the earth is holding them

i am holding them: all their bones,

the ones you buried. 

i keep them: not like secrets, 

but like saints:

enfold their bones 

in roots and webs, 

in beetles, bright as jewels.

Each name you will not speak

i keep

and cherish

and when their names are called 

i will unfold them,

slick with blood

and thick with tears.

Heap up your might while you can,

and your pride: 

that mountain cannot bear the weight

i, tender, hold:

their names shall all be told,

are told,

are cherished.

Each one weighed against your soul. 

a sonnet, an invitation

No more wandering. I'll wrap your feet in clay--

wind roots around your ankles, till you stay

your restless dancing. Till you dance

here, with me. Until you rest. Each day

with me. Lay with me, down: over us the soil

a coverlet: soft, bundled against toil.

Rest, dear. I'll wind up every lovely sense

of yours in dirt--send little worms to coil

(to swap your eyes, your lips, your tongue--

all your softnesses). To sate them. So long

you wandered, restless. Be here. Lay

down now, darling. Let others seek and dance:

Darling, let go each starveling sense.

I'll hold you, root you, cover you, love. Stay. 

requiescat

God grant you in death more mercy than you ever held in your mouth.

May the souls of children walk you to your rest,

may you not rest until you have put your fingers into every bullet hole that laid them down too young.

May every step to heaven burn your feet.

May you carry every lie you ever spoke, like heavy stones.

May the young men you swayed hang from your neck like chains.

May you drink grief before you let them go.

The grief is mercy. 

May you be granted to serve at the feet of dark skinned saints and know it grace.

May your children be raised by better men than you.

May they receive the empathy you scorned.

May they grow up kind and good.

May they dream a better kingdom than you preached.

May no one triumph at their death.

hand over mouth

I have no hope, but I will speak, Job said.

I will break my teeth on this world,

and spit the bloody chips out in your face,

you who made this, you who made us

for all these good gifts you gave us. 

I have this faith: 

to come to you, to hold out my fist full

of hot rage, to say

this is no justice,

to open my fist up in your face

if you will not be just, we have no justice

if you will not be tender, we have no tenderness

if you will not hear us, we have no hope

the world will not bear the weight of us,

of all this wickedness

done upon us, and by us: it's

too many graves to count

these days, these days, these days.

Do you count them, God,

these graves? 

i dreamed i lay me down to sleep

I dreamed I lay me down to sleep

And did not rise again;

Whatever tears my lovers wept

They watered me like rain.

I was a garden, in my bed--

I melted into earth

While all the loves I ever had

Crawled through me like white worms,

And all the loves I ever loved

Sprang up, like seeds to sun,

Alive, unlost, though I forgot

Their names as I dissolved.

question

How is this world good? How right?

the best of all possibilities 

of being,

the only way to gather up the threads

of all these lives?

Shall all be well?

Lord, through what dark and bloodstriped door 

are we borne, wailing

into a life of grace?

Must it always be this: the crushing, and the grief?

Are we, altogether, so stained

that only death makes way for better life?

Is this faith? To ask, at last, that we be eaten up

by our own appetites, by our own wounds

to make a place for better life?

Is our painful death a gift for what comes next?

You Who demanded the children too

be consecrated 

to You in death

even the children, Lord, 

and the beasts,

You Whose Name is mercy--

You do not let us forget it, 

they are written into scripture,

how Your demands glittered,

unrelenting,

biting and breakable as teeth.

I would not see my people crushed,

our children lost--

Is there no healing? 

Is this our last best hope:

A god who sees, who holds each tear, and who ordains

no less pain

I make my claim

against your righteousness: 

I rest

my case.

daily

Alternate title: let's pretend i'm sixteen again. It's 2020, indulgence is survival.

 

I meet my dying every day,

going my way to work. She stops,

sometimes, to say hello, or raise

a hand to wave. 

No need to grab my wrist

for attention. She can wait

the years until I settle down

into my grave.

We'll have time, then, to 

get down to it: the conversation

we delayed, the real business. 

No rush.

She'll be familiar then

already, a face I've seen

daily, a white face, her eyes

a dark smudge

I can't read, though she seems

friendly enough.  Some days

I think, looking in the mirror

I'm becoming

less myself. My eyes less real,

like hers, my skin less flesh

and blood. She waves.

