~*~
Carmine, Alizarine, Madder
Cochineal (Dactylopius coccus)
The cacti and the orchids are doing well
though according to the child they raised
their heads in the middle of that first night
inquiring after their mother
Weathermen continue to predict snow
which never falls for all the chill
air which cuts through walls
The coast can still turn the seed of any thought
precipitate Last night, reading Susan Stewart
my head ascended the ladder of vertigo
Toward Florida, no, further south,
toward Mejico and Chile, the Canary Islands
any place where indios press
cochineal out of insect bodies
How many legumes for a thimbleful of indigo,
how many scales from the prickly pear --
enough red dust
to speckle the surface
of the faulty metronome
a sausage casing
a heart the size of one nopales.
~*~
Getting There
The bodies of fish inhale
memory of air in deepest water.
They slide through rusted portholes
of ruined ships, the elongated
keyboards of dead sailors' ribs, hollow
sockets where a green flush of filaments
and bouquets of sea-anemones
surprise, weaving visions of coral.
The sea undulates in layers, its planed
surfaces the resistance to swim through:
such heavy music, recitals of sharks'
teeth falling like indigo notes on a scored
page. We swim sometimes with desperation
through channels filled with nothing
but the guidance of our own labored
breathing; or with that slow fandango,
clotted blood and honey, the siren
song of centuries. How it breathes
in our brains; how we fold into ourselves
repeatedly, learning tricks of diminishment
and scale— The better to skim through
water as though water were only air,
a portal which takes the shape of light
fanning open, or the wake
of an endlessly passing boat.
~*~
Gecko
He appears
one evening
behind the cabinet
where you keep
the blue soup bowls
whose porcelain sides,
when you hold them up,
admit light through
translucent grains.
Time slows
to the hourglass
trickle of waterdrops
from the eaves.
The twin
eclipses of his eyes
stun a nearby moth
to silence.
In the humidity
of these outlying
provinces,
I can understand
the desire to yield
to the dazzling
emptiness of
celibate hours.
If it dropped
from the wall
and fastened
its languid body
in the canyon of
my nape,
I would hear
its syncopated
questions beating
on my skin,
trailing into
the night, fainter
and fainter—
Will it rain
Will it not rain
Will it rain
Will he come
Will he not come
Will he come
~*~
Bird and Pearl Earring
One who does not understand the yellow
palm-bird says it is noisy. - Yoruba saying
Two would drive me mad as well, three
and I'd be clawing at the drop-cloth's cunning
eyelets, making flint of the mineral teeth
of my cage. Someone slides a window panel,
and I swear more than musky sewer smells or frying
onions push through the oily screen: a hint of rain,
wet sand. A clutch of morels, their woodsy
plush unraveling the ordinary noise
of trains. When I regain the air,
I beat it for such secrets. Some days I cannot tell
what I like better— marble paperweights,
books' deckled edges on the high shelves,
a doily in tatters; or that plaster diadem:
Houdini's eye, salt crystal swinging from
a woman's earlobe, refusing to come free.
~ for Naranja
~*~
Decanter
What did they drink from
in olden times, when river
was mouth and beaker,
when tongues sought
moisture hidden in rocks,
or forked their way to manna
and lightning in the desert?
Dry, the mouth desires
a garden of sweet roots
to masticate between the teeth,
desires the ruby fruit
housed in a skin terrarium.
But they say its waxen sheen darkens
the blood's boiled rose,
say its bones
rattle like hourglass stones.
And the glassmaker's
iron calipers pull
a vessel of glass
through a slit neckline
of heated ash,
so we can hear its crystals
tuned to ringing, its mineral
vapors bound
by flame. My brittle flute,
my sometimes mute
decanter, turned
on a heated spit then raised
to cries and toasts of joy—
Broken on wood or tile
or stone, what matters more—
thirst, or the luck of shards?
~*~