Afterland Read online

The way their eyes turn lunar, rogue as dead stars

  Thrown back to the graveyard in heaven. In the

  Afterwar, there are no more terraces, no more hills,

  No hand to sweep the hearth, but always, there remains

  A man omitted, and that she knows as well.

  Beyond the Backyard

  Light passing through

  geometry of chain-link gate.

  Wig of barbed wire.

  All, I might see.

  We pay our rent

  to the mechanic next door.

  He’s industry too.

  Someday,

  I will forgive dirt floor

  alleys with dumpsters everyone used.

  Forgive forklifts

  crawling in the lumberyard.

  Forgive acoustic winds

  lashing open the back door.

  Anchor let go.

  I will climb on the ledge

  to peer over,

  beggar my eyes

  to a view.

  Rusted sedan, wire zipline

  to stapled roof, retired

  shopping cart missing wheel.

  My parents fled for this.

  Sojourn with Snow

  That day you brought it home

  It’s like tiny diamonds

  That turn to water

  Taste like ice Try it

  You too

  Once saw how it dropped

  A slow searching

  Until it went away

  Gone are the warm banana leaves

  The vapor rains

  Evacuee from a rainforest

  Hostile frost

  Settled your skinny body

  Or maybe that city

  Would start you over

  No layers felt enough

  We played with this gift

  Every day

  Compressed to no more

  Numbed in our flushed palms:

  Those of refugee children

  Who now believed

  Sprinkle more

  In my pile

  My footprint stays

  Make me the jasper from

  nectar of summer snow.

  Original Bones

  I wander the earliest days

  When I had a written language

  Before 1952 when missionaries

  In laos wrote one for me

  Before 1959 when a phantom script

  Came to the mother of writing

  Before 1986 when I drew

  The letters of mai der

  I showed up in southern china

  A few millennia back

  Uncooked people

  Led to war

  As a child I once looked up

  From a farm in fresno’s valley

  So much deeper the engine echoes

  In my kicking eardrum

  Grayer now my eyelids

  Gnarl into clouds

  There was a time

  The mountain came to surrender

  Pressed itself down as my page

  The Hour after Stars

  Rose petals wash in fire.

  I graze my swidden body.

  I hear the crow’s voice

  before I see it land in the leaves.

  A handwritten letter of provision

  hides inside

  the pantry.

  Cold as the wolf

  who takes the calf,

  I stare into the boulder’s mouth,

  make my kills in this citadel season.

  I drink from a nest of bees,

  sip their stings as ginger

  on my tongue.

  Afterlife comes at the end

  of a book,

  when I walk into the opal winter.

  The lines are roped into a ladder.

  My dew of blood adjourns.

  The latticed coffer closes over

  the little horse.

  My Attire Is the Kingdom

  Folio of roads

  On a hand-woven cape

  Capitol

  To my shoulders

  Hem whose pleats

  Are foothills in exile

  Every empty space

  Grain walls

  Garnish the folds

  Linen wraps the leg

  Recalls how much I bled

  Round patterned copper

  Hair in coils:

  Where I stored corn before

  Crossing water

  Disconnected middle

  Silver necklace reminds

  Of the iron collar

  Quotations braid

  Into wool

  Five hundred years:

  I wear the mark

  In a belt of coins.

  After All Have Gone

  I once carried my mollusk tune

  All the way to the lottery of gods.

  Rain was the old funeral choir

  That keened of a hemisphere

  Moored under lampwings.

  Clouds never left. I knew

  The lights would shine clearer

  If I closed my eyes, just as

  I knew the Pacific would teach

  Me to sleep before tying my

  Name to the flaming. Here I

  Am now at the end of amethyst,

  Drizzling another lost sunrise

  Inside the quilt of my hand.

  Grand Mal

  Now that your seizures,

  sage of spells,

  has untethered you

  from living, we read

  once more your story,

  a girl who shook the land.

  Touch

  where you meant

  to speak,

  we could never know.

  Wings as monarch

  on cheek. Fighter descends,

  hurts to feed

  from knees that

  won’t, will be,

  never am.

  Woman of deep,

  held as love

  thundering home,

  here is the coming

  of every child lost,

  the trembling this moment

  of your late stare.

  Last Body

  I can’t leave my hurting skull

  Or the rose apple opening inside me.

  I’ll count the weeks, months,

  Unfurling each numbered day in my hair.

