A tree's dark leaves explode to black-wing squadrons in the sky like an airburst lifting all the heavy fruit away. More and more I'm seeing hydras in the green world. I know alchemy in the pot and it's not gold, it's green and grey matter— smoke curled fiddlehead in the fire of a synapse. I'll not romance away, but to stake it that green engenders other colours burst from root to germinate. Farsight eyes a mountain down records the rockiness of its whale hump brown-in-grey and the ear's too deaf to hear its echo sing. It receives nearness by degrees and grows— the Hydra’s sprung new throats!— and the Nearsight’s news is piqued by pine. Shoots erupt through rock thrushes plumb silence from the valleys adding upon limb-brush, hum and stream-spoke sound—the mound’s a mouth of syllables. Written word’s a reaping of wild seed in buried space, is the plant and farming of grey places and that’s a hydra too. The bough’s birchfruit of birds will break the earth for seeds to take and preen them for their worth. Patience! Observe a birth immaculate.
poetry
Dark Nights
I hold this splendid dark night in my hand
Inward gratefully it’s a lovely night
Dark nights like great hideaways
Dark nights like a safe haven
Dark nights like a safe time to take a flight
Dark nights like a sacrament in my hand
Love, a Recipe
You will need:
1 large onion
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into one-inch chunks (about 3 cups)
½ teaspoon turmeric and arsenic
1 can (14 ounce) coconut milk, sweetened
1 unfertilized human heart (if not in season, they are available by the dozen in your grocer’s freezer)
Coarse sea salt to taste
Gingered lime (for garnish)
Directions:
- Slice onions. Do not notice another beautiful woman walking into the room. Do not mutter to yourself in Dutch, keep slicing. The onion is not a metaphor. You are not slicing smaller and smaller gyres of grief. Add garlic.
- In large saucepan over medium heat, simmer coconut milk. Do not chant “I love you, it’s you I love.” Simmer, simmer.
- Add the sweet potato and the heart. Make sure to give yourself ten minutes for the auto-autopsy. If you are using frozen heart, make sure to tenderize it properly. Do not hear the fragmented laughter from the other room. Keep stirring.
- Add turmeric, arsenic and onions. Do not overreact. He is not examining the curvature of eye, tit and ankle while you are seasoning.
- Salt, 2 cups salt. Disregard the salt in your tears, the salt in your wounds, or that time you made out in the ocean.
- Ladle the soup into four bowls, top with a spoonful of jasmine rice. There are no substitutes. There is no time between the gingered lime and the ecstasy. Do not imagine poisons and ways to disguise them. If he sees you crying, blame it on the onions.
- Freeze. This dish is the kind of thing that keeps and does not change.
Here is a poem I wrote when I was 18—how embarrassing! As you can see from the poem, there is a great deal of teenage angst! I was trying to play with the recipe form at the time, and see what happened. For me, poetry has always been a kind of fun language experiment. This is from a real recipe that I love, and I just substituted the ‘real’ ingredients for more ‘poetic’ ones.
Tokens
I used to think that a glassy, effervescent stone, dug up from the dirt and spit-shined for song, could message the moon and undress its powers to control the sea from my pockets; that a long, cylindrical whistle, carved from soft wood and painted in earth tones, could call the birds from the south and conduct their music; that a broken watch left behind by my grandfather, could turn the tides of fortune into my waiting palms. But the undulations of the ocean remain strange and ethereal without retiring to the swoops of my hand, for tilling the land where the cattle graze takes more than a rock, a whistle, a watch, and an Ohm.
Blind Man View
What is it that a blind man sees? Without his sight, does it make him free? After all how can he get hurt if he can’t witness pain, How can he love if he can’t see what love contains? Fingers upon curvatures, a choice to see what’s bad Not knowing the difference between what he has and what he had Because if he can’t see what’s come and what’s left him behind Then he doesn’t know a piece is missing, not wishing to rewind But if he can’t see the bad, how will he be secure? Read a face with fingertips but someone’s heart he can’t be sure? So what exactly does a blind man see? Blots of colour, or a smudge spree? Does he see any outlines, or nothing at all? Discoloured pupils, running into walls. But when blinded, all other senses increase so much more So I guess he sees much better than he ever did before
Memory
Trees hunch over sky; skin and hard-bone cliffs. Come winter: beards of ice, grunting stone. That day I walked into surf, wore a shawl of sea spray. Still in her armchair, my grandmother wades past headlands to open ocean where waves wrestle and refract. And then farther: there, the sky is unbroken and the wind never blows. Her returning rain sews green to grass.