Conjuring

Conjuring

Pursuing the brilliance of scarlet macaws, the insides of blood oranges, a blue so deep wind scrapes spray off the crests of waves, I remember the shock of blue against black in the face of our Siamese cat who had asthma like me. The runt of the litter, he would play till he collapsed, a hump of fur, sides heaving, mouth open, eyes closed, thin high wheezes accompanying each impossible breath. I’d massage him when he wheezed and couldn’t understand why he was put to sleep. In the following weeks I hid in my room when I had asthma, scared the next time it would be me. Or that I’d be sent away like my older sister who rarely called and was only spoken of when I asked, though I knew better. She juggled oranges, made dimes disappear before pulling them from my ears, and tickled me till laughter and her fingers were all that existed, masking even that keen longing for my father’s return.

I’d watch for him on commercials with tall smiling men holding their daughters and in the families saved by Casper and Mighty Mouse. I craved him as other kids told how their dads were lawyers like Perry Mason, doctors like Kildare, or were so strong they built houses and carried their kids around piggyback. I knew if I were good enough he wouldn’t be dead anymore. He’d come back if I did what I was told, was nice, always smiled. I felt him in the large arms of men and reached for him as I placed my feet on top of another man’s huge shoes, my arms stretching up, our hands holding as he walked, my feet and body shadowing his beneath uncontrolled laughter. My father became my guardian angel after I stepped alone onto the red ant nest hidden in rattlesnake grass. I screamed as their teeth tore flesh till large arms swept me up and carried me to cold water to dampen the hot sting.

Stinging like the night I packed my suitcase and ran away. Three blocks later I stashed my pink case, heavy and awkward in my six-year-old arms, behind Melissa’s neatly trimmed hedge. I didn’t know her well enough to ring the doorbell. I was unexpected, uninvited, yet she was the only girl whose house I recognized as it got dark. Peering through the opening between ivory drapes, I saw their dining room table set for dinner, her brothers playing beyond, and was startled by her father when he turned the corner of the outside of their house and asked what I was doing. Scared to say I’d run away, I asked if Melissa could play. As he pulled the long metal rod off the chain link fence, inserted it onto the sprinkler unit, and turned the water on full, he told me it was late, I should be home, out of the dark. I nodded, walked toward my house till he went inside, and then returned. Hugging the shadows, I watched them talk and laugh as her father cut thick slices of roast beef. I stared through that narrow lens of window and strained to hear words, learn their language.

When it got too cold, I went home. My mom, draped in diamonds and a low-cut red-sequined dress, was about to leave for cocktails. She said she knew I’d be back, that I had nowhere to go. I went to my room, pulled toy soldiers out of my closet, set up the lines of defense, before she called me back, told me to fix the lower hinge, loose and squeaky, on her bedroom door. I tightened and oiled the hinge just as I would later tighten and oil the wheels and handlebars on my bike to ride the fire trails behind our house. Rubber scraped from my soles as I skidded round curves and clutched my handlebars as firmly as I had gripped the barrel of the rifle when I was seven. Aiming for cans, I pulled the trigger, my shoulder mottled blue, yellow, green, from the rifle slamming against my too thin body. But I kept pulling, conjuring my father in the activities of men.

And myself in the motion of animals. I would leap over objects with the fierce gallop of horses, move with the stealth of the great horned owl that rose like an apparition across a too huge autumn moon, or run with the cunning of the mouse beneath my red plastic wheelbarrow. Our best mouser couldn’t squeeze her tiger-striped face under the barrow so she placed her front paws on top of it, perhaps to jump, but it tilted and moved forward. The mouse paced itself to remain underneath so our cat stopped periodically to sweep her clawed paw between the wheels unsuccessfully before returning to her hind legs to push farther. Near the cabbage plants the mouse darted into shadowed green. Tracing my finger through air, I tracked the means of escape.

Thank you to the editors of Kalliope for first publishing “Conjuring.”

Obrigada

Obrigada

What if the first word we learned

in another language

was not toilet, how much,

or even where, but instead

thank you;

would we see past lines of experience,

the stumbling of innocence,

broken teeth, exquisite eyes,

to each person’s essence,

the miracle of existence,

and be grateful for a form

that could say gracias, dhanyavaad,

tak, xìe xìe, spasibo, danke, shokran?