  Frost ribbons inside my brain,

  Canals push up my leg.

  I’m moving on

  To what the world needs me to know.

  I am the angel trapped inside the bullet.

  I am the exit wound trapped inside the angel.

  Am I the scarecrow

  Perched at the end of the human trail.

  I’ll palm cotton between my prayers

  Until the universe has passed,

  Waving down jellyfish

  To volcano hours.

  What force propels a bullet

  From its chamber. Is it sourced by water

  Trickling in a karst cave,

  Or is it an angel’s gasp as she flees.

  I can’t answer it all,

  But my mask grows taller every year.

  Gray Vestige

  From a half-mile, I thought

  you were some crust of kelp

  and drift. I never could have

  guessed it was the last lying

  down of you, submitting to

  wreckage on this side

  of the wind. Dear humpback,

  this land is too dry to carry

  you further. Soon, you will

  be taken, your salty oils,

  fragment of sea-frosted spine.

  Take every sinew adrift where

  barnacles splayed pectoral

  fins, your mammal tissue

  putrefied into aquatic skin.

  Long ago, you were the arched

  door into the ocean having

  built an orchestra for your

  own kind of flight. Some things

  return, but never really do.

/>   Like the sifting ground,

  the scattered baleen,

  and this your body ancient

  turned upside down.

  Heart Swathing in Late Summer

  In the penumbra of an oak under sculpted

  Moonlight, we pile the last waking hours

  On our faces, breathe the wilderness of dry

  Heat waiting for fall ventilations. It feels

  Later than it is and the air is already mouthing

  The date for tomorrow. At least now, our eyes

  Can fall into the craters of a waterproof

  Reflection, and we stop for a moment to fill

  Ourselves with the kind of light that can only

  Be found in the dark. What is night if not for

  It being a repetition of unlit squares glued

  Jointly, plastered against the thought of midday.

  What is not seeing but to echolocate a name.

  It’s how I find your chin when I can’t sense

  The meaning of your hands. Weeks ago, it was

  Astral rebounds, shiny hinges. We harvested

  The fertile Perseids posed recumbent

  In the back of a flatbed, tallying the mineral

  Opulence reserved for those who wait. Not

  Ever so many in return. Now this moon in its

  Entirety has never looked so much like

  A distant circular kite set ablaze, doused by

  The kind of burning a man feels when he hears

  The humming of rain against a woman’s bare neck.

  Meditation of the Lioness

  Violets are hatching volcanoes.

  Today’s bees have swallowed

  The last milk of lanterns.

  All the whisper goes out in a drum.

  An empire separates inside the nautilus.

  On a bed floating the basin,

  We fall asleep in fog of the ancients.

  By daybreak, we trill

  Through cavesongs,

  Skate our soles

  Toward the next aurora,

  Listen to our fingers

  Kindled as white sage.

  Then every cloud is a crib,

  Every snowflake a small city

  Falling on the eyelash.

  Then child, you are cultivated,

  Fit to obey

  The balconies inside you.

  Now you are free to follow your prey.

  Days of ’87

  You lean by the door before me,

  Tall, unshaven, arms at your side,

  Oversized duffle by your feet.

  I stare at the ironing board, unable

  To speak. My fingers unfold the shirt’s

  collar before trailing it with an iron.

  Steam locomotive combing through

  A snowy night. Metal tosses vapors.

  Mist touches you, then leaves the room.

  Five years before, the argument set

  You loose. Your father cursed you

  From the house on a shining afternoon.

  In an hour, he returns from work.

  What hangs in the mind, a crumpled

  Sleeve, wrinkles stay. Does the mist

  Kneel captive to a traveler in a train

  Heading toward a salty canyon.

  Too much has been asked.

  A solitary engine, the waiting room,

  The feral call.

  At Birth I Was Given a Book

  I have heard the flames

  hunting inside your glossary.

  A starling calls

  from my folded window.

  I won’t outgrow next year’s stone.

  Beneath your cordilleras,

  exhibit of ripe artery

  I take my feed, I drink

  my childhood thread.

  I find no stamps

  in your red lagoon,

  only scent of cypress burning.

  They say each birth is given pages

  that equals the span of its life.

  Last breath happens

  when last word has been seen.

  As if you knew,

  long before the war

  where you slept on your kills,

  centuries before building

  your nation of scars.

  You are the pound

  of pink cold

  unlocking from the water’s spine.

