Siri

Siri

How Wyeth, after Christina's

burial, saw a girl and caught

glimpses of real of true

magnetic north under her

skin and he made

the sun come up

through her

flesh and maybe from

time to time the flight and gargle

of the gulls might

(if he were a different man

maybe he'd be 

frightened) and too

the high screech tips

the tuning

fork to remind him

of the January hammer

and pry as the men

open the small plot of the old woman's 

now permanent world

to put her back into it

dust to dust and from what some

might come to their own

understanding as ugly (but I wonder

if this doesn't reveal more about 

the seer than the sitter

and who I mean to say

is the one without

the brush who stands

in some hallway at the museum

of modern

art on their way

to take a piss

and see her there resigned

to some hallway

and from the fraught

tension seek to make of her,

to make her

a place in the hay or beneath

the tree

and revealing sky something breathing

and alive that stinks 

of absolutely nothing but lives

lived in every open pore

poised to raise the dead

from beneath the skin

maybe the same way God

looked at Adam and made of him one less

bone and closed him and while

he slept and didn't wake him

until Eve was clean

from being brought out

of the furnace of blood - (that's another

question for another

poem, how long was Adam left

to sleep while God and Eve

had need of one another? Because

Adam's the first man

to see her but not the first

being, even her breath isn't

his but instead it's god's 

and all the beast and beings believing

in master

-pieces conceived from beneath

need --remember it was Adam's

loneliness that made him believe

his creator coudl give him

that help-mate that companion

newly needed -lonely? Jealous?

seeing the two

//yes two creatures 

look  -  -look --look how far I've come

from just wondering

about Wyeth and when he needed

his grief

assuaged and seeing Siri

the stone was thrown

toward the water, was 

thrown

Jamie and Nureyev

Jamie and Nureyev

 

Knowing nothing of ballet

but what it must demand

to shape the bodies

of children of men and women

if the split: to gain 

nothing 

but

air

without the aid of any 

machine

or billowing silk

I'd say

maybe that's a way

to summit euphoria

the muscle of it 

becoming even more

weight

-less

and this and this

man to man unpinning

the slippers or lifting

the brush

after the last possible stroke

and the lactic tremble

of coming down before

the euphoria shifts

to dysphoria

before it is even

stepped for

and letting it all

f

a

l

l

bones and shoulders

and stitched umbilical

caves and mouth foam

and the tongues

and fingers

or at the very

least, tips of them

each that touches

something absolutely

unnameable

on the way

down. 

Seeing Christina

 Seeing Christina

From some win/dows,

    when he sees her

and she's well

    when she's picking

        blueberries

        she's a grassy

            blade

or maybe

he, considering (a spec

                        per

                -haps)

it could be

so far away

it's a crow

        or

it's claim

being close

is a slow going

        or

once spooked

to movement

(you think

        I'm going 

to say ghost

don't you.  No?

        OK)

But only so

you won't be

cold when you

(and you will) pull

away from

the window

frame and say

Not today

I'm free

enough of my need

to kill some

-thing I'm going

to let it be

a ghost

or a crow

or a widow

or a sister

insect

bumping up

the grass and so,

    do this:

get close enough

to thump the frame

from it's age

and when it's eased

and relieved

lift it, take in

the wind and wait

for wee bitty

in the window to

        take up

her skirts (like

    the blowing

                    lace 

                            curtain)

(like JAZZ)

and make it

try to, like she

does,

on your own

a flat earth theory

a flat earth theory

 
It gets dim only when the tool
you've been using to illuminate
the road you're going down
is dimming its view.  Do you
have shoes?  Good shoes?  Choose

function over fashion darling
because where you're going
when the dark is vetted like vatted
molasses and your last crumb
is thumb-brushed from the under

-neath of your eye-lid (how
exactly it got there and didn't
cause some sty?) Listen, this
isn't to do with you or maybe
it is, but back home a mother

and father are going through
the motions of carrying on
and hungering some for the last
of what it was their son, run off
or slipped up or was he pushed 

over or all of it and he didn't

give a rat's ass what-all
he was letting come from
firm to limp in his mouth
and it finally did him

in.  I'm thinking maybe the rim
of their world is flat now,
and it could be how we've all
been struck to trust something 

linear over something elliptical 

because seeing people walk out
of sight and never back in
sight again makes for those edges
and falling clean 
off them and into a new

suit such as the tailors of death alone
know the exact measurements of,
laying their tape prostrate,
face to foot, and we only see,

and then only maybe,

that when he comes to

and sees up, which is to say
through, it's if it's a thickening
winter-deep sea-fed river bed

whose water, coupled with

the augur, has been stropped,
because such a meeting the clean

air breeze is shush, shush, 

slush, each blade thick

with it and overflowing.

periphery

come from the ball

and chain lamp-pull,

she invisibly descends

and lets one toe test

the desk's security.  some

of the prima ballerina

in her first and second

foot and the absolute

patience in her waiting

to make of the day

what she will, come

what may.

Egg Tempera

Egg Tempera

I imagine, him
rowing over, he wont't have
to bring his own.
But pigment
and water and what's not
sold: over or under
weight or candled
to make the shadow
tell it's globe holding sus
-pended story: the yoke,
once free of its own
outer globe, will
submit to his
four fingers
and that little
yellow pouch of sun
he rubs his thumb on
without puncturing.

God is sometimes soft
like this, alchemied in
the hold of an old hen
still worth her weight
still pecking the choicest
crickets corn cake crumbs crop
of rocks down past
and then make
them into a chemistry:
tell me Andy wasn't thinking
somehow what Al fed
his hens mattered
and I'll say
you're full of shit.
That oleo sheen? it
makes a big difference:

factory eggs and their dull
face and thin dregs
and broke legs, the weep
between his stained
fingers and the casual toss.
Loss becomes it
when it's all wound up
on bottom: shell, spitty
bubble rubbed, flung

from his thumb
and rub and struck
the random scatter against some
floorboard doorjamb mopboard
graniteboulder pantsleg
in the blueberry field
and then the speed of
how it all comes to be
brushed: what he saw what he sees
what we see
and he some years now
dead beneath it all.

After Wyeth's Ropes and Chains

After Wyeth's Ropes and Chains

 the rope always hoisted the 
just lambed does
up off the ground and out 
of the mouths of the coyotes...

Maybe memory, in order
to commit itself some

-what entirely or in part
depending on your port

of entry into your own
bravery, or at the very

least leave a sneaker print
or two surviving the damage

or the convalescence
or what all comes between,

needs to be paired, needs
a sticking post of old oak,

a branch to hold the reins,
rope strips ringed into

the bit on either side of
the face.  And maybe

the brain is the mare or
stallion or gelding you

alone ride or at least most
of the time and train her

or his or their ribs to ease
into the grip of the knees

or in time and matrimony
come to need the reins

less and less so both can
know where it is they're

going.  Association.  Only
in my own knowing of home,

and only if I'm going to
the old swing rope will I

see the boy there and his toes
holding the throat end

he called it stolen from his
stepfather's boat.  He'd told

me going up was like knowing
the way husbands know

their own wives and he let
slide one eye and one closed,

fingers to palm hand over the salted
rope and then one then two

fingers to my elbow then trough
my shirt and the curve

edge of a new and suddenly
unrestrained test.  And up the rope he'd go.

Only in this version does it hold,
through cold October, through

assuming it's only mine ,
now that he's dead, and was

that next summer.  And because
he did it with bare

soles and toes I take my own life
time to take hold and

fist over fist hoist myself
up to give at last my curved back

to his permanently
in the sky and then let him

have his way with me
turn me, eager bit strained

finally, finally, exchanged.