Let's Be Honest Here

                                      

Let's Be Honest Here

                       The foremost of the storm's

Multitude moves the wave belly-lovely

Glass of the glass sea shadow of water  

On the open water no other way

to come here the outer

Limit of the ego.

                        George Oppen

                        From a Phrase of Simone Weil's

                        And Some Words of Hegel's

I'd said I'd said not

having to remember I'd said the stuff of its sound is still

living from when it entered into

me and cried and tried 

from one split end

to the other to escape

and I let 

when I was

able

the most of it out yes what I could

and I cauterized

the rest what didn't wash

down the drain down

the cum-done drain I tell you  

                                            I wouldn't

want to be the lips of that pipel I didn't

want to be those lips

and insisting isn't enough

when loved ones turn

you over and fuck you up

the ass and withdraw with one hand

on the small

of your back and the other under the rim

of their cock stroking themselves off come on baby

come on baby bitch come on come on tight as wind puckered

against the one once living

blade of grass pinched

and blew through for that absurd horny

sound and the thumbed

and rubbed not unroughly and not

randomly on the bottom lip

of my mouth so that for days he called to me sweat easy buttery

veal

 

What of It?

What of It?

What of it?  The grain

bag limp in the middle 

half gone invitation

to rats if it weren't

for the sentry tom, his

knotted paw (caught

in some trap or shot

and all the more caustic

for it) and the dust

coming up in the mote

of sun early enough

from may on through

who needs the brief

kerosene limp in her faux

crystal base and teetering

fingers filling her in

the dark after the globe's

come off and laid new born

baby like in the dry

sink clean of the weeks

of keeping the wick just

clear enough of the draft

burner to see what all

of the buckets and the odd

missed thus unmilled

kernel picked up by the hob

of his boot and left off

on the way to the coop what of

it easing itself in the mud

if there is some and it 

dulling in the rut before

some dove comes to

sooth the view into 

a descending fog in front

of the sun and what's already

come and gone and done

its dust job on that grain

bag, heavy enough fog

that won't burn off.  And all

that walks in and out 

of ill or good will be omens

will be thrown some briefly some

forever by the jittery needle

excited by the iron shoved

in the fire to light the pinched

end of last summer's news,

the come and gone of men

and the old hen on the block.

as, presumably,

as, presumably 

(believe with me)

for jessie t

made of marsh or creek

grass or river reeds

or even some pieces

of each - see her reach

between the brief

breezes (and see)

they lift the wispy sheen

of her feathers between

her wings, above her knees

of dragon-feet green, her eased

ability, scaly wefted see

her reach for ophidian confetti-

trembling- moon-steeped, beak

cleaved memory.  then see each

writhen twist need

to leak free of her, 

cleaved in two, in three, daily

in legions, heaved, but discreetly

see?

seeing christina

seeing christina

barn
from wyeth's grave

hard to say which way she's facing

back to any gazer who invades her

world easy as walking in for tea

assuming thee's plenty of cream 

if it's taken that way or something

sweet if it's handy or even necessary

or water drawn up from the pump

and sitting still in the kettle 

on the burner plate.  Ignore her

stench. Ignore the loose floor

boards or the obvious worn to gloss 

spots she's as acquainted with as if

they were her lover, and her hip

bone and tipped lip of pelvis bone

honed as on a stone (though if 

you go to the barn you'll know

such a stone) go barefoot in the close

of the morning in the close 

of the noon hour in the close 

of the whole length of the day

and evening and caress where 

her body and the grim grip of her

fist is a heron on the thin barren birch

limbs sticking through the river

ice in winter.  how do we know

it's the old house she's seeing tell me

what do you see?  fields like wheat?

really blueberry beneath.  Wheel

tracks thick as troughs muddy pot

holes doesn't she have to slide through

on her way across the flat horizon

the painter has tracked you to?  Or

the sixteen windows facing 

the sea aren't there sixteen see

the deep receding nearly green 

matte sans sheen.  The one economy

of a frugal rag the shifting from

house to barn and the swallows 

against the lift of the different

wind in this acre of field the ascension

of her coming chignon and thin

thin aggression of the ladder 

against the rafters  

roll call

briefly

roll call

to explain grace requires

a curious hand.

