Painted with Birds and Insects Amongst Blossoming Branches

The teapot had drawn him in—its blue pattern calling from some past; a dream perhaps.  Her dress, yes, blue slubbed with white, twined over and over, long like how his bones felt now that he remembered, something deep and flowing through him.

He wasn’t going to that shop, just passing by on his way to the hardware store for some couplings.  Some couplings, dammit.  And then the blue in the window glinted, caught his eye.  He went in feeling too large, of course, too unsteady.  If only it had been some bigger place, some vast anonymous brightly lit box where he could slide into an aisle unnoticed and browse with his eyes scanning the shelves, his fingers free to touch without any questions.  But it was a cubbyhole of a teashop, a dark acrid den.  He was afraid to ask about the pot.  He didn’t want to hear its provenance—how it was Delft or Chinese or what the design meant—he only wanted to touch it, to hold it close to his face . . . .

“You like that pot?” 

Oh please, he thought, don’t say it, don’t tell me.  “Yes,” he nodded, looking downward, sighing.  

Just then another customer banged through the door, jangling the red strung tangle of brass bells and asking loudly, almost bellowing:  “Tea.  I need Green Tea.  And White Peony.  Do you have these?”

Oh, thank god, he thought.   While the proprietor re-directed her gaze, he reached quickly into the window display and grabbed the teapot, pressing the blue shining ceramic to his cheek.  A sleek, cold rush; thrilling, like popping one’s head out at night from an overwarm house to just catch a glimpse of a sliver of the moon before it was shrouded again in frosty clouds.  “Forgive me.  Forgive me, my love,” he whispered to the soft glaze, the tiny twists of stems and wings.  Just as quickly as he had grabbed it, he replaced the pot and left the store.  Back on the blaze of the sunlit street, he felt his heart burring, his whole being smiling.  What, what was he doing?

He had gone mad.  He shrugged and kept going. 

Typhoid Mary Never Washed Her Hands

The Saab broke down again.  This would have sent me into a panic of money worries, but Dell never seemed to panic.  Her previous man had been a mechanic—I knew that.  She got on the phone and had the silver beast towed.  At the shop she spoke authoritatively to the repairman.  She had a list of probable causes in her head she was ticking off, knowing how much each item should cost, weighing the repair costs over the worth of the car.  Meanwhile, as the man looked things up on his computer, she was continuing her previous conversation with me, complaining about her husband as girlfriends do, just little annoyances: How he wasn’t aligned with her.  How he didn’t understand her completely.  How he wasn’t affectionate when she felt low and in need of it.  And I thought, Oh, why can’t he be magnificent?  Why this sagging gap between men and women?  But then there was all that I didn’t see, the mystery that arched between them and them alone.  I thought of the men I knew and how they were.  How were they?  Did I remember?  It was the long silences that tripped me up, perplexed me.  What I wanted was a blessed communion of souls and I could only come to blank, shamed silences, lying on the floor mute and still.   Had men’s feelings been so raw and so stoppered that when they broke such terrible floods burst out and destroyed every tender bridge leaving nothing in their wake?   I could not speak to the emptiness I had witnessed.  It tore at my own understanding and blurred my belief in the order of the world. 

As Dell was talking, I noticed a molar in my mouth had gone wrong.  It seemed to be hanging lower than usual, worrying my tongue.  Oh!  Dell said that her dentist was right next to this shop.   He was so wonderful; he always found time for any emergency no matter how small.   He wouldn’t mind fixing it for me.  She took me straight over to his office.  A tan, muscled, and grinning man in a tight short-sleeved white jacket greeted us.  I immediately hated him.  He kept rubbing his hands together greedily as though he couldn’t wait to get them in my mouth.  I wanted to leave, but my tooth!  I had to have it fixed. 

