July 11, 2017
Still Life with Dysphonia
In the palace of music, a gathering of the mute:
this became the body.
In the asphalt’s cracked path, a clutch
of frog eggs: a teaspoon of froth, a shoal of dark water
haloed blue. Mouths spooked open
to O, the choired sky; double
artifice, the trebled singers spoking the hall’s
spectacular skylight: coins of stained glass pooled
to a colossal droplet poising
the milling audience, bronze and copper
and gold. To make matter what wasn’t
between you, you said I
love you. Imported for this particular
drift, swan that circled the park’s tiny island, alto
clef of her neck in reflection among cypress
knees, a child being photographed in her dotted-swiss best
among the groomed daffodils. All those belled
golden throats. Click.
Click. The shuttered air recalling what you cupped
your ear to—the steeled tracks, the disappearing
parallel—what you lowered to the dampened
ground for, what you clear
your throat for: what isn’t
coming, though the soldered ceiling wheels
its staff of glazed bones above you:
The baton already lifted, cocked.
Still Life with Cusco: Cochineal and Zapata’s Last Supper
To harvest color, lobe by lobe the cactus is shaved
clean of its colonies—each gravid insect
a fugitive cargo of eggs carmine-steeped, encased
in ash: like a gray sweater pilling, then the bright
starburst in the palm. The open-limbed view the ring of disciples
unhinges to: cuy, enduring indigenous meat—splayed
on its platter; the crimson cloak, the pale wafer
of Christ’s face: the better half of betrayal, like virga hovering
above fields of prickly pear, all those
atmospheric optics—sun pillars, hole-punch clouds, a sunset’s
claret. Fall streaks. And the dry
equation of scripture: his left hand clutching a small
pillow of bread, two fingers of the right tensed toward his own
glowing face. Bread, body. Like rain that ignites
the fire, never grounding—the sky torn, the bolt
descending: One per version of the sacred is one
definition of savior; to rescue, to gather the clipped
to sanctuary: vicuña, sheared of her stellar
virgin wool; puma, claw-plucked to prowl a discotheque’s
thumping floors. A condor cropped
to a farm of feathers. The city’s station: to quarter
the quartering, each limb freed from the resisting
body; to frame the church-studded plaza hung
with oils. Zapata’s Supper, absent the lamb, a seamless
jointing—what measure subversion, what measure
struck faith? At the heart of the sanctuary
at the heart of the cathedral riveted from the old city walls
gnawed to their crux, to an unserifed sentence
of stones so exactly puzzled not a blade of grass
could pass between: not a feather, not an eyelash. Not
the disk of a day moon; not the elbow of a shadow
razed from its house of desert sun, the thorned limb
scaled with insects clustered like a broken head
of wheat, the gleaner’s fingers pursed to demonstrate
yield—not the mosquito slapped sipping
at the tail-thump of his wrist, but the clotted grains,
his transfigured palm rouged with the surfacing
opacity of cardinal nectar by which I mean
these girls’ own burst bodies he holds out,
yes, for us.
Still Life with Phantom Crane Fly and Vanity Mirror
Absent the light-speckled thicket camouflage is lost
her zebraed legs triple-jointed quills like folding
seeing-eye canes half-ratcheted splayed
into place a bruised lilt as she lurches
her stilled wings the veined gauze
of obsolescence riding the fan’s current
that’s caught her a cottonwood’s
parachuting seed an image
of home you keep
dreaming as a mortgage you’d signed
and somehow forgotten the house
rotting without you and you living
basement by basement what you’d witnessed
in swamped forest air spectacle’s creature
a dozen unspooling legs just a tangled
mating your bed long made
beneath bare-bulbed earth shelved one-
eighty-proof rum the Ford you’d street-raced
through neighborhoods kept
taking you nowhere and one night
into a ditch the dealer you idolized the one
you let drive you passed out proving
you were your father’s daughter and could
take it his name was Trip his name
wasn’t Trip he was famous for the huge
falling-down house he’d kept
a half dozen runaways at to sell
for him including your friend Troy
in the backseat how nostalgic they were
for that lost house you kept for two years
in a nightstand drawer the rolled socks he left
that night in your car as if you could remember him
unpeeling them maybe they’re still there the way
heroin killed Troy but not
for decades the way your ghosted jaw would ache
when you’d wake unable to voice
the difference between seedpod
and wing the thready body
both labyrinth and a taut
unspooling legs hollow breathing
a diffusion batting the silvered surface the slivered
room that expansive mirage
sealed there the glass you slip over her
you cup your hand there fling her
out the window some other breeze
to catch her one you didn’t
snap on by a switch igniting
the wall his name was Jerome I
was an acid trail in a set
of fitting room mirrors
dissolving to you vacancy chain
in reverse you learned to be by being
least most distant the o
so gullible one batting a fractured
room of glass you let her go rather
I made her gone
Still, with Trip
Trick isn’t in wining,
dining: hit,
miss. Trick is picking
with skill, gilding
this girl driving
blind; priming girl-bits
with quick highs: spliff,
gin; brimming
in blitz—it isn’t will
inviting will, it’s
jiving, it’s timing
stripping this listing
thing: prizing thighs,
pinning wrists, ribs,
lips, with hips, prick,
imprinting I: minting
in child, Bitch.
This skirt-hiking
giving-in isn’t limb
stitching limb, skin
spicing skin: it’s
circling, it’s wing-
clipping, divining chinks I
fist in. It’s winning.
This pitch, this flinch—
writhing is icing, I drink it
in. Slick Wiz I, I’m
chill, I’m with it, Christ, I’m
striking it rich. I’m His
gift—skill, wit, this
stiff hilt I swing:
if light’s listing ship
is sinking, if civil
twilight, virgin
night, is tiding in,
it isn’t I: girls
spirit sin. Which split,
drifting girl’s filth
will I witch this night?
Miss Shrinking Girl, Miss
Whining Girl, Miss Victim
Miss Pills/Slit-Wrist Girl:
Miss Scribbling Girl, sling it
shrill, hiss with infin-
iting might. Dish it.
I’m thick brick, biding
I bind. Sick strict
in bridling, I’m whipping
birch limbs, I’m disciplining
lightning. Girl, bring it.
I’m whistling, I’m
spiking it in. High sign.
Kiss kiss. I’m still
riding high.