Thank you to the editors of Marin Poetry Center Anthology VI for publishing “Obrigada.”

Massage

Massage

circle     polish

each toe

a river stone

unbridle shoulders

where wings would grow

if we could bear

the weight

Thank you to the editors of ¡ZamBomba!: literary magazine for first publishing “Massage.”

Hounds

When first approached, their

tails gently thump thump thump

yet I have watched these hounds

shred deer to bone licked

clean by ferocious tongues.

Sleeping, they seem no more

than lanky pups, glittering

canines concealed, but virile musk

urges them awake, famished,

no longer kenneled in dreams.

Thank you to the editors of California Quarterly for first publishing “Hounds.”

Touching Death

I’ve touched death twice and come back. I feel like a cat, though I’m not counting on nine. I was told as a child that I would not live even thirty years due to severe asthma…. http://www.cezannescarrot.org/vol4iss1/thisedgeofsea.html

Thank you to the editors of Cezanne’s Carrot for publishing “This Edge of Sea.”

Boles, Newman & whimsy-table

Nature is relationships in space.
Geometry defines relationships in space.
Art creates relationships in space.

~M. Boles and R. Newman

I’ve fallen for painting furniture…and here’s the close up of the top

Satsuma

Satsuma

Crescents of tangerine cool nipples

that purse like lips as

O of navel grips its slice &

taut shiny glans raises its

section to the sun, hot through

blue-green leaves of eucalyptus;

tongue slides between citrus & skin,

belly arcs smooth,

teeth release juice bursting

through this moist cavern,

tongue, lapping in slow pulses,

swallows wet open flames.

(Thanks to Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Laurie McAndish King, editors, for including “Graffito” in HOT FLASHES: sexy little stories and poems.www.leftcoastwriters.com–Hot Flashes now has a blog as well:http://hotflashessexystories.com

January 17, 1991: this endless war

January 17, 1991

The day after war begins I
reach to hold, be held
beneath the crescent sliver of waxing snow moon
I feel your chest press   retreat   as we embrace
silken hair weaves through finger-
tips. Men and women die
in a city no longer theirs   no longer
home. Your arms wrap me
as water holds wreathes
and Iraq retaliates,
missiles strike Jerusalem,
ten year old girl cries within the brown
mantis face of her gas mask.
Pressed peach of our cheeks
parts my lips near the tenderness of your neck—
I want to feel
your breath on my tongue
your tongue as I breathe.
And what of those in Baghdad
no warning?

Thank you to the editor of We Speak for Peace, the 1993 anthology  from Knowledge, Ideas & Trends, Inc. and to the editor of Literary Well/Pozo Literario for reprinting it in Vol.5, July 2007 at http://lit.carayanpress.com/eweaver.html For more volumes of this beautiful online zine:  http://lit.carayanpress.com

Dark in Light

Dark in Light

Wanted to show you the moon
but cruised off the wrong ramp
and wound up in a war zone
where there is no curfew:
men standing solo in the middle of the street
or huddled, talking beneath burned-out lamps;

wanted to show you the soccer moon
but drove down darkened roads with bars
enclosing windows and doors,
barbed wire spiraling a hardware
store and nursery—planks and daisies
out of reach;

wanted you to count the seas
across that haloed orb
but drove alone
through neighborhoods as treeless
as that dog-song moon;
beat-up cars driven
beyond unmarked borders
pulled over by uniforms
with clubs and guns,
jagged tension cutting concrete air;

I want to know who
declared this war of Americans
against Americans:
children peer from sheeted windows,
women hide behind hollow doors,
a man looks up from an empty street,
each of us equal
distance from the sun’s reflective sphere.

Thank you to the editor of anthology Something Like Homesickness, Zapizdat Publications, 1997 for first publishing “Dark in Light” and to the editor of Literary Well/Pozo Literario for reprinting it in Vol.5, July 2007:  http://lit.carayanpress.com/eweaver.html For more volumes of this beautiful online zine:  http://lit.carayanpress.com

Choose

There are two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as if everything is a miracle.

~Albert Einstein