An ember, hot poker, a cry, a drop, a crash— the Miller tells his tale with relish. And here alone in the Mill City I’ll embellish The story just a bit and a little slapdash.
The river foam isn’t flour-white, but flour’s not white Only bleached And I’m beached On a riverbank without a fight.
There is no flood Only flour, and ice in the blood And concrete and mud.
You have become soft, I whisper When urine stings my nose When smoke smarts my eyes When shouts grate my ears.
You have become soft, I cry When I long for a smile When I ask for some sweetness When I look for a cushion or shade.
You are soft and pliant as cheese You are soft and wispy as leaves You are soft and easy as rain.
But then again, perhaps I am not soft. Perhaps I am ripe.
If a man would be a leader, let him be a bridge. If a woman would be a leader, let her be a pylon. Let her slice against the current, watching waterbirds fly on Beyond her sight over the distant ridge
Where rapids stretch their legs and meander
Out into the world. Let her buttress with steely arms
The passersby who fear no harm
From great arches, their master and commander.
Gathering barnacles and algae, Our pylon stands in shadow And ice and foam.
Straight backed as a tree With woody fingers full of snow A current for a home.
The curve of your hip flares out like a queen’s crown, And your hair is the mantle of a king. Buried under wind driven snow or ash we can’t—or don’t—think of the kingdom’s fall. Where your calf curves out and buckles in, I watch and I want to weep. That is the only logical response to such ecstasy.
Cast your nets wide, I tell the young people with big eyes and empty hearts,
Throw fishing lines out, spinning until you have woven yourself a web
Or a mat
Or a blanket.
Take courage, I say to my students, because if you cast enough lines the world will begin to catch them steady.
You will find fish in your net, meals in your web, prayer upon your mat, warmth in your blanket.
And so here I cast out a line of my own.
Hello.
I turn my belly skyward for your viewing pleasure. Does this please you? Your gaze scorches this skin-patch, but I don’t flinch. Would you notice if I did? My tongue lolls out, hungry for the taste of your knowing fingers. May I lick them? I thirst, I pant, I am want itself, I am inflated with desire. Won’t you fill me? Your gaze is fickle, but I am faithful. I am patient. I must wait.
I long to be a blank space in your history. I long for your touch, for your fingers to twist and pull at the strands of my signature.
Say my name.
Your silence is my death. Your silence presses my bones deeper into earth, dirt dampening the cries in my lungs.
Say my name.
My son was king, my son survives. My son is not I, I am not my son nor my daughters nor their dynasty.
Say my name.
The sound of my needle piercing linen is
As crisp as a cherry popping forth from red lips
As round as a plum pressed to pink tongue.
I draw pink thread through each wound I make, Suturing past to present.
The hole of this needle gives way to the eye of a skull, then another.
A hole in the shape of a nose blooms in negative space, a Bermuda Triangle ignorant of scent on the air.
Holes between teeth jut down, down toward a clavicle, a sternum, an absent breast, enfolded in nagajuban and furisode.
And above these pink-tinged bones, sakura begin to drip down the canvas, thick as molasses and bright as the skin below an eyelid. As optimistic as Brooklyn in spring, sakura pour over the bones.
Who is this dead woman who promenades beyond the grave?
Perhaps her bones are now mine, my flesh sutured to the frame of an island woman who once climbed onto a steamer ship and once climbed off. She would not understand these words.
Perhaps they are the bones of her daughter. Lord give me the grace to forgive what I see in the mirror: that daughter’s cheeks, lips, and eyes. The sad smile of my father. The smirk of my little brother.
Perhaps the bones belong only to me. They are, after all, the offspring of this heavy mind and bloody fingers.
With so little to go on, who knows?
I bless the bones with frothing blossoms in ivory, rose, and scarlet. As with bone, tissue, and blood, sakura live just a day.
Then they rot like memory.
Just a thank you note to say that
Once you were bespectacled, respectable as the stack of yellowed paperbacks behind your mouth that smacks of wis-dom, wise judgement, heavy as a cudgel in the contours of my brain. Your words hung in the air, light as a wrecking ball and there were angels in the atmosphere. Their blood is on your hands, which were extended, palms up, full of gifts that I savor after the slaughter. Gifts like recipes or roadmaps, presents that necessitate
Just a thank you note to say that
If kintsugi makes a thing more precious then my mind is a goldmine, a hoard of glittering things that you plundered and pushed across the table toward me like a bottle of glue, an offer I accepted. Rubble and glue inside a skull, what can I do but suture them together, raise a new dome, like building a ship in a bottle. I craft columns, halls, and balconies that arch toward something ineffable. There are angels in this architecture, birthing and re-birthing like Athena leaping forth and bubbling away like a mermaid in foam. So this is
Just a thank you note to say that
Thanks to you I am an architect, an artist, an angel, a ruin-god-lover-handyman-cynic-golddigger. Thanks to you.
