Letters to Rothko in Winter

i.

Captive, 

what can I say 

now you’ve 

held me so long?

How mildly we touch   and the season indifferent

even homes nestle stunned

Now fingers 

have become numb

sense  is trackless

Sense under this—succumbs

ii.

I cannot warm enough

to shelter love

cannot hold my hands out

long over fire

I am this selfish    bare    hindered touch

the rest  of my body

    not my breath 

is by   gravity 

by     spanning loosed

my closeted  blood 

expunged   

iii.

Feel the way 

these shoulders 

balk at friendships

under the roughening cold

hands tucked to fists withdrawn to my coat

I walk past you

anonymous

a body made forcible

by the straightening weather

if you recognize me

you go on walking and the wind aligns us

parallel  

never to meet

iv.

Shifting shadows 

pull frost breath parabolas

from mouth to air

A street lamp lit in the falling snow

pulls the shadows from the ground

snow swirls speed

around it, falling slower 

at the corners of illumination

shadows and flakes 

reach for each other and disappear in the rush

I wait for you with my mouth

gasped open

blinded by the ice lattice melting on my lashes

by the mirage of this bright tunnel to the sky

dimensionless but for chiaroscuro

flat but for the folded meeting point 

a deep churning of light and snow

that pulls from me desire  

blood flooding from the head 

shooting to the toe and up again

I realize blood is a gift 

only appreciated in winter

v.

if you would offer your hand   

the plane of the earth would extend

and I would walk upon it to touch it

if you would meet me under a dome of snow

I would build it for us with bare and reddened hands

if you would cut an eye into deep ice

I would emerge from it as an ascendant berg

and break the span of barren earth between us

Nude, by cartographer measured

Her name is Diana, namesake 

wary, sylvan, and fleet

her will to evade, in physic allegory 

turned to a deer or arrow shooting and shot 

through a tangled wildness that for all its glory

and nakedness is still unassuming

Her deaf understanding of a coin or pelt on the blanket 

shines brilliant under his palm

a trade in symbols

other body for other body

the cartographer and his lover

spanning each other, tracing contours

holding their breath 

they picnic on treasure

not wanting to smell it completely

a pineapple regal beside him, beside her a burst plum

the fold of their stomachs and the cascade of her hair

when in this did he take too much of her

was she rising or settling in a hammock of Americas

does she know now 

his kneeling becomes her dust?

A Periodic Leavening of Bodies (draft 1)

i.

They appear like marionettes, walked 

along an unseen floor, bouncing in a slow 

and studied manner, to indicate forward movement. 

Their windows are hazy, made of cellophane

leftover from baking. Scrawled in black crayon 

on pink construction paper, faces with malformed 

lips show expressions drawn from a whim-driven hand.

They bob next to each other, two buoys 

in the soft swirl of darkness behind them

at first together, showing the overlap of faces, flickering 

like eyelids in sleep. Then one sinks deep, and its passengers 

become mere slits of pink color, until finally, nothing is there 

visible.

ii.

Silken, a deep red dot, wide enough to be the backdrop

for a pair of eyes, suspends, rippling in an origin-less 

draft of air.  There is a gap between the bottom 

edge of the fabric--so smooth it could be the skin of a water snake 

brushing as it passes, hidden on a clandestine errand

against your ankle--and floor, a dizzying black and white 

checkerboard, made audible by the square-heeled 

shoes of Carmen Amaya twisting her body like a mobius 

strip until all her hair comes tumbling down. 

We cannot see her behind the shimmering red dot

though it is certain she is there, sweeping her arms 

back in a muscular flourish as she continues her inspired 

clatter. Though there are no feet to spy on, no 

sweat from which we might suck flamenco's juices 

we are content to imagine Carmen's arches.

iii.

Geometries in motion, the mass of bodies

under the joyful care of a parent-beloved child, churns

upon itself, barely sensate to the can that once held

coffee grounds, shifting slightly from side to side on a shallow

radio flyer traveling over weeds wilting in the mid-day sun

jolting over cracks in the pavement before being forgotten

in the driveway and left to melt into a crust that must be scraped away.

Parallel Families (draft 1)

i. shared veins of memory

 

If we'd begun earlier, thinking about our futures sooner, we might have put off

the inevitable lethargy a shared past brings. Now a parasite slow slurping at the veins of it enforces a languor that prevents our hands from moving towards our cell phones.

 

We have a fainting couch and specially fashioned corset stationed at every memory that might provide reason for a call, and they overcome us decorously. When did we

become such ladies?

 

Our fathers might ask the same question in their doting ways. Our fathers are our fathers. They are shared. Our mothers are our mothers. Also shared.

 

They are also owned. My mother is still more mine

than is yours, and so on. Their sympathies are bestowed preferentially, along with inheritance, shape of mouth and manner of speaking.

 

The similarities between us are so marked. We both come from houses

full of collected glass curios. Our parents wage Sunday afternoon

wars against dust.

 

We were shaped both more consciously and more

perversely than any of our classmates, and the differences we have felt

there, are marrow deep. Why do these parallels

not unite us?

 

They did when we were children

when we were flat-stomached and young enough

to protect each other without fearing censure.

 

We once held hands as we walked alongside public highways though we

were whistled at by more than one red truck, full of freckle cheeked

would-be men out to prove manhood.

