House Key
dream i heave blood
frantic, my crying
it rips me
into my mother
her blue purple,
my rust red.
My mother’s mind is a steel trap
set for mythic beasts.
The innocuous comment of a coworker,
a manticore:
Poison tongue turned
Poison tail
Poised to strike.
The unforeseen change in plans,
a banshee:
Squalling Sibyl turned
Squalling squall
Squalid hope remains.
She can no more set them free,
lest they set upon her in their fury,
than she can turn her back.
She knows well the persistent attack of the immobile.
Her father’s ghost is a gargoyle,
cemented to the parapet of her psyche.
Terror turned inward,
her stone-skinned guardian’s memory
wards off her confidence
like an evil spirit.
You can hear it
in her incessant asking,
“Does that make sense” —
a defense against
being charged with stupidity
or being found guilty
of undue alacrity.
So often sentenced to vicious mockery,
she learned to soften her voice
and shed her thin, bruised skin.
A selkie,
she drifts between
land and sea
and shifts into whatever
form will set her free.
See,
she knows
if she looks too close
at the contents of her traps
all she’ll find reflected back
is her own visage.
my brother is going to college;
my aunt is going to heaven. can’t
imagine the jet lag. i find myself
telling you about it in the mirror.
you taught me that, telling, that is.
you thawed my throat, traced
the timeline of my torment back
to the past life where you left me.
it’s warmer now, two years later,
the tone of my voice. deer graze
for longer, the tv is turned down,
clouds are shaped like cauliflower.
if i could force this feeling to the groumd
and make it talk, i worry it wouldn’t
have anything to say other
than asking how you’ve been.
I.
Straight highways. Few cars.
Prairie grasses touch small lakes.
Passing seagulls swoop.
II.
Light disappears late.
Sunrise erases short nights.
Farmers fill long days.
III.
Strong wind bends short corn.
Pushes greening branches low.
Cows turn, protect their faces.
Limbourg Brothers, “June” from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, c.1413–1416
Gold leaf
Honey of June
Summer scythed, gathered by noon
Shimmering sunlight solar boon
Sweet scent
Zombied out, miles up in the sun.
Drive me to the ER. The light glitters,
and nothing is as real as the past.
But not even that, not even that
could touch me now. Inertia as armor,
fear can’t kill what it can’t catch.
Summer figment, blue girl, live mirage
glistening on the linoleum floors,
believable momentarily when I whisper
I’m trying, things are finally getting better.
Just ram your eye here in the kaleidoscope,
slight of my hand, my open mouth, ghost fists
twisting with magic. Drink my snakeoil,
your stake in this fantasy I’ve built on bone
is the only favor that matters to me.
The waiting room is vivid, impressionist.
My multitude of lies calcify into castle walls.
Things will get better. I need you to believe
just for this moment, and this moment
could last a lifetime. It would not take long.
The radar shows
a storm system stretching
from Oklahoma
to New York.
A squall line across half the country.
The meteorologist points
to colors.
Pressure gradients.
Bands of precipitation.
As though naming a thing
makes it solid.
The rain falling outside my window
this evening
is from the same system
falling on you.
The same composition
working through different coordinates.
I like that weather refuses
our borders.
State lines.
Time zones.
Clouds do not care.
A storm crosses Kentucky
without noticing
Kentucky.
Before wires and telephones
messages crossed states
on horseback through rain.
A sentence taking days
to find
the person
it belonged to.
Tonight I imagine the wind lifting
the leaves to you.
You looking up
from whatever you are doing.
Maybe reaching
for the bill of your cap.
The universe
understands connection.
Gravity.
Migration.
Watersheds.
Everything leaning
toward everything else.
Even longing
behaves this way.
Sometimes I think
relationships are less like bridges
and more like weather.
Not something built.
Something entered.
A pattern large enough
to contain two people
standing far apart
beneath the same rain.
The water in our bodies
has been here
for billions of years.
Passed through oceans.
Glaciers.
Storm drains.
Tea kettles.
Tonight
somewhere beyond the horizon
water is falling through darkness
onto both of us.