  Late Harvest

  It started with the apricots

  Turning all copper hues on the orchard floor.

  The farmer had no one to pick them.

  Then oranges.

  And the tomatoes.

  Someone has tilted the land.

  A star flashes

  As if it needs help.

  Other times it is a loose tooth

  In the open mouth of the galaxy.

  There are no laborers.

  The crates, empty.

  Stare long enough at the fields,

  The parched horizon,

  And you will see, from its lifting,

  A kind of smalt fog.

  Cipher Song

  It’s come to this. We hide the stories

  on our sleeves, patchwork of cotton veins.

  Scribe them on carriers for sleeping

  babies, weave our ballads to the sash.

  Forge paper from our aprons, and our

  bodies will be books. Learn the language

  of jackets: the way a pleat commands

  a line, the way collars unfold as page,

  sign our names in thread. The footprint

  of an elephant. Snail’s shell. Ram’s horn.

  When the words burn, all that’s left is ash.

  Turn me into

  starlight lattice,

  riding mudwinds at post-thunder.

  I Am the Whole Defense

  Mid-1700s, Southwestern China

  Lightning is the creature who carries a knife.

  Two months now,

  The rains hold watch.

  Statues bury in teak

  Smeared with old egret’s blood.

  I feel the pulse of this inferno,

  Tested by the hour to know

  That even torches must not waver.

  In the garrison, I teach boulders

  To trickle from the cliff.

  My fallen grow parchment from their hair,

  Calligraphy descends

  From their lips.

  Infantry attack

  But my musket knows.

  They scale the sides

  Yet I tear the rocks.

  I am not wife, but my name is Widow.

  Let them arrive

  To my ready door,

  The earth I’ve already dug.

  Diadem on Lined Paper

  I saw you first as a man

  Whose left arm was the branch of a tree.

  Your frail stretch

  No thicker than fingers on a gingko,

  A body

  Meant for downfall.

  Then you turned over

  And became a tree

  Whose branches were the arms of a queen,

  Spanning before me

  Like a bridge, earthen silk,

  Consanguinity,

  Love that works without a thumb.

  I took to you my birth,

  My almond song, chrysanthemums

  Spun into corona and gold.

  Before morning, I gave you

  Memory of blossoms,

  Carried your scapular weight.

  You learned me, I did not walk

  But my feet did.

  When fire set itself to expired nights,

  I uprooted you from a grave

  To mark my body mourned.

  Ear to the Night

  I press my hand to your sleep.

  Then I find your spent head under small

  whirling tresses

  having digested the clatter

  of car horns, children

  bustling into sweet shops.

  This
might be

  the gift of a street:

  drumming Saturdays and a Monday palm of heart.

  I’ve learned that yours

  is the chorus of breathing,

  a rhythm, forgiving,

  that nuzzles the margin within my nature’s cratered sigh.

  Once, I felt the feet

  of a canyon collapse within you.

  Then I come to eyes,

  heavy with the tumble of night dew

  having collected verdigris

  off the entrance gate.

  Never mind the umbrella

  you lost on the subway tracks.

  The head is an iron jar filled with many swiveling hours.

  All day, I listened,

  a city carved

  from the hollows of a wire woven shell.

  Phantom Talker

  You must know

  I am the ghost

  with creosote mouth

  hiding behind

  your silent head

  in the vermilion portrait.

  My body reduced

  to three urns of calories.

  Turn the clutter down,

  saucer, candlestick, doily.

  Can’t clear out the deceased

  from a secondhand store.

  My sleepwalker

  is amnesia.

  To peel an orange

  with closed hands,

  broke potpourri, sparse-tooth,

  wedding shoes.

  Slow pages widow my way.

  This Heft upon Your Leaving

  I peel to the center for the shape

  of an answer to give you,

  for the way an answer cures

  in wet resin

  or can hook through the days

  toward the pendulous

  blink of your eye.

  I answer as air

  answering a clapper

  against edges of bronze

  before belting out an anthem

  of a thousand grazes,

  until I hear paper stones fall

  at your softening window.

  Years ago, it seemed we were loose

  strands swept from our ways,

  two vestigial selves

  to hide behind.

  Only the smell darkened when

  we washed our hands in a brew

  of cardamom and clove,

  and your arms blushed

  over me in earnest.

  I tell to your thick listening

  as the mouth to a sudden ear,

  to your shimmering heat

  as it condenses around me.