 

We rolled twenty joints in the course of an evening, smoking them calmly

as we watched children wreck guitars and scream half-rhymed profanities

we knew referenced us.

 

We stripped naked under moonlit cherry trees to take night photographs

while neighborhood friends peered at us through the fence slats

muzzling shamed excitement.

 

We are family, not because we purposefully cut

vein and pressed hands, not because of a childish wish

never to be separated, or to live together as virginal curatrixes

guarding a house filled with artists, but because we share

memories that wend like alligators through a thick mud

emerging dangerous and purposeful to tell us we are blood.

 

 

 

 

ii. we are not blood

 

"We are not blood" and therefore we have a history of excused behavior

based upon the differences. It could be argued however, that our formation

into adults was done  through a series of shared adventures

some of which shed blood.

 

Why then, are we excused from each other's tables, turning

the forks to face the tablecloth, crossing our plates with the other silverware

allowed to stand, bow, and walk through doorways the other must suffer to enter?

 

Did we not weep into each other's hair? Am I not familiar with your body, your

large breasts that you tape down with layers, your yellow skin

with black, straight hairs, every curl you wrestle with on your head?

 

Is it because I have studied you so closely, consumed all of your minute details like the

scraps one throws to a loyal once-feral bird, that you are mine? My attention, so like a raven's warning glances, has been acute through all these years.

 

Nothing of your face or body surprises. Nothing that came from

you could render me aghast. I would swallow these emissions and still have

room, even if over-stuffed with bread, for more. If you needed me to pull

poison from you with my own lips, I would do it gladly.

 

"We are not blood" I know is the cry of love, deep in the bellies

of strangers. I am a stranger, yes, though we have caressed each other, floated bath boats at each others' thighs, dressed each other for our staged daydreams, spoken of lust and love, rolled tight wands of cannabis, watched as the smoke from our fingers

undulated and danced between the pixelating squares of my bedroom screen, laughed over the constriction of time in the creation of night photographs, argued about our respective nations' pride and marched through my house singing loudly our separate anthems until the windows hummed back at us, had our morning routines we lovingly repeated for summers upon summers until we were women.

 

"We are not blood" is a single battle cry that traverses oceans

only to find it unechoed in the pantheon of Eros and Ares, gods who

once would have embodied it on the field until we mortals awoke as heroes.

 

"We are not blood" is the sound of a warrior's sigh as a sword enters his flesh

waiting for a new kind of sight, where not all things are to be won, vanquished

or lost, but only explored until by death arctic winds, the body is overtook.

 

I am tired of my blood, heroes, the hiding cliffs of your bathwater shining legs

want nothing more than to admit our uncommon kinship rather than wait for

our love to grow old.

 

 

formation

Living in the time of numbers draft 1

We live together in a time of numbers
escalating, oscillating, expanding
always circling outwards
and leading within.

Once, I did the bidding of numbers and made them
my mates, realizing that each single number was
in of itself, many--a composite made one definition.

I let numbers dissect and reshape me in their image, invisible
though edged with light, so that my body was like there's, seen
only at the edges.

Until I understood complex numbers just today
I did not realize that one whole side of any body
rests in the imaginary realms, did not understand
fully, though I did sense it, that these could be made by
thought alone.

I sit with you at brunch and you tell me about a moment
of illumination, with such pleasure in your eyes and in
the uplift of your lips, which I know are soft, always.

You are only a portion satisfied by my exclamations
over your undergraduate discovery, because although I do
understand your excitement, I do not understand numbers.

Not understanding is as palpable as a thud in the chest from a heart
you will never feel beating in your hands. It is the heavy awareness of abstraction.

Numbers are without bodies. They do not dance.
They do not die. This is my argument against beauty.
The infinite you so effortlessly embrace.
A void you ask me to be.

Sometimes we will look at each other over long distances
and you will have to breach them with a proof of love
the ability to explain our connection.

After February (draft 2)

vii. Approaching the garden

With shears ready you lead my two
friends and I past five mounds of dirt, freshly covered with wood bark. There are pursed irises ready to unbind and buds on the rose bushes hinting at color.

Our voices are hushed. We tiptoe. I pat the heads of tall purple onions.
A mother duck hides under uncut grass. You indicate her and we bend forward
to look. You say "she believes herself unseen" and we giggle at the
delicious secret of her unveiling.

We stop to hear the names read aloud from white stakes
pressed in the ground and gather harlequin tulips until
their bright heads overflow our hands. We rhapsodize
about flowers and spring. "At last" we cry over and over, "it's here!"

Our walk ends on the shaded side of the house, where the bleeding
hearts drip cheerily on their curved stems.

"These are so marvelous." "Yes. You look at these, and you think, somebody
was having fun." "Exactly, you can explain things like tulips. Those are simple." "But bleeding hearts no." "Their design is too complex." "Somebody, something, made them."

"Do you think it was because they wanted to show us they exist?"





viii. It is only you, who by asking, found comfort in the answer

Where were you? How could you
have been absent, on such a day? To have arrived, late
to class, straight from bed, without having showered or prepared
in any way. To have arrived, and taken a seat in the back of the classroom
a seat, saved by a current lover, whose face begged silence, knowing
you were unable to be silent.

"What happened?" you asked loudly. "Who died?

Then quieter, in almost a whisper, but with a burble of shaky
laughter that would re-emerge again later, well up steadily
throughout the week, as a giddy confirmation
accompanied by hysteria, "Who died?"