Movable Borders
I have enough to eat.
The news sells cereal
with a pound of flesh–
a charred toddler–air raid veteran.
My home is still
as a funeral parlor.
TV sells soap, the stain of mass
evacuations, walking mass graves,
eluding the cleansing. Today.
It burns the muscles of my
belief. But I never
did exercise regimentally…
I can touch the war between the
states with my great, great grand-
mother’s white glove hand. Our
farm, before the tornado took the
old Place…Young Heathcote Mill–
grinding the Mason-Dixon Line.
It could have been a hiding
place. Under the gearworks, behind
the race…for me, for railroad passengers…
I have known no war.
So I turn down the volume,
go for a snack when I’ve had my
fill–The child’s parents among
Those shot. The distance of death,
Sudden or slow. What I could know…
She never hit me. Our crime was
similarity.
Daughter and mother in the same
old battle to change each other.
Geography the only poultice/politic.
From America, Serbs and Albanians
look and sound and shoot the same,
playing Mother May I at the border, at the
pit, at the polls, apart.
No bullet pocks or splatter patterns
mark my sister’s house. Today.
I have known no war, she repeats like
a rifle, rolling his drawers for receipts.
He sets his pattern and she pours
herself into that casing. Confined,
she swells like bread. The hardening, the
hairline stress, his bottle-
rocket burst–Not rage, not
rage, not rage, she rattles.
CNN doesn’t blink.
They are cleansed. He is quiet.
She is quiet. He makes another
promise, unkeepable. She believes it
again, and rests. And Serbs slip over
the border with the clothes on their backs. And
Chechnyans drive over Russia, un-
welcome garbage scows. And the
Canada geese move in a v
for victory…or Vietnam…
She will visit me at Easter.
I will crucify my opinion to cleanse her stay;
a sacrifice for a cease-fire.
Delicious distance.
—WT
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Addah Belle’s Pocket Watch
Addah Belle’s pocket watch stands open
on my desk like a sandwich board
advertisement.
I want to shrink down and crawl under it,
camping in my ticking tent. Constellations and
bug spray.
Addah Belle knew me. She could
look at me and tell. She could tell my
future. In her time women married.
Addah Belle chose door number two
and taught at a girls’ finishing school,
finishing them off for marriage.
Retirement came abruptly. Bourbon and
ceremonies. The stillness of her room
in the farmhouse. And no Marion.
Two twin beds, like a dormitory, and her
married sister downstairs and grandkids on
long weekends.
So I, her grand niece, tracked in
with pocket frogs, too-close best
friends and notebooks. She noticed.
Mom cut my unattended hair short.
Strangers took me for a boy. A boy
with notebooks. Listening to Auntie.
And the pocket watch tent would ticka tick,
flashlights and ghost stories on her desk while
she advised I could be a writer, plan a career.
In her time pocket watches were for men.
That might be how it came to her. Tom,
the last at bat who walked home
lost, wondering why she wouldn’t
marry him, why remaining at school with
Marion was preferable. The watch
forgotten on a wash stand, a library shelf,
a parlor bridge table. Tempus abire tibi est. [It’s time for you to go away]
But the watch she kept and wound, for the sound.
I was a writer when she died. I was a lesbian when
I found her love letters. I hope I am memory as I ticka
tick away at a career, our career.
Tempus vitam regit. [Time rules life]
—WT
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Gin Bottles
We know this secluded warm pool
and every time my plane lands in your town
we agree by looks to dip a little deeper.
I’ve been marking my mother’s gin bottles,
afraid to see the levels go down…and marking
my skin as the water of us climbs me…and you
and there is the breath-held thrill that fear might
come as a cold current. But not so far, and last
time you dipped me in the words I love you.
It wasn’t a splash, just some interplay of water
waves and sound waves and time spiraling
imperceptibly as we gave space and touch.
How do I mark this?
Fear asks the question. I know you meant it
as another holon holding me against my own
demon towel. How do I let you know that,
even so, I’ll take it?
Gin bottles. I drink too much fear. In a growing
moment, I believe I can breathe underwater.
And our warm pool is space, silently expanding
after the big bang that didn’t hurt a bit.
–Wren Tuatha
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Battling Janus Enough
Janus is the Roman god of beginnings and endings. He has two bearded faces.
Battling Janus Enough
Your arms arch lazily over me like a train set.
My breathing builds but I’m burning coal,
blowing smoke. Our fingertips buzz near, quiet,
a Sistine Chapel moment in the dark of your
bed. You let the last of my words come,
with the same grace you wore to let me in.
And the knocking sound is the
refrigerator, you say. And January
lays her hair on your shoulders as you
pivot. Janus would mutter cold in my ear,
and then he’s in my ribcage, playing me
like a piano from the inside.
