And when you are stripped
of cloak and sword
armor gone
skin exposed to the gathering storm--
and the storm always gathers
always upwelling swirls of
did he eat? who did he hurt?
does he cry? Why this rains?
Your soul feeding his soul
as your life fed his life
invistble ubilical pulsing between you
worry, love, exhaustion,knowlge
that some day it will be severed
and what will be left of you?
Hard to be a hero
enmeshed in care
of others
every leavetaking
an abandonment,
needs scaled
one atop the other
rib-crushing
traitjacket.
Easy not to be
body forgotten
in its encasement,
easy not to hear
your heartbeat
in the ceaseless clamour.
Every day, sun rises,
sun falls. A distant call
to look up
shed it all, let the wind
lift your arms
let it all fly.
Once
you were gilded
dawn climbed your shoulders
haloed your head
Once, you drank the sun
life champagne--
felt it bubble within
When did the world shift
from yours to theirs?
When did you become
a black hole
sucking at distant light?
Now they all dance
to music you cannot hear.
Every body more graceful
every face more lovely.
You are ash circles,
the dead weight off flesh
in friction with itself,
Walk, and self chafes against self.
You have proofed
overnight, ballooning disappointment.
Consistency is key.
And boundaries. Boundaries--
again and again,
I review: Don't walk back.
No regrets. Say it once
and hold. He cries
when I say no chocolate.
Forgets the warning: if you don't LISTEN,
if you don't stop. Now!
Please, he pleads
I'm good now. I didn't kick
since I got home.
M heart cracking.
Hand running through his swear-soft hair
his amber-flecked eyes.
Please, Imma, please.
One last chance.
And though I know it shoud be know
out slips yes.
"History rhymes"
my friend posts
it doesn't repeat
exactly
it does merge, mix, echo
Same lined walls,
same gym mattress in the corner
same wail. Same pile of shoes by the door.
When it rained, the perichor
slippery stones
and lights blinking through the clouds
marked which year it was
which round
but now it is the same sullen heat
Fallen figs smashed into the floor.
Swim through the same menace,
watch the same dusty sky.
But now my baby can run halfway
and my daughter can cross the street.
There are two new rabbits in the school petting corner
a new row of graves in the military cemetery
and I am more tired, and sad and heavy
body the clock tracking history
Everyone is a prophet these days
betting on the end of days--
will it be today, or tomorrow
can you make the wedding
and how many low-flying
wings make a divination?
I lower the shutters.
Burrow deep in bed. Know
that always there is more
to lose. Every call a beginning
of a new loss. Better
to crouch between the bags
that you pack--or don't pack--
for the shelter. Think of what to take
or not take. Bite your tongue.
Don't answer. Silence is always
the best measure.
On my third quest
up Yehuda HaNasi--
drop off, pickup, pickup again--
I want to believe
I'm the hero
of my own story.
I feel like the car.
Or the ass.
Giddyup donkey.
Pack apple squeezies,
and baby carrots, pack
crackers, nuts and tangarines.
They won't eat them anyway.
In other lands, women jump handsprings
with hair unbound.
In other lands, they video themselves
setting photos on fire. I look
at the gloaming gold
torching the trees. How it sets fire
to yesterday's puddles.
We play hide and seek
in the dry fountain
De-escalation is key. Lower
your voice. Crouch
down. Slow your body,
though your heart
might pound and if you tense
he’ll feel it. Be calm.
Listen! He screams,
You don’t listen to me!
Stare at the gaping maw
the screaming teeth. Feel
nothing. I thought, he gulps
I thought you said…
But I didn’t say, I want
to say, but don’t–
to de-escalate.
I thought you said
it’s for me. I want
it to be mine.
And I want to give him
what is mine
to swerve the storm
to escape.
No, I say. Walk--
slowly, slowly
--to not escalate.
Recursive
On my forty-fifth birthday, my credit
card gave to me:
30% off at Fox (clothes and home goods)
(calculate school shirts, sweatpants, are PJs included?)
a hand lotion from Sabon
a cake of choice at Zariffa,
which I will eat
though I know I shouldn’t.
For the first time
in almost ten years,
I will not
stock up on baby clothes.
For the first time
in almost ten years
there is no baby
strapped against my chest
or billowing my belly.
Wait and wait for the weight to lift
only to try to weigh down again–
blanket, vest, power workouts–
ways to broaden the britteling bones
make being dense
and pin my shadow in place
to be sewn down with a lost thimble.
Of course everything circles round
and one day I’ll look back
and laugh–
or cry–
because all water incubates
in the sea and will return
to the sea
even our tears, with their salty traces
and our salt blood
stained red by iron
like the scraps of metal
in the bucket that seeps rust
darkening the water
that will replenish my rickety lemon tree
whose scrawny branches
struggle to bud
or even unfurl their wings
unlike the irridecent sunbird
that darts between them
searching for the sugar water
I forgot to leave in its feeder
because leftovers and decay
are another’s nourishment
mother other udder
merging and switching
like rippes distorting the pond
that flee my finger
and then still
resolving to a face.
