Smoke
One. You wiped a table
on which I’d spilled a tall glass
of water.
Two. It had never happened before.
The green beans were lurid,
the corn alive.
Three. I misunderstood your eyes.
There were carp. Where did the carp
come from?
Four. You were afraid of talking
to the Franciscan: one touch
and you’d be off, committed to monasticism.
Five. There was a girl in pink. She seemed
calm but reading poems aloud was a string
of first kisses, heart so hard it nearly passed
out through her shoulder blade.
Six. I woke delirious as the blue
of sunrise on white walls, quiet as dusty
linoleum cracks.
Seven. When you could not follow
“Pied Beauty,” I said, you’re
tired, I’m sorry. Was I? Right now I’d stare
straight at you, say nothing.
Smoke
Imagine us in a house together,
Borges and Beckett smoking with Kafka
(and you) whenever I look away, air
draped around Part One of Rilke’s
“Spanish Trilogy.” From this
cloud, look!… Then what? Babies
would ruin your life. Wouldn’t they?
And you’d return the favor.
I am not being fair. You may know
how to love. Am I this angry?
I thought I had forgiven you.
No, I thought nothing
to forgive.
Imagine us in a car together, music
without words and melodies unless
by melody you mean the large pattern
thought finds in well-placed silences.
Imagine us on a roof together.
In what country? I don’t really want
to travel. In New England. What
are we doing? We could be putting down
tar shingles, which last for decades.
We could be smoking
out a nest of raccoons,
though only people tired
of their lives would climb on a roof
with a mother raccoon. We could be—
first I said, leaning back on our elbows,
crossed ankles, streamed shadows.
We could be standing
on top of the house. Staring off, parallel.
Smoke
It was hot and every morning I woke
wondering why the air was electric. From our hill,
we could watch purple lightning storms on the pink
Sangre de Cristos.
At home
I charcoaled your face onto a painting, using
the one clear photograph I had, in which you look
wild and silent. You would have held your wine glass gracefully
but were pacing
the fringes at the opening-night
reception, looked out over the crowd like a mountain animal
considering domesticity. What is there to say? I was afraid of you
at first. Maybe always. No smoke,
no fire.
There was a steep hill
behind the dormitories; one morning at sunrise
I climbed it, thinking I would stumble
upon the hiking trails I had been told ran off
into the distance. Round-topped hills, ravines,
everything balding. Charged sagebrush.
No trails. You never mentioned
a lover, only a girl who had twisted
your arm to bring back something turquoise. I asked you point
blank, months later, what we were doing. Doing? What
do you mean?
Speak
for yourself. Am I slandering you? I am not objective. I sold
the painting with your face in it, almost mailed you
a slide but people asked for photographs
when you walked around Manhattan, and you always
turned them down. A makeover-show hostess cornered you once
and tried to convince your date to get you on the show: I can just
see him—cut that hair, a suit…
Your eyes coaled
fierce when I laughed.
I stopped calling after the third try (months
in between) when your voice mail spoke so quiet
it cut: Hello. Leave
a message.
Smoke
My tongue is covered in the crushed aftertaste of chocolate. On the radio
the flutes never forget they are cylinders of trembling air cut by lips
sharpened to a singing edge. I am not waiting for you to call. Are there
new versions of you? This one breathes deeply, awaking,
does not snore. This one has irises like round glass knives.
This one makes my shoulder sing when touched. Everything sings
if you know how to breathe on it: direction, velocity. Sun
breathed on the lilies for one day and now the blossoms
are all shriveled. I hear coneflowers are hardier, though they’ve always looked
timid to me, chastised, as though they had their petals blown back from their faces
by a blast from directly above. Maybe they were brazen once, reached shamelessly
as though the sky could fall in love with them. The sky, seeing their foolishness,
spoke in a roar, reduced each to one terrified eye. Lilies have their day:
on May 1st everyone carries shy fistfuls along streets in France. Taste: flower,
root, stem, fruit-bulb. Say medicinal if you’re afraid of poisonous. Lilies
will grab you by the heart: skip, stammer. But it only takes one day of sun
and they are dead. I am afraid of the sky. Today I’ll dead-head my maybells,
ask the neighbors for coneflowers and brew blossom-rhizome tea. I’ll drink it
very hot and think, How strange that no one seems to know where Mayday, the distress call,
came from. It wouldn’t be May 1st, and M’aidez is not how to call for help in French.
I am hungry with tiredness. In the kitchen a knife gurgle-clinks
through the jam. The solo flutist etches a melody into my lungs. Phone connections
got crossed sometimes when we talked: you were out
in the middle of nowhere. There was a cough once in the line
followed by silence, then a woman’s voice, scraped raw with age.
Smoke
Last night I made you
kiss me, but it seemed wrong,
even in imagination, without
your consent. So I straightened
my arm, pressed my palm
into your shoulder, sent you spiraling,
weightless, away.
Ropes unhinged
that had bound you
like a hot air balloon
with no passenger basket, just
the gas burner roaring
into the slender, bright mouth
straining up. Go on, rise
offward, skyward, be a tiny emptiness
between the clouds and sea,
a toy and then a spark.
second poem: “From this cloud, look!” is Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the beginning of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Spanish Trilogy, Part 1: “Aus dieser Wolke, schaue:”