Concubine of the Quarter Moon

 

I did not hire the day laborer inside whose bones I ride. 

Here is motion, here is time, here is the spinning world.

Here is the trowel, mortar, and metronome hand industrious.

Here is the moon, the hidden language, the valuable burl. 

Here is my compulsion to sing, and my throat empty as a new vase. 

Here is the afflicted tree holding one jewel and a thousand birds.

Merged, the swordsman and the healer, missionary from God.

Ice and ivy grown on my tongue break the bricks with words.

I am a scorched bird born of lightning, hatched from geode silence.

I am more beautiful than any river. I am cloaked in thorns and tar.

One day, laborer and wall will dissolve intestate

and I will rise, concubine of the quarter moon, magna voce avatar.

_______

17

Icarus, always out in the garage,
him and Dad fucking around with their wax wings.
Dad says, don't fly too high or too low, 
but Icarus has clay ears, he just wants to impress some girl.

What do I know? I'm just his sister.
He'd sooner listen to a goat.
Up, up, excelsior! Higher! 
First he is a feather, then he is a stone.

Here's what I am gonna do:
Men always miss the obvious.
I will fly at night when the sea is calm
and the sky has no distractions.

Up here, I can't tell stars from reflections on the water.
Is this my skin or my wings?
It's quiet--nobody heaving anvils of what-to-do my way.
Is it hubris to have my own heart?

I don't know whether I am rising or falling,
but I am in motion.
The ground or the heavens will open,
and I will glide in, Girl Astronaut, Queen of the One Big Try.
_________

for Ella at Toads.

 

Softly and Tenderly

Softly and tenderly,

Jesus is calling

Cheryl and I sang with the others,

standing on the risers in our choir robes

like Christmas angels on a tree. 

Come home, come home,

you who are weary come home

So Cheryl came home

with me to the one-bedroom house

with the rag rugs and 

my grandparent's four-poster bed. 

It's a Kindness to each other,

something a lady understands can't be a sin;

it's a Kindness, our Mercies to each other,

and if breasts are for babies, then baby, I'm in.

See, on the portals He's waiting and watching,

watching for you and for me.

Cheryl sings it in the morning

softly, to herself

with coffee in one hand and keys in the other,

to drive the kids to school on the bus.

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling

calling, O sinner, come home!

I'm home already, or as home as I can be 

with the cream in my coffee all the sweet that I need;

softly and tenderly...taking care of my own,

and all who are weary, Come home!

___________

just something for Rommy's goose "Virtue or Vice" at Toads.

 

 

Dragonfly

I dreamed of you last night.
(Yes, after all this time.)
Everyone was floating, dancing, flying,
and yet you were melancholy, 
and the world kept turning behind

Us where we posed. 
What does "I love you," mean?
Is it glorious in the morning, or as idiotic
as childhood pictures we cringe to see?
Still, who else has seen you

In multi-form, and been proud to say it?
Dreams are shadows, no matter how bright--
and I don't celebrate what's happened to us both.
Here is the curse of compound eyes
the dragonfly knows--everything is on every side,
never distinct, never absolute between blooms and motes. 

I dreamed of you last night.
(Yes, after all this time.)
On rising you were gone and not gone;
I saw all that I cherished about your face, your skin, your fire,
but also the ashes, the waste, the blight.
The curse of the dragonfly is to see ahead and beside,
but never clearly, and--in singular blindness--not at all behind.
________ 

for Bits of Inspiration--dragonfly