At the top of the tallest temple whose apex pokes from the snarl of life like a middle knuckle hunched in an exactly square east-facing doorway a monkey sings softly paw curled around nothing beside her.
Along twisted pathways below vines reach for the back of something that ran by a century earlier.
I am the rain carrying an apology to your shoulders.
2
My Love Is a Greedy Deity
Worshipful one, I command thee: bring Bartlett pears—three, or five— slice them so no bruise remains place them in a ring like a child’s drawing of the sun.
In the center, erect an altar of gold filings shaved from the wedding rings of high school sweethearts, and on it pile grains of wheat—seven, or eleven— soaked a week in honey.
Then leave. Seek joy or angst as you will but do not return until I call you. I dine now.
I am the sunlight carrying freedom to your enemies.
3
My Body Is an Unmarked Detour
I stare at you from under bright orange hair that seems to alarm you gesture with my red-bearded chin which takes the rest of my head with it in what could be a yes or a suggestion for you to move.
Is there something you would like to talk about? —my choice of shirt, my lack of a manicure? Can you say anything to clear my doubts? —Do you want me to approach or show myself out?
I am the wind carrying salt to your world.
4
My Memory Is a Dove in the Window
In a dream after her heart attack my mother screamed “Bastards!” a word she’s never said aloud at a circle of grey-bearded men facing her their shoulders hooked forward hands hanging white at their sides like skinned birds.
I am the long-held note carrying answers to your daughters.
—War again
The F-16 cuts through air,
then more air, through clouds,
then more clouds, through whatever is
above clouds
above the round earth
with its prickles of cities,
its patchy fields and scratchy deserts
kept in by dented roads,
its pigs, wolverines,
& cats.
All that under it, &
more: perspective, view,
dreamy vision, memories of
front rooms, school rooms,
hospital rooms,
time striped, hatched,
notched on the face of it,
on the vast open face of it,
nothing subtracted, good
or ill. Nothing
taken away: not memories
of who one is supposed to hate
nor statues of who someone once
admired. Like when S said
emotions are only added,
added to themselves and to each
other, and that my reminder we needn’t
be lonely isn’t right, exactly.
The love is added in, she said:
added in like almonds or copper,
like copper to gold, injected
like insulin, inserted like
a grace note. She said, the night bird will still call us to
wakefulness and we’ll be alone
before we’re together. Together,
I insisted. We are
alone and together,
and we’ll be wistful and satisfied,
and forgetful and reminded.
It’s the blessing in the red ridge
of a scar, she tells me.
The and of living more.
In the night a car plowed sideways through our front yard and left a tall cedar pointing into our bedroom window, like a prosecuting attorney asking who did what, when, where.
“Did you put on gloves?” a friend asked about my being first on the scene. God I forgot. I wanted to save someone. But limber as gymnasts the drunk driver and passenger stuck their landing.
There was that time when Chris came shouting into my kitchen and I tended her cut scalp, tried to get her to call the police, stuck my anger behind my face and just cleaned
the red sink, red counters, red floor. No gloves. No saving.
And the time a man who needed a bath and clean clothes heckled us marchers at a Pride parade. Most of the women said Have a nice day and kept walking but he called me a name whose invisible weight
tilted a scale inside me. I didn’t aim for his face and miss. I aimed for his hat brim and it took his head with it.
What were you thinking? my lover shouted as the man walked away fast, muttering. God I don’t know. I wanted to stop him. I wanted
to get his attention. To make him afraid. I wanted to be enormous to save someone.
forgets that parts of her
are missing
that other parts once
angled for attention
she took time
as if it couldn’t be bent, flattened, eliminated, reordered
and effort
as if it was matter
as if it mattered
as if it could be compressed or exploded, colored in, Photoshopped out
with her everywhere,
twin burdens slung from a yoke
she ignored the warnings all around
the flags, sirens, scars, flashing
beacons, allergic reactions, slaps on the
cheek, fullness, emptiness, the color red,
the lack of color
she had let it go let it all go let it go let the cells
puff up or fall where they would into the cracks in her arms and legs
over the dents in her lips through the tunnels in her scalp
into the empty spaces she’d forgotten
a landfill of woman
a historical dustbin
an entire lost tribe
too remote and ugly to signify