Nothing Takes Me Back Like the Sound
of two notes out of tune
with one another, wobbling
towards harmony — my mother
practicing double-stops on her cello,
Beethoven sonatas, but I knew them
as a series of repeated phrases,
repeated, repeated, broken by swearing
or the tap of the pencil as she set it
back on the stand, the same notes
repeated until they lost cohesion
with the whole, the way
the word mulch loses meaning
after repetition — mulch mulch mulch
mulch mulch mulch mulch —
but in the concert hall,
those notes strung together
like stitches form a garment,
spun from her, and I’d remember
the scales and the dammits
and the hours she spent
in her practice room, door
closed, this work she did: mother
mother mother mother mother.
* * * * *
Lilith Dreams
after Philip Schultz & Rodney Jones
Last night I dreamed I was the first man to love a woman.
Before me, only women had loved women, and men
loved other men. Our skins were orange and tasted
of ripe persimmon. We took our pleasures secretly
at first but soon grew bold; and when we were discovered,
it tore the simple world asunder. There was no mercy.
They separated us, me and my love, sent us
to desert islands tied upside-down to the ceiling
of the galaxy, where we dangled painfully and sighed
sprinkles of stars across outer space: God and Adam’s
outstretched fingertips, the moment of creation frozen
so it looks like nothing if not longing. I woke
with my teeth chattering and sweat pouring into my eyes,
knowing I’d been him in the dream but also her, and I
didn’t know which one I missed more. I wandered
out of bed and down the stairs, into the yard where my skin
tightened against the chilly air: two eyes blinking open
under my thin t-shirt. My thighs were not my thighs.
I had touched them with someone else’s hands, or else
had my hands gloved in other, until I could not tell
where myself ended and that other began. Knowledge
raced away from me like it was holy water and I
was trying to catch it in a cracked cup, yolks leaping
back into their shells and the shells snapping shut,
disappearing back up into some warm dark place
beyond a white mass of feathers and wings beating heavy
overhead, shadowing the sky. If at that moment a snake
had offered me an apple, I would’ve snatched it, I was
that desperate. Nothing can soothe the pain of that kind of
discovery and loss. That kind of dreaming and awakening.
* * * * *
Lincolnville Beach
Fractal facts of our existence
matched us up: we are a species
that sees archers, horses, heroes
in the sky. I thought the stars
were made of rock, but you tell me
they are churning gas and heat.
The sky is packed with light
that’s made of air. Is that right? We pace
the beach, arms around each other’s hips,
search for sea glass as our feet
sketch hieroglyphs along the line
where foam recedes, reaches.
Quartz and iron, coral, peridot.
Twists of a kaleidoscope. The sky
is everywhere the sand is not.
Each rock is made of rock.
Your name’s a gesture, litany
of shapes I make from breath.
Repetition doesn’t fade them,
wear them down. With each wave
the water magnifies these nubs
of stone that we call sand:
tap of tongue to teeth; grit.
Iterations of obsidian, cream, sable.
Limestone, lava, lava, limestone.
I especially love the Lilith poem.