There are angels, good
and bad, right? And we all —
Some of us fly. Fly!
I’d climb into the drawing
Leonardo made and be the figure
bent to gears
and levers and ropes pulling up wings
of tanned hide sewn
with raw silk. And fail. And never
get anywhere for years
and years. Talk to us,
the dead say, our
deep blues set the garden adrift,
our leafy fronds do the shade right.
Still one of the living, I walk there
twice a day, early morning,
evening. Because once
you made me lie down
in that dream, telling me
it’s easy, it’s all
in the small of the back, subtle,
most delicate angle. And you lift
like this, you said.
We’re Not Insects
though we keep time, sort of.
And make our own
white noise. Ask the half-deaf who
lean closer, every word
bottom of a well, under rock and water
and here comes the bucket on a rope,
hitting the mossy sides
the whole way up, here where
cicadas begin in the body, all
its pools and deeps
and dusk. Insects that never
entered the garden by
invitation but their
triumph, their pulse and
their pulse —
Once Made of Feathers and an Ounce of Blood
From then on Katrina
fiercing up from the get-go
any girly girl named that.
Before too, whole phrases
incisor-sharp: fuck you, you fucking fuck!
all down the front. New Orleans,
black T-shirt sold on the street for mischief and joy
years back, pre-nightmare.
One has to respect
options, I said, three parts of speech
pressed into service.
Rage on fabric going, gone
redundant. End of the World, take that! A thing
to slip over your head.
Surely piles of them mouthing off on carts
to wild up later. Ever after. Day of days.
Torn wounded muck of it twisting out to sea,
great biblical sweeps: shipwrecked
porches, car parts in flight, dogs every
bent shape of
howl and horrific, dresser drawers
jet-streamed smithereens
beside warblers battered ancient into
once made of feathers and an ounce of blood.
You. If you ever wore
such a shirt, you’d hold it close,
a live explosive
under a milder, say, button-down.
And pause. Oh yeah? whipping
open, getting even.
Like some
Woden or Zeus seized. Grief
on steroids, if that were a god.
Notation Gregorian
after Kyriale seu Ordinarium Missae, author unknown
To note the inevitable is a most steady terrible job.
Diamonds pox the score, but the other puncta, little
square notes for the chant, many have tails
bedraggled kites can’t get rid of either, the day officially
gloom now, treachery head-on in high wind.
Wily punctum: called virga and often doubled
thus the bivirga, two quavers united by a slur.
It’s a quaver the throat knows, locked
in middle earth and ice. Beware.
But the apostropha is never found alone, e.g. —
in woods, where night falls
like a folktale. Not true! Famine is this
very soundtrack, the least-loved child left there
far from the river, a sacrifice, the yet-to-be bass clef
of any desperate mind. I’d grant
maybe a hungry second girl, both quavers
tap tapping it out.
If you think too hard down centuries about ways
we got here, you can’t think at all.
Don’t ask how an apostropha works finally.
Except I found a stray root in Greek: to turn, to turn away.
And a history of addressing
an imaginary person. In regard to
a repercussion is always to be made — agreed,
off whatever hard-hit note you
don’t see coming, that faint echo down after each
keeps bruising. Minor —
never minor. And beauty
is blue black.
I guess one hears or
does not hear, an inborn thing like that dot to the right
of the square means pause because
I certainly understand hesitation, shame, embarrassment,
the world-without-end medieval underneath
brain, heart
my heart, stop, breathe. Ditto the plain English of
according to circumstances they may be sung
lightly crescendo or decrescendo. That’s depending
on the angle of the stake in the heart put there by
god help us. And how huge
dark trees when
all is lost, those children dawned.
Song Again, in Spring
The bird’s hunger, seeking shape: a worm shape, green