One day my heart too will

cease drumming

my blood cells on their tireless

rounds, it will all be still,

we will sit down

together

and she will put her arms around me

like a friend.

 

ghost

--if i were a ghost i'd haunt this garden:
lie down below these tomatoes,
be an insect throughway. My sky
an aromatic tangle: green,
with yellow stars

or sink like rain
into the busy dark beneath:
eyeless smell the white roots reach through
my unfleshed restlessness--
Could i rest there

unlit, listening
to worms creep through this deepfurled world
this universe of small things

could i hear roots slowcreep and drink their little drinks--

oh, i could sleep
a long time

a summer long,
tomato life long
from seedsplit to ripe fruit
to rot
to make this dirt more sweet.

a birth day

Once on the day after Christmas I lost an earring,

half of my Christmas present, a little smiling kawaii squid

(this in the bad old starving days 

when I was a girlshape made of brittle glass,

I wasn’t sad

I wasn’t sad)

it slipped out sometime that day—

when I was pulling espresso shots, ignoring 
the cramping 
and the clotting—

or maybe later at the clinic.

I don’t remember their faces, 

just the white coats

the necklace stethoscopes

they said any residual tissue would be 
taken

lab tested

I guess they sent us the papers

later

I was too numb then to ask 
for the scraps 

so we left 

bereft 

All I had of you then 

was my lost earring 

Later you gave
your first 
last

best 

gift:

the glass cracked 

that night 

we cried,

I cried

I could never have been your mother

I tried

I tried

I think that I was born then,

when you died

birth story

Begin here:
unscrewing

Begin with
the unscrewing relentless
wrenching
open oh
opening

its beginning
the small
tensing the
thin primitive smell of
ancient fear: so

it begins, so, unbearable,
it goes on opening. This
unbearable breach, still
opening--

how i am opened for you
bloodpainted, torn: i am made all pain, and mute
a door for you:

So we begin the hungry months:

the hungry months, the dear birdgullet days,
their endless small indignities
the heavy tender breasts, the constant leaking
--i will be weeping:
milk, blood, tears

i will be made your milk
your meat, your bread
your fear, your comfort, your bed

what i deemed my body broken--breaking--
in crumbs to fill your little needs--
how shall i feed you, small famished soul?

And you, weaned and closemouthed at last
will (unbearable opening) you will
go on through my heartbreak, opening,
opening--

what will my heart unscrewed
and opened bring into the world?

birthday

In spring you shared good news--
two babies! Due November --
like a plate of freshbaked cookies.
New life is sweet in the mouth,
brown sugar and vanilla.
A taste to savor--
God is good
Taste, unseen, eyes built,
fingers unfolding,
the knitting of new bodies with new souls

Summer brought figs and wasps.
Untwinned, too, one twin
One sister, to be born
half of a pair--
What memory of sister cells long melted?
What redseamed and burning loss
sewn up in every stitch of joy?
May I beside you drop my tears
for these dear twins
Purl tears, still, for that pearl
that little lump of cells
they took--
unfingered still, and unfarewelled--
in glass
away--

The birthday--Ruby Mae!
Born in November
in a cold far place,
a white gray winter
To know you hold, at last, the small bright crown
to nine months' long ring of grief and hope
Touch her fingers.
Hold her curled into your shoulder--
We unwrap your news like early Christmas
bright with red ribbons.
Is God not good? 
The tears we paid seem guarantee
of days and years thick with sweet memories--

Till an imperfect heart's small raveling
surgeon stitched, still opens
and opens, and opens
its unstoppable switch: breath
to emptiness.
We watch ribbons spin and shred in a black sea.
Was one not enough?
Something beside you--faroff
in my own gray home
I share the indignities:
mucus, tears, acid
puncturing the days with its
unbearable taste--
 
Dear friend,
Let me sit down with you
at this bitter plate.
To weep
and hope
and pray.
God is good --
To believe, together,
that promise,
that unshakeable one day.

$fifty

so what if this woman gets raped God
you know He had nothing to do with that
jesus standing there crying behind His eyelids,
Oh honey, you know I didn't mean for that to happen, why
Can't we all just love each other like I do
My yoke is easy and my burden is light, you know
I would never ask you to carry
that, and
it's your body not that poor
bastard's not that maybe baby's and it
probably would have had something wrong with it anyway
so many of them do
Oh honey I don't want that for you
nothing but a baby yourself, go
Get you that fifty-
dollar unbaby off the shelf

28.12.2011

This is a small sorrow. Already
i sit bonecold,
unbroken

Tremble: black coffee a
welcome jangle in an
empty--

This is too small for heartbreak.