Drop the lights
Take down the walls
Uncover the sky.
Tomatoes ripen--
Seedlings wait to be planted--
God pulses through the rising
Vine, through the purpled geranium bud
Through the flower-shaped milk
Ducts, that fill and ache and drip--
Through the cat that prowls its territory
And the fallen leaf that scrapes the floor--
The light that breaks through the grid
Of leftover schach
And through the hospital window
Where Ram breathes in his sap rise
Feels the air enter and rush through his wind
Pipe, feels the wind brooding deep
As worldwide people ping
Photos of the sky
To the phone he will not touch.
No one you
warns
about the shame--
the body turned swamp,
turned quicksand --
how the hollows gape
every time you walk, every time
you climb. Sliding, sliding,
drown—
after breaking, the body
will not seal. Bleed
for a month, three months
eternity. The terror
of sitting. Of shitting.
Put ice. Witch
hazel. Cry your eyes closed.
No one warns you
how the jointed boat
pelvis will creak, rock.
leak. How bodies
once mended, a ridge
of stitching remains,
like a seamed sock
rubbing your shoe.
How you can hate
your own stench
wash and wash,
and never feel clean.
Lord
of hosts
Lord
of knowings
teach
me the multiplicity
of this
body that opens
and
shuts without volition, quivering
like
a vibrating string.
Lord
of endings
beginnings
and thresholds
where
I lie toppled
eyes fixed upward
curled
hands conches
feet transforming
back to
the tail
that
will buy me back my voice.
Within the darkness
that presses its nose
against the window
a baby screams
and screams
her father humming
desperate sursuration
Not mine. Not now
Not today.
Lights out. Bedtime
On distant lit pathways
a stroller appears. Disappears.
I’m scared to go to the army,” my son says.
What if I don’t like the food?
And also--I might get killed.
Crouch in a ditch. Pray.
So many promises I want to make.
But nothing to say.
I tell him of the Davidka,
the canon that couldn’t aim
but saved the city with its roar
The siren shriek
haunts the night
but my children have learned
to barely flich.
Today my son has an earthquake drill;
last night, a missile.
Saferoroms sprout like mushrooms
before the rains.
Two helicopters circle
locuslike overhead.
encircled in the angry
howl of aircraft.
I will have mercy
on whom I have mercy
And grace
on whom I have grace.
Yet how we long to lock
salvation in a box
to shoot at will
Sun ricochets off the waves
and the siren begins
ereely unconstrained.
Bathers stampede towards the changing huts.
I crouch over my baby
tell the preschooler arms over her head
It's nothing, I say. Nothing
to fear. The wail dies.
See, not even a boom, I sooth.
These days, these weeks,
in a shark mouth
propped open with a stick
ready to snap.
An egret scries the murkey water
then plungers, silver
flailing in her beak.
Two weeks till first grade,
two weeks till kindergarten
We balance at the soupy cusp
of the turning year.
And the wind. The drifting bubbles
The kites with streamers
that soar and swoop and crash.
The world perches on stilts
and likes to flip
off the tightrope
spanning the abyss–
fall down to the taut plain
balanced on posts
only to bounce up again.
A costumed woman with a crown of stars
Turns in an undulating banner.
Behind her all things wind-driven and fragile:
Kites, crepe, whirligigs,
sugarfloss that melts to the tongue.
a woman with a rainbow wrapped baby.
My baby runs between the shadows--
I will never wrap him again.
My daughter's keens as her string tangles
my son crying because the tassels tear,
because it flies
because it won't fly
because it falls.
Walls disappear in a sudden gust
that sends kites spinning.
Hold on tight for the next turn
There is heft to sadness
a hard brittleness to grief--
it etches the edges
of the unspoken
the black maw
no sound can breach.
Lips, teeth, tunneling
gullet. All the sloughed-
off selves.
Masticated
crushed and swallowed.
See me, I pray.
Remember who
I am, when I
myself have forgotten.
You said! he screams, you said !
You always lie!
Explain how the buses aren’t running.
Explain we won’t be able to get home.
He is a furious whirlwind, unappeasable.
Every word a promise, and so
every word is a lie.
I hate you! he shrieks. I hate
you. You're the worst mother
in the world. You’re pee. You’re poo.
You’re all the disgust
ing things in the world.”
Vomit and spitup and urine and shit.
Is that not what mothering is?
I want to tell him how
his beautiful face turns ugly
how I hate the snarl of his bared teeth,
how the shades of his eyes pull down
over his soul. But as his mother,
I say Well, I love you. Swallow
the bile. Try to see him
beneath the animal-rictus.
Is this not keeping a promise,
even if unspoken?
