wide the oven door
And call.
Call your mother. Call your
children.
Call the names of the men you
ever believed
Might love you.
This is your confessional,
this is your confession:
That you no longer believe.
That you’ve lost faith in
electroplated icons,
The silvered saints of
toasters, metaled mixing bowls,
Electrical knives.
That your prayers remain
unanswered
Though daily you bow before a
sink
Of dirty dishes. That you
can’t make meaning
From a matched set.
That you are lonely.
You cannot find solace in the
shopping channel,
In the prayers of appliances
whirring.
You are a woman who has come
to understand that KENMORE
Is truly less.
A woman seeking absolution
with her head in the oven.
Serving up her soul like a
supper.
Snow Geese on June Lake
Hoe can I tell you what I saw
When I returned to that place?
How can I explain those stumps
Frozen fast to the lake’s dark
ice?
Legs without bodies,
Seeping blood,
Like stubble left in the field
after a vicious harvest.
Or how I skated
Carving desperate
figure-eights between,
Around, those legs webbed in
the ice
And glistening like rinds of
cast-off Christmas fruit.
They must have believed he was
some kind of Savior
The way he walked on water
In his thick soled boots.
They must have believed it was
Salvation
He carried, wooden handled and
shining in his hand.
The way I tried to believe
For the longest time
That they had simply flown
away,
Grown tired of the need to
stand or walk,
Absolved themselves of the
awkward burden of feet
That could never out-run the
bitter bite,
The final unforgiving slash of
the axe.
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On Bowling Night the Fat Men
Dance
On bowling night the fat men
dance
In party shoes
And colored shirts inscribed
with names
Their mothers never dreamed
of: Biff and Rocko
And Pinky,
While cocktail girls teeter
Beneath trays of Bud
And dyed bouffants,
Incendiary red
And twice the height of the
Sears Chicago Tower.
It’s a modern miracle they do
not topple.
Or perhaps a Gravity overload…
Holding down at least a
hundred bowling balls,
Snatching back the flying
pins,
The flailing arms,
The laughter, BIG, BOISTEROUS,
Heavy as Puccini,
Who would be surprised
That these gigantic men could
do the Tarantella?
Or that something light as
hair
Could point the way to heaven?
Who would be surprised to know
The parking lot has lifted,
whirling
Vacant
And weightless as the night.
For China L.
Who
Died Because No-One Would Hear
Because no-one would hear,
It is best that you are deaf,
And mute.
The bones of words are
brittle,
Would surely snap
Beneath the weight of your
telling.
And what to tell
That is not spoken in their
Thousand blue tongues tattooed
Across your face, your arms
and breasts,
His signature.
And what to hear more terrible
Than the rise and swell
Of your own strangles scream.
In the darkness you trace
The wounds with fingertips,
Read your welts like Braille,
Seeking light beneath the
blood.
Light that twists to torment
In the morning mirror.
Light that mocks your vision.
Deaf, mute, you yearn
For the relief, the pure and
colorless
Dark of the absolutely blind.
II
Next door, neighbors pretend.
Pretend deaf,
Dumb,
Blind.
Pretend ignorance.
Pretend not to understand the
Sign
Of slaps and shoves.
Though it’s a language,
simple,
Without nuance.
A language clear as a fist.
On the streets, they shun you.
You are a shame,
Your blackened eyes a
reproach.
(You must have misbehaved.)
And it’s obvious;
You will not hold out
Your empty cup.
You do not beg.
And how shall they absolve
you,
Absolve themselves,
If you refuse to beg?
You’re a slap in the face
Of all that is good,
And kind,
And decent.
III
He’s a good man, they say.
A kind and gentle man.
He cares for her, they say.
He giver her things.
These are the things he gives
her.
He gives her a piece of his
mind.
He gives her the back of his
hand.
He gives her colors.
Every shade of purple,
Livid reds, pinks, deepest
blues.
Hideous greens
And yellows to garish to wear
Outside of the house.
And once he gave her flowers,
Roses,
The color of something
dying.
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