Poem: Op-a-le-scent

I dreamed in op-a-le-scent green 

But only because

I liked how that word slurred milky from my hummingbird tongue

And not because

I actually dreamed

In the shade of the dragons

Perched in the window of the Chinese shop downtown

I always thought

The gold-dipped claws were a cheap touch to a perfect, roughhewn thing

My first perfume

My mother's  old scent

From a plastic stick pulled free from beneath eyelash curlers with long cold handles

Smelled of man-da-rin oranges

But not really

It was just that I hoped it did

So when the other kids asked with voices like a tetanus shot

Why I smelled so strange

I could tell them in in-dig-nant and righ-teous tones

That I smelled of man-da-rin

And their eyes would pop wide like flowers the day before they start to fade

And I would pull my lashes down low with sweet mystery

And bask in the elegance of my exotic tastes.

My parents were never angry

They were FU-ri-ous

And I was never sad

But des-PON-dent

And the sky was never gray

So much as a color shared with the underbellies of doves

I'd visit my grandmother

And kneel in church

On the benches I wished the Catholics would share with the rest of us God-fearers

Thought that I'd never heard of anything so beautiful as "Holy Water"

Prayed my eyes would open up a-qua-ma-rine

in-di-go

like a torturous sea

or the wall of a storm.

I wished away the simple sweetness of common words

Family words, home words

On syllables that twisted between my teeth like ribbons

Like ma-ri-o-nettes 

Had no time for forest

musk

gray

or blue

And everything blue means.

3.23.12

12:30 AM

Some Prose for a Wet and Dry Spring Day

I couldn't take my eyes off of them, two boys and a dog- yelling into the lightness of the air because the sound felt so right in the afternoon, just their fair share of noise. The birds know it, the brittle winter reeds let the wind suggest it to them. The whistling cracks in the concrete and stucco know it well as it hollows them into chambers for weed and vine to place frail roots. I can't take my eyes off of them, the rusty step of muscles worn ten years to the future by the sitting and waiting of an entire season, the nervous quickness of their hands, of the dog's speckled knees. They are watching me- the dog with a woman's eyes, knowing of things and ignorant of me, pursued by that lack of acquaintance. The boys with that side-ways curiosity and embarrassed evasion of the eyes- I store each flickering glance of the turning to mirror my turning toward- store each glimpse in jars for lonely days when I've forgotten what innocence looks like out of the corner of one's eye. Store it with the freshness of this air, the smell of soil that must come before the smell of growth.


Introduce new characters to this play directed by finite stretches of blue sky. The sister and brother and the bikes they could only straight ahead in the fall, when their fingers could not quite wrap the handles or their feet cozy the peddles. Now they are propelled by the promise of skinned knees and grass stains. Their mother does not mind that I watch them with unshadowed eyes- no one could mind anything in this weather, this white dress and smile weather, this deceptive near-warmth that pulls off layers and lets the skin of elbows and wrists breathe in with defiance. It's the fleeting aspect of it that lends it perfection, that makes things more beautiful under the looming, passing shadows of clouds moving in. I've been healed of some things by the passing from gray,


I don't know what.


3:54 PM
3.4.12

Poem I: Snowfall in the Pueblo

I was there

At 8:30 AM, when the streetlights went dark

And their ambrosia flicker fled the byways

At 8:30 AM, when the village may have been empty of souls

For its silence-

Just walls of stucco and wood frame

In intent conversation with the echo and splash

Of my footfalls.

Snow was falling, in that determined way

That snow falls when the season has robbed it of rightful storms

And the vineyards sat in stoic wedding gowns

The texture of turned up rocks and frozen soil

In wait for their green-fitted bridegroom

A pale bride under the vaulted and steel-eyed sky

Whose train and veil extend beyond the hilltop,

I'm sure,

Perhaps all the way to the sea

To St. Petersburg

To wind-painted oceans of sand.

Silence at 8:30 AM

When I walked the mud-slick back-path

The water-slick backstreets

The dangerous glisten of murderous, winking cobblestones

Smoothed down to pavement by such winters

And the fountain muttering incantations between drops

Charms against ice and shattered pipes

A dog barked

A formless dog of dawn

Looking out from behind warm panes of glass

Or stealing beneath the bridge, a picture of neglect- freedom as well

Which is not always such a comfortable path

When winter comes.

I will never know if he barked at me-

To get my foolish feet indoors, my shoulders beneath blankets

To walk some more, a harsh and throaty bell of affirmation

Or maybe just at the snowfall

To break the strange and desperate quiet of it.

I finally turned for home

And thought a heatless world better than a heatless apartment

Picked a flower

Conducted the low-flying birds in their brave northern symphony

And thought

For a moment

Of introducing sound to the furrows and stone of the fields

"Don't you see this is winter's proudest day?"

When the bride blooms

Her earthy skin will be all the warmer.

9 AM

2.5.12