She has always been afraid to come here.It is the river she mostremembers, the livingand the dead both crying for help.A world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation.The matsu trees brush her hair as she passesbeneath them, as do the shining strands of barbed wire.Where this lake is, there was a lake,where these black pine…
We spend our morningin the flower stalls countingthe dark tongues of bellsthat hang from ropes waitingfor the silence of an hour.We find a table, ask for paella,cold soup and wine, where a calmlight trembles years behind us.In Buenos Aires only threeyears ago, it was the last time his handslipped into her dress, with pearlscooling her…
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for thenight. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistolon the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare onits black cord over the house. On the televisionwas a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottleswere embedded in the walls around the house toscoop the kneecaps from…
On the phonograph, the voiceof a woman already dead for threedecades, singing of a manwho could make her do anything.On the table, two fragileglasses of black wine,a bottle wrapped in its towel.It is that room, the onewe took in every city, it isas I remember: the bed, a blockof moonlight and pillows.My fingernails, pecks of…
from the imprint of perfect wings and cold gowns,and we stagger together wine-breathed into townwhere our people are buildingtheir armies again, short years afterbody bags, after burnings. There is a manI’ve come to love after thirty, and we haveour rituals of coffee, of airports, regret.After love we smoke and sleepwith magazines, two shot glassesand the…
They sway within you in steady wind of your breath. You are forever swinging between this being and another, one being and another. There is a word for it crawling in your mouth each night. Speak it.Ancapagari has circled, returned to these highlands. The yellow pines deathless, the sparrow hawks scull, the waters are going…
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hairon my legs with a knife, getting white.My hair is the color of chopped maples.My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south.(Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills)Skin polished as a Ming bowlshowing its blood cracks, its age, I have hundredsof names for the…
By boat to Seurasaari wherethe small fish were called vendace.A man blew a horn of birchwoodtoward the nightless sea.Still voice. Fire that is no fire.Ahead years unknown to be lived—Bells from the tower in the all-at-once, thenone by one, hours. Outside(so fleetingly) ourselves—In a still mirror, in a blue withinwhere this earthly journey dreamingitself begins,thought…
fire in a fenced clearing.The posts’ blunt stubs sank down,they circled and were roofed by milledlumber dragged at one time to the coast.We slept there.Each morning the minus tide—weeds flowed it like hair swimming.The starfish gripped rock, pastel,rough. Fish bones lay in sun.Each noon the milk fog sankfrom cloud cover, came inour clothes and held…
The fires of a thousand small campsspilled on a hillside.I pull leeks, morels from the soil,fry chubs from the lake in moonlight.I hear someone, hear the splash, groanof a waterpump, wipe my mouth.Fish grease spits at darkness.Once I nudged a canoe through that water,letting its paddle lift, drip.I was sucked down smaller than the soundof…
