Bitter Greens
I know the bitter ones. The consonants that break
hard against the ear. Kale. Radicchio. Chard.
I know the dark billow of leaves, the wild ripple
above a cinch of twist-tied ankle stems,
the bulging veins in celadon or scarlet splitting
each one up the middle. I know the curly edges.
If they could speak, they’d sound exactly like
those cranky ladies slowly poisoning themselves
on front porches up and down Brenwall Avenue
in 1964. Hair sprayed in frozen waves or held in check
by nylon nets, rings of lipstick on the tan paper
of spent cigarettes scattered in an ashtray’s upturned palm.
What did it mean, they asked, when the fanciest
house on the block got bought by a mixed-race couple?
We perched on the steps, watched their wagging
chins, their smoke rings. We waited for an opening
to beg for cookies. They almost always rose
from the sag of plastic lawn-chair webbing,
let the squealing screen door slam behind,
returned with chocolate chips or Oreos, those bitter,
house-coated women. We took their sweets and scrammed,
ran toward the thin patch of trees we called the woods,
toward the creek, the secret fort, the puddled
mosquito-bog of dead-man’s lake. Ran
toward a future that didn’t belong to them, we thought.
* * * * *
Matisse in the National Gallery
The artist’s wife leans on the turquoise
arm of a slat-backed chair. Her eyes swim —
two black fish in the glass bowl of her face.
The shoulders and sleeves of her blue coat
lose themselves to the background’s indigo
swirls. From across the room, four goldfish
watch from a clear cylinder, their orange
reflections trapped on the water’s surface.
They swim among rough approximations
of philodendron, nasturtium, elephant ears.
Captive within a painted matrix, all circle —
wife, fish, blossom, smudged muddle of
the left hand, the feather nodding in the hat.
In other words, nothing extraordinary —
A woman waits underwater. A fish swims
among houseplants. A girl in a museum sees,
forgets to breathe.
* * * * *
“It Is What It Is”
Now the sooty shearwaters pull their day-long ribbon over the sea.
In the middle distance, the black thread of wings presses
along the invisible road of their ancestors, pulls us to the edge
of the water, to the edge of something we are trying to grasp.
There is the order of the world that we understand,
and the order of the world we do not understand.
A full moon always rises as the sun dissolves into the Pacific.
Wild blackberries are sweetest on the tongue of a small child.
There is no life to be had that doesn’t include a knife stuck in the chest.
Now the hidden clock of our hungers folds its hands.
Feathers multiply on the shore. Squid shelter
among ocean ledges. A heart like the new moon — pitiless, unlit.
* * * * *
Field Notes
after Jericho Brown
In the billowed meadow of the night
A bobcat trots unseen between the sage and lupine.
The soul hunts at night, smelling of sage and lupine.
I check the box. I am not a robot.
Outside the box — stories and dirt. Robotic
Surgery of the soul. I light the candles.
In this anatomical theatre, I candle
the egg, but the egg keeps its mysteries.
Who I am will remain a mystery.
I carry the entire throng of me
Into each day. Is it wrong of me
To say I am a six-fingered star,
A scalpel, a germ, a silent movie star,
A bobcat sleeping in the meadow of the night?