Dell left me with the good doctor and went back to the repair shop to finish her business there.  He sat me down at the base of a small theater with all of his interns blabbing and joking in the seats above us, as students will before class starts.  He was explaining the procedure to me.  How important it was.  He sensed my hesitation.  Of course I had the option of doing nothing, he said with a grin, and get along just fine if I wished, for the moment.   I could ignore my molar, but at what cost in the future?  What about sex?  I blanched at that.  Was he saying how important it was for my orifice to be the sweet smooth vessel for a male organ?  That my oral health was primarily for the good of mankind?  Of course he hadn’t said that.  Why did my mind go there?  I could hear all the students murmuring approval and agreeing.  What was he saying, then?  I shook my head and blinked and saw that he wasn’t looking at me, but pointing to illustrations of the operation.  The molar would have to come out.  Teeth were primitive.   Enamel and bone in the mouth had served our ancestors, but decades of research had brought modern dentistry to the point where teeth were irrelevant, replaceable by . . . and he showed a diagnostic diagram so fantastic and incomprehensible to me as though it were the inner workings of a massive mechanical Leviathan.  And the scrub-wearing youth kept up their loud commentary behind us.  Look, I said to the dentist, can’t we do this in your office?  It seemed that my private inner workings were being displayed, something so embarrassing and personal and somehow shameful.  Oh, she has teeth, then?  No one has those anymore.  I turned to them and began to scream.  Shut up!  Shut up!  Shut up!  I screamed and screamed at them until a bell sounded and they all left.  5 pm.  Quitting time. 

I left, too.  There is nothing wrong with me, I mumbled to myself.  My tooth is fine, a little long and sore, but I’ll live.

I walked to a vineyard where the vines were old, over 50 years like me, I thought.  Maybe that wasn’t so old.  Dusty fat grapes hung off them, almost brown in their ripeness.  I picked one and it split open like a fig and its juice spilled out into my mouth as flavors unrolled like a carpet.  New patterns kept emerging, bright and sweet yet threaded with dark notes.  I’ve planted all of this.  And I’ll keep planting.  All these long rows like a pipeline heading . . . I kept walking.

Dell picked me up in front of the theater.  The weather had turned cold and her face with rimmed with a fur-lined hood, like Diana, like a fantastical huntress.  Her young son was with her.  I told him about a man driving 100mph there.  It was Dell’s ex-husband, the boy’s father, but I kept that part to myself.  I made him into a legend and started to spin a story about him:  The dangerous maniac who had flown down streets and terrorized little dogs and children.   No one could stop him, no one dared and he had driven the same route we were on.  He just kept speeding along until he was airborne, I said, just as our car hit the crest of a hill, just as I looked at Dell and wondered why she was driving so fast.   “And then he flew with black hawks and came down into a blackened valley of ravens and cranes.”  I continued,  “swarmed by plump pigeons colored like koi, orange and white, lolling on wires by a barn.”  Her son looked at me askance and went back to his red and blue Legos, smashing one into another.

“Dell, I need coffee,” I told her.  “I’m sorry.  I forgot to get one earlier.”  She glared at me for a minute and then relented.  She didn’t want to stop, but she knew a place.  We pulled over.  I realized that I really wanted a French press, but it would take too long.  We entered the coffee shop.  A man and his aged father were in line with us.  I quickly decided to order a latte, which was the fastest word I could think of.  The old man was asking for a burgundy and beef roast.  His son was trying to pull him back.  “Dad, they don’t have that here, it’s a coffee place.”  Dad persisted.  “Burgundy.  What do you have for burgundy?  Meat loaf will be alright if you don’t have a roast, and potatoes, mashed, with gravy.”  He turned to look at me.   I was trying not to stare back.  I lowered my eyes.  I felt embarrassed for my rushed order of a latte.  What he was ordering actually sounded better.  His son was mortified and I couldn’t help but share in his discomfort.   But what shame was there in asking for what one really wanted?  The old man had a thin blue worn washcloth in his hands.  He brought it up to my mouth and began wiping my lips.  “Hold still,” he said, “I’ll get it.”  He brushed the soft terrycloth over and all around my mouth.  I don’t know what was on my lips, but I let him wipe me clean.  I don’t know.  I don’t know.  But I let him wipe me clean anyway.

