How It Transforms

Their faces in the light of the fire
are transformed not in a way
that is other, but in a way that is more

not the glory of angels or saints
but of unmasked humans
their secret eyes and lines

set in fire by fire.

the trees are an etching
of all the hands that have
reached beyond and to

and the answer falls softly
between their fingers
and their rasping lips
collect ice

Brett looks into a distance that is
obscured by snow and says
the god I usually pray to is Aaron,
my college roommate

and the fire transforms
the wood to iterations
of itself
and when you tend to it
you leave soft shadows
on your cheeks where you
touch after the tending

These are the days you will never
know again
these are the only days that matter
because they will get you to where
you are going. 

where you are going is a thing
you look at all the time
but in the looking the definition
disappears and you are left
with your rods and cones
fighting over what to see

and all the girls are lovely and rosy cheeked
and waiting for someone to ask
them to dance.



  

 I.

And I have burned all my fingertips off on the log ends
and my lips blowing fire back into the face of the fire
and the ash flew and fell like snow and my hair was white

I keep the candles burning until they burn out
and then it is morning and there is no more ink
no more heat even and I gather the ashes to my
face and breathe in what warmth remains

and there is soot lining my lungs and smoke
lining my nose and wood lining my throat and red
wine in the lines of my lips


II.

If this is just the interlude


III.

It's just that we were there
you and your knees and your wet eyes
and your lips cocked like a gun
that no one knows is bulletless
and I was there too with my hands
palmed to catch whatever words
were too much for only our ears to hold

and it was in a basement, many layers underground
and the book was old and the smell of it reached us
and was not unlike the smell of ash and bone
and wet leaves under wet leaves
and in it was everything we had always known

the beating from above was sure and strong
but we were not frightened
and the candles made the room look
like a page from the book we held
and there was bread and wine
the sacraments and sustenance

and staring into the fire she felt a warmth below her skin
and she thought of all the words they had used to say
such a simple thing

which still had not been said, and never would be
or had been, as many times as birds rise against the sun
with light glancing off their oiled feathers

as many times as the mailman
stops to check for the dog at that house where the
dog is always and ever salivating for the ankles of mailmen

as many times as the earth ticks around the sun
out of need or habit or love
 

fathers die “but when your father dies, it is your father dying”
some poet said and this is a true thing

Chips of the bones of my father exist now in a coffee canister on the floor
of my room.

This is what we are reduced to, pieces of ourselves we never saw or touched

Ribbons of grief tie up my hair, which I have cut off.

At five I broke a window with a baseball
a window in the master bedroom
and the glass rained down and the hole
where the glass no longer was
blinked black at me and tearfully
I went to my father and told
him the news. He held me and said
“don’t you know I will always love
you no matter what you do”

in the hospital room his brown skin smells like medicine and decay
and his cheek bones were sharper than his tongue had been
the oxygen mask over his mouth keeps him from speaking and for that
I am glad.

I always loved you I say
he closes his eyes and turns away before
shaking his head no

it is the loudest thing he ever says.

when I was 7 my father was unloading bricks from the back of the truck
he threw rhythmically and my sister thought she could run between bricks
when she fell, he screamed and jumped from the truck and held her
bloody head in his hands. He looked up at me and we were both frozen
by the tears running down his face

in the hospital he asks for ice over and over again and we don’t know
where to get it and he is angry with us and we have not seen him in three
years and we have not spoken to him in that same time and his hospital
gown is hardly appropriate dress for a reunion

I dread the opening doors of the icu
I dread the smell of his dying

one night I pray over him
I do not plead with God for his life
but for his peace

he growls and writhes through the oxygen mask the whole time
until he has exhausted himself and falls asleep
to my voice. 

when I was 18 I came home with a nose ring
my father made me sit at the dinner table
with a band-aid over my nose

in the hospital room he notices my tattoo
and as I hold it to his face so he can read
the words he makes a sound like “yes”
through the mask. His yellowed eyes
meet mine and then we both look away
I at the edge of his blanket, he at the edge
of his life.

Every day he sees further than we do
until he is staring into the face of what is next

the Japanese maple tree we were not
allowed to climb still sits in the yard
we left a long time ago

and the bones of my father lie
in pieces in a coffee canister
on the floor of my room

promise

and when the fire wouldn't catch
we gathered many pine needles
the sap sticking between our fingers

and when we reached for each other
later we left sappy prints on the skin
we keep covered

the trees rubbed together and made
the sound of an ancient door
too warped to close

all night i heard animal calls
and your coughing
and the grinding of your teeth

if we ever meet again
i promise not to be
the kindling or the ash
but the air that feeds the fire

i promise

The Joke

Yesterday evening I was sitting at the bar
not to drink but to grade
and four men who love me were there

I ducked my head and pretended not to see

One offered me a drink
One taught me two bar tricks
One looked sadly with a slight
outline of bitterness around his lips
One just smiled as if it were all
a joke

and it is. Four men walk into a bar
at the same time and the girl they
keep in the corner of their eye
because she will not be kept closer
bows her shorn head
looking in her glass of tea for you 

Everyone goes home alone
shivering

and the punchline hangs
suspended beyond the limits
of our understanding

but I don't mind
everything has been beyond
my understanding since
what happened happened

but that is another story
and one we tell differently

I think we even memorized
different endings

In mine you are mine
again

And oh, the hangnail will not fall off gracefully. And oh, the cars drift listlessly, list less, ripping the skin of sleep off just as it gathers. And oh, that night we talked all night I was only speaking with half my tongue. The other half was folded like underthings in a tiny cage that hung in the cavity of my ribs. Did you hear the rattling in my chest when we slept?  Did you wonder how many tongues I had folded up inside? Were you frightened at how it might sound if I ever learned to speak with all of myself?

Where We Are Going

we didn't ask the directions back
where we are going there is not trap door
no false walls, no trick bookcases and no
hollowed books

things are harder and brighter where we are going
where we are going is no reflection of where we have gone
before

the house in my dreams with the roof caving in,
it won't be there

the stairway that twists and chips its way
underground and ends in a tiled bathtub full of
rust blood stains water death and sacrifice

will never be again

and the reflecting pool that has been there for
longer than the earth it is set in, the grey water
beckoning the light infecting and the bodies
you are sure line the bottom sliming
and dancing disintegration

will not be there

the stone house it is set in
the moss falling over everything

will not be there

the beast and his voice
will not be there

i will not look over my shoulder
and you will not fall asleep drunk
and uncovered

it will be larger than the rock
that choked you
and smaller than the wishbone
with which you pick your teeth

the kingdom will unfold
like an ink stain on a
wedding dress

and there will be no one to tend
to the stain

and everything will become the color
of new sky

He said

Something like an iceberg
he said
and i suppose if we mean that an iceberg
betrays and a ship assumes, yes.

wild and briny and dripping with the sea
he doesn't say but he would if he knew

soft skin and vintage furniture
he says and he is just a child

i do not like being ignored
he says

i hate you he doesn't say

may i take your picture
he says

the light is hot on my face
we talk about art and ideas

mortar between stones
string between soup tins

these capriccios
these pronouns
this collected adonis

dead bugs in the bottom of a jar

their pretty wings tore
their lovely light turned orange
and stopped

just stopped 

and now there is no light in my room