Yin Days
Small cracks on a MingVase, like moistened hairs.
A globe of soft ceramic cream.
Delicate blue men with robes
Of violet fire
Walk blithely past the age-born
Barriers.
(If you want to see this,
Stand behind me. Feel the
Ripples of pleasure across my hand
That become the
Final form of the vase).
All we know is only
Light, reflection, absence.
I know
A candle and the white light of the vase,
The black cracks of
No light.
The light, and the reflection of
Blue men in the shudders
In my arm;
As if I were a Chinaman a thousand
Years old, walking through
Dark black cracks.
originally appeared in Remington Review
The Strongest Building
Every screw works itself
Free of the girder, eventually, backing out like mice
Gnawing at the cage until their teeth ache and bleed
Until, at the very end, it can cast off its bolt
And dive free into the street.
All the world can come crashing after,
For this moment like a dream.
But dreams are on their way down too
The night is drawn and hammered, like
Mice birthing mice in a
Lust to fill all the corners
So they can all starve a little.
As the sandstone figures cool the ears and watching
Eyes tend to drop off
Fall ringing into the air
Jealously watched.
Plates of glass gather the scene
Plates of steel squirm uncomfortably
All that holds them in place is
A little confidence, like love thinks it never
Dies.
(I don’t have to tell you
The bolts are writhing in their place
Staring down
Picking out
A place to land).
Scheduled to Sail
Dawn is breaking
All over the floor like the
Good china against the door
The arrangements are made before
Someone will meet you at the airport
Take care of yourself
Dear.
Out here, at dawn,
All the water smoothes over as though
Someone had lain down upon it, as though
It were giving up on a long convalescence. We shared
The sea in silence. We overstepped the broken boards
On the pier
We saw sailboats. They were crawling on the horizon
You asked me if I could put you on one, send you to
Martinique
The best I can do is send you a letter
But I don’t think these words would
Fly far.
Out here it still seems like yesterday
Out here if you lay your face in the water it begins
Right away to work on your cheeks, polish your eyes
In a thousand years the waves would polish your face
Smooth like a china bowl, featureless like
The bow of a boat senseless
Like a jet hanging on the horizon
Motionless, full of regret
Like a day receding you wish
Had never come, like
A day the waves strain to reach
But never quite do.
The Nail
I followed you on Easter morning
Like taking part in slaver’s trade
We sipped our coffee, read the Times
Unaware, I am unmade.
I wash my hands a hundred times
The silken softness of your back
Sleepless in the crowding gloom
The sweaty silkness of your back.
Pinioned on the middle deck
My hands no longer are my own
Your voice receding on the shore
Like shackles to an anchor stone.
The deftness of your argument,
Compelling, but to no avail
I’m unwilling to accept
There was a gift within the nail.