All at Once

The night air is close

               like jasmine tea,

petals pressed in leaves of musty books,

              wistful spun silk.

You

rise like a luminous,

              distant planet

And I blanket myself

over some falling

                   stream,

as you paint the night sky

on my face,

tracing ancient lace trails

with each soft breath;

A sonic gesture

            telling tales

                  of fealty and desire.

Circles into circles,

        a thin weave of skin

Small leaves

        Some drift of acanthus.

Slow rain drops

                 Intently.

Green grey

               The wind.

Your hands press

               Against me,

Dropping my

              Stacked shoulders,

My solitude,

              all at once.

The Hiss of Fossils

Africa is so arid.

We glide over Kenya, where I’ve never been.

The shrubby carpetweed and purslane clump;

outposts of savanna trees seen from our plane.

And the sudden grace of being airborne,

while just walking on clay-pack landfill,

a sunwashed track on a hillock of trash,

the exhilarant height from my head

to the ground,

returns me to that buried child,

diving most earnestly into play.

I drew a line

I remember a stopping point

leading up to full bloom,

shaking and wondering:

Why haven’t I done this before?

I came hard and cried:

Green irises exploding in jaguar spots.

I cry sometimes.

Sometimes I cry.

I didn’t feel bad

about the train sex.

I was afraid of the next stop,

but I didn’t feel bad.

I didn’t speak.

I couldn’t.

I drew a line.

Today is better

than yesterday.

I just let it be,

just curled like so;

Like a pillow in a case,

a hand around a book,

Just so.

you just have to fold

She prefers Rachmaninov to Wagner and I think, “Good Girl!”

The girl who is a little mad for the Beatles and looks lovely and shy,

hair parted with barrettes, falling in love . . . perhaps . . .

But she states her preferences, she does have that.

I’ve gotten sucked into something that’s not me, not my life.

I’m ungrounded and wandering full of longing, unspeakable,

because obsessions are ungodly that way

and make people hate you after awhile; even your best friends can’t stand to listen to you.

I pin Marlboro ads of glossy horses

all around my high, four-poster bed fitted with the white chenille

and tear through Barbara Cartland Romances

Guiltily.

It’s not right.  It’s not right.

But I don’t know what else to do.

There is the lonely high desert beauty of the wild horses

and the sweet young innocents and their bodices,

to be sacrificed to love, the beauty of it,

the stiff mount of the paramour,

if it could just be so on this hill,

this golden mesa.

A plate of haddock and chips 

and a pint and a half of Guinness later,

we finally got around to men.

What did we want.

I feel high and flirty suddenly.

I dismiss the men at the end of the bar as too old, but then, the one with glasses . . .

And salt and pepper hair, perhaps . . . a somber aspect, vinegary.

Just like us, two friends out for a drink on a holiday night.

On a holiday, you just have to fold your hand, my friend said.

It takes so long to tighten it up, to straighten things, you just have to fold.

Too old.  I think again.  Then not knowing what age means.

How old am I?

I just want someone who likes me, my friend says.

Huh, I snort.  But she’s right.

If only someone would be pleasant, nice.

“I’m the nice guy who every girl says she wants, but really doesn’t.”

Gah, who wants to deal with that massive annoyance.

I shut the dating site down with the snap of the laptop.  No one.  No one there for me.

Desire. 

She tells me that I don’t want a mirror of myself

after I tell her that I do.

The glasses behind the bar shine and I smile.

My mother picked the difficult one.  She wanted a challenge!

I pick younger.  My friend wants older.

Alright, then, we aren’t conjoined twins,

although sympathic and invested in this friendship.

I feel bad for having scoffed at her interest in knitting.

Just because I’m that sort.  To judge it as what Old Women Do:

Baby their pets and knit and cry at movies or in public on buses.