 Two days. Already my breasts
have lost their ache,
have shrunk unneeded to their
small untenderness--

(Tonight i will drink red wine.
A whole bottle. Two
if i want them.)

Oh small small grief
oh little bittersweet:

you sit across from me
you will sit there tomorrow
you will hold my hand tonight
and cry brief tears.


We are left heartwhole, barely
touched by that
small soul.

Left so little to remember--
just this day, wintercold,
black coffee,
sour on my tongue.

the fifth portrait

And you sleepy-eyed still tiptoe
in before the sun
creep in between us,
breathe our sour morning breath.

You smell, still, of princess bubblebath
and your own sweet child breath.
The halflight shines white off your hair.
Your small elbows and knees are needlesharp.

We lie, wallowed and pierced,
watch the spidersilk
your small breathing

The fourth portrait

It's a damn shame, and already they're blaming
and blaming.
Soon they'll be banging on our doors.
I don't buy nothing unless it's off the books.
I'm stocking up.
They can make their limpwrist rules
up there
but me -- I have the right
to keep and bear --
By God when some crazy bastard comes after my little girl
I will have teeth in my mouth,
I will bite.

The third portrait

The world cries white snowflakes;
tomorrow it will giggle
bluewinged butterflies.

Today we are weeping
over the small bare graves.
Below us the earth, unstoppable
pushes up its silent green.

The second portrait

This too is a message --

We have forgotten how to read.
See only stars --
We track the tides and storms
map different routes to work.  

We have forgotten how to read

the secrets of an opened bird.

The ancients with their magicians,

their calendars and instruments,

were wiser.

In the East and in the Americas,

in green Egypt, in their temples,

their eyes grew deepsouled from searching.

They read the circles in the world.

These lives we live now are circled too.

We live within one age:

another will succeed it.

After winter, always, there is spring.

Everything bad is a sign

we have forgotten how to read.

When landmines are sown

and reaped

when women and children are raped:

Read.

These are the death throes are the birth pains
the end of an age --
The entry to a kinder, wiser world.

We will live, then, more soul and soul.

Anyway that’s what I choose to believe.

It’s a more hopeful way of looking at the world

(we have to live in it)

grieving -

The first portrait.

When children die

don't cry:

They have gone out like stars,

still hoping.

We only are left.

Envy them.

Envy the passionate

the humanists, the atheists

with their fairy tales.

Envy the innocent dead.

Don’t cry for their small ends.

Cry for yourself:

you have still so many moments

to be borne.

Even the distractions become tedious;

the carousing habitual as toothbrushing.

I go on buttoning and unbuttoning.

I have given up finding,

in their lips,

any door –

I have come to desire one thing only:

to sleep through long seconds.

There is no one to ask.

We are all trapped in boxes,

breathing. 

Breathe

I don't know how to breathe today. Somehow

my lungs forget their instinct/memory.

Each inspiration is an act of will. Reluctant will: i don’t

know, today, how to breathe in without a press of pain.

I don’t know how to breathe. The laundry looms

in bedroom corners, stinking, faintly sour.

The bathroom sink is rimed in toothpaste, the countertop carpeted

in strands of my long hair, the shower greasy with the unscrubbed buildup of our skin.

Outside my unwashed windows might as well bristle a hedge of thorns,

so thick and silent is the coverlet of dust on every face.

I wrap myself in this detritus, I cocoon myself in stale bedsheets,

inkstainless, I let words flit into my brain, then toss them out

so many papermoths freed. 

I cocoon myself

in the stale bedsheets; I teach myself to breathe. Again,

I teach myself to breathe. Next moment,

I teach myself to breathe.

I said Come in

I said Come in, death,
be my friend.
She walks in
like violets,
wearing her spangled
oblivion.

Says Call me not
death. Hangs
that perfumed cloak
over the chairback.

Unwrapped she is
a full figure of dying,
promisedark.
Call me
now, she says,
i will be
now to you
forever,

love.

I wanted an end,
a friend, not
this--  Her eyes are
dark gates
opening