                                                Marianne Moore

                                                the Pangolin

These days and days we’ve stayed

in place and yet stray

from the grace of immaculate spaces, 

the dogged way of tracing

the abeyance of dates,
their traceable

fingerprint places: how their being
there is a shape how their not

being 

there is 

a 

shape: how

they have names how

they have places how

they have cravings how

they have made ways of how to be

named aloud and not dismissed

because listen, when you call them
out  they’ll stray back into their throat.  
Like ticking the roll with your mechanical

pencil, quick check quick capital
A into the string of teeny
squares that for now will run
the full twelve weeks

blank and clean to the coming end:

weeks and weeks and in my tired

dated way, a paper layout

to make it all keep up and in place

keep it easy,

keep it being

keep it needing to be

seen. Take heed:

lean like you used to

lean, each of you: how you

listened, remember listening?

to the whole

goddamn list predicting (not

really) it

your name

what pen or sketch of serial

will has nested there

between two others (unless

you’re first unless you’re

last)

and you wait it out until it arrives

like every soothing routine

it arrives somehow

in time.  But now.  See? see?

see that Friday doesn’t need me

to say it’s Friday

to be Friday.  It’s all honest

and arbitrary but for the pure

dependence of it, the box

on the calendar

and what’s inside

to tell us

where and what we need to

see and be and re-

member              .

before it’s all thrown off its delicate

metronome in the midst of a plague

in the midst of a quarantine.  Tomorrow

the calendar says

I’ll be fifty.  Today it says

I’m forty-

nine.  I’m counting.  I have been

counting.  I’m right

where I belong, pausing all

that stalled indulgence like when,

when, when will the delivery come,

when will I hold it out and not

open it and not put it on the table

or the vanity or the porch rail if

the sun’s out

and watch for the weather to turn

watch for the afternoon to come on, watch it

March watch its sun come closing in later

(incrementally) than it did yesterday.  Or like phases

of the moon.  or illnesses.  But truly, whose

looking?

Before I reach for my darling

knife to open this gift (not the sun and not the moon

but if I could, now’s the time

wouldn’t you say?) I think of slitting

the edges on the ends first

and do, to ease the middle forward

and toward my rib and count

the seconds it will take to make it

finally

after all this gone by time,

see the light I have to light

if my fire's bright and not all that guardedly

or needing to be seeing

as what’s being

lifted or

poured or

tumbled . . .it’s been

a long, long time coming  up

or down or staying the same

marked or not marked Friday come Monday

or whatever day makes me

say today today

today is the day the last

day in this day and age that I’ll be this age

and I take it out for a walk

like it was a dog wanting

green grass or wanting

another dog’s pee tree

or even sweeter

like it was not any one day at all

you feel me? and being

such creatures who move as clumsily

or as gracefully as Marianne

Moore’s pangolin, depending

on how it needs to utilize

its armor

or its tongue

or its teeny eyes

or its absolute

vulnerability . . .tell me who?

you? needs

names for days of the week to be

boxed and shipped off

to the roll call to be stuffed

by incurious and injurious hands

so that by the time we arrives to be

opened we're all in shards or sand

or chunks some as big as my hand

some ground down to powder

some just relieved of its one small handle

now in three pieces

now resting in the bottom

of the vessel it was meant to be held,

light of the world it is, up with.

clemency

   

 

clemency

                                    It's not

about the light - but how dark

        it makes you depending

on where you stand.

                                Ocean Vuong

                                Eurydice

 

if i could pause in this fixed spot

i could watch how the drop of water on the top

of the birdbath's brim will

cast back the moon, falling half full. watch

her revolving on the olive branch

of morning. watch the water in the bowl,

cracked and compact with mid may's still

icy night, stay calm enough

to splinter her setting reflection. if i could

stop in that fixed spot or yet let

myself move with the moon i'd tell

myself she would break out of that drop

of water and slip from far to the lip

of the bowl close to me and let herself 

in or at least spill on my knees in the draught

of wind, the coming sun, before

she slips and slips under the gazing

ball in the shade of the brief azaleas  

pause

yesterday we watched a fox

stalk the goslings.  the pond

their world.  the field beyond

another unmarred nebula.

everything is still winter

gold, the daffodils on the hill

rogues.  who knows

how they came to be

that far away from the road

the border garden our neighbor's

property line.  free

as they are  and as seeing as

they can be leaf

green and briefly pink

in their middles like vixen

tongues they know nothing

or everything about

the hunger of pups

or goslings.  and brief

the black paw raised

and brief the black foot

paused, grass, daffodil, water