And I’m NOT OLD!

Why shouldn’t she churn out loads of knotted patterns?

What am I doing with myself?  Drawing.  

I start to sketch the bottle of grenadine and an imagined crème

with stars and stylized sunflowers like a schoolgirl.

How could I be in love with someone who didn’t like

Crème Anglaise?

It’s her turn to snort.

I had practiced that one.  I knew she would get it.

Crème Anglaise.

I draw my spoon in paisleys through it,

press the embossed sterling beads to my lips,

inhaling the mix of vanilla and metal,

like buttons,

And the tweed, the cedary tweed.

I think of the boy who smelled of a Linden Tree.

And so thin, a lovely trunk and limbs.

I wrapped around him like a vine,

green and urgent.

And the way his hair curled to a small fascinating delta

on the nape of his neck.

I sigh.

The Mississippi of him

The long dark warmth

The river at night

So dangerous and vibrant with a play of moonlight

Lapping.

That was my year of twenty-one year olds

He was the brightest, really.

Though he inevitably slipped me a stone.

He smiled at me with his hand holding Rilke

And said I had to come home with him.

And I did. 

A smile.  If only.

He’s a lawyer now.  I found him online.

I can only shake my head.  He wanted to help people, he said.

I wish I could see him again.  But he has probably gone all soft and the flame gone out.

Men don’t seem to age well.

Have I?

I can’t tell.  Sometimes it seems that I barely know anything about myself.

I have to have dreams to talk sense into me.  I can’t seem to trust my desires in daylight.

That’s it.  Trust.

It has been broken.  Over and over. 

Like a good girl myself, I listen to Beethoven

In the morning.  A distant thunder.

Sucking in papery woodbine

And downing coffee.

Stamping through the garden

in a black ink peignoir and coral Happi coat,

flushing out Japanese Beetles from wrinkled pink bonicas and the

golden raspberries, drowning them in soap.

The dew washing my feet.

The waffle iron is smoking, too.

Brahms is what I want, I think.

Something soothing.

What do I want?

When my professor asked me in Pyatigorsk,

I lied.  I wanted him.  I wanted him to hold me.

To love me.  I wanted him not to have feet of clay.

I wanted him to be my perfect mentor, my father, my teacher.

But I asked for my friends.  I was very drunk on Georgian Champagne and very homesick. 

I wanted love, but I couldn’t trust those words.

He sat and let me cry.  That was a great gift.  I didn’t know it then, but it was a gift.

Not to try and fix me, but to let me be.  To let the backwater of my heart unstop and flow

in quiet tears.  As he stood guard, smoking like a dragon, folded at the end of my bed, still as Buddha.

Weep, then, little one, weep.

Louise said Heaven

I don’t think I’ll see any lovers this morning

rising from dewy meadows,

twined like bind weeds

and blooming pink hued and golden

with such clinging desire.

This morning only grey plumed pigeons

paired on the power plant lines

below sleeping peregrines.

You went through London’s swamp

clutching that last thing,

the mantlepiece clock

and its key for winding. 

What happened to perpetual motion?  

Timepieces, simple mechanics,

just hands sweeping around a dial,

the earth around the sun,

the shifting moon factored in. 

No confusion,

clouds come up,

but the mountain stands still,

the erosion, the plates underneath,

too slow to register any significant error. 

Yet always the friction.

Louise said heaven.

Some pale plateau glowing

in her fervent imagination,

but also tangible

like a thatch of a chestnut’s mane

that you can’t help but thread your fingers through

and hold close, inhaling the musk and fire. 

Who named you and made you other. 

And what energy fuels this need to grasp

and stake some claim, graze into the next pasture.

The senses sway and pull us under the blue green caress in waves.

We glean and gather and pack our hearts with rough bales,

Only to pull out later

Sad amber catches of eyelashes and kisses,

faint pockets of breathless gasps

on the edges of desks, perhaps,

where beauty falls

in each swerving atom

and should they collide . . . .