I’m convinced we’ll wake you.
Janus plays words without music, I’ve gotten what
you have to give. It’s about endings. Open sounds
in the dark, even the fridge shudders. I gave you
my stories and they weren’t enough currency to
buy what I came for.
I’m humming along. I am not magnificent
enough.
Enough. I want to reclaim the real estate of
my ribcage.
The new moon has been stuck in the black
for days and I have kept bleeding. I pool
my power in my vessel.
I bring as Janus labels me a taker.
He climbs down a rung.
I word and Janus parrots that words are empty space.
But he slithers seductively down.
I move when Janus sings freeze.
His eyes glow but they don’t shine like yours as he
trips on the lip of my vessel.
Janus curls inside me, confused and warm.
His beards are coated and sticky with blood.
The taste of iron has taken his words.
I cup your hand and track your arm across to
my belly, button, cute as a button, I press
your hot palm in and we’re at the controls,
I press and my blood draws Janus out,
unchosen this time.
Endings and beginnings are words in the void of space.
I say it is about beginnings, maybe not for us,
but for me.
—WT
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Plankton
Look at me wintering, wise little raccoon,
cold, anxious fingers licking tea and dreadlocks,
sorting yellow seeds from poppy seeds,
poppy seeds from dirt, dirt from food.
Washing and typing, busy hands to
keep up with this head, ahead of this
pining for summer and shiny sweat.
Light will rise soon, bringing haiku and
didgeridoos.
Shiny things. Knobs to turn and regret.
Spilling and more things to sort.
Shiny things, the glint in his eye in a
photograph. The prism in his eye so
close that his open mouth is sifting me
in like plankton. Hazel. His eyes are
shiny. I surrender my skin to his
nutrition.
Light kisses his calendar and we are
markers and pix and a plate of
pearly mung beans. Yellow seeds left,
poppy right, and parsley, deep green
from between the bricks. A shiny eye
and I loose my language.
—WT
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The Thud of Escapement
It came to me in the watch museum.
It’s weights, hammers and gears.
Action, reaction. Action, reaction.
The thud of escapement.
The dominoes of a story.
I want to stand inside a pocketwatch
and lose myself to inevitable design.
I want a plan well engineered,
that leaves nothing to emotion but the
joy of cog after cog, falling in track,
ticking toward the unalarmed achievement of
another hour struck. Zen empty time.
And thus our story could be like a watch,
Action, reaction. Weights, hammers, gears.
Little gears for instant gratification,
Huge gears that circle in years with minute changes.
And I could know that your actions are reactions,
along a path which matters like another hour struck.
Nothing personal.
-WT
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Suiza
Bride of the Wind by Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) Oil on canvass, Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland. Self-portrait of the Austrian artist expressing his unrequited love for Alma Mahler, widow of composer Gustav Mahler.
_________________
Suiza
Suiza sits and the planet hesitates on its axis.
Adventures come and go and
quiet pours in like poisonous mercury.
Suiza poses on the bow of a yacht and
there is not enough alive to inhale. A school of
reporters darts starboard and port. A dive to
the reef below only exposes jagged barbs of
brilliant coral. What time is it?
Suiza skiis down the mountain because that
was the point of climbing it. The pain and wet
cold of a spill is still exhilarating.
The wet cold rain soaks Suiza’s leathers and
the motorcycle rounds the Alpine bends with a
dangerous life of its own, exceeding speed limits
exquisitely. Who is driving? What time is it?
Suiza, do you see me? Do you see me watching?
Bonnie’s hand lands and Suiza steadies. I tilt
on my axis. Bonnie is there, good for Suiza,
she fits in the box on Suiza’s near shelf. I
teeter and roll out of my wrapping.
I come without a box.
–Wren Tuatha
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Peter with Oranges
I’ll pivot.
Thanks for the oranges and advice.
The citrus of it drips on the latest patch of
my same old rash.
These ones are tart, picked early for
importing, maybe.
But they boost me.
You, picky Peter in the pond,
treading water and explaining the
one cylinder diesel engine while
I-as-Lorelai swam naked circles around
you, pond moss in my dreadlocks, in
your beard. Hikers on the arteries diverted eyes.
We are organs of that larger hungry animal.
You can be the brain, if it would please you.
I’ll be the lungs–belly lungs,
the goddess of the yoga breath.
And words, for me, will cease to be symbols,
just handsome howls and organic grumps.
A corsage over a splinter.
–Wren Tuatha
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Lucille Clifton, Won’t You Celebrate with Me
Former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton has died. This poem seems a perfect way to pause and raise my tea mug to her. I met her briefly in Columbia, Maryland and I was moved, not just by her poetry and narrative style, but by the use of Lucille’s dramatic training in her delivery of each poem. I picture her bringing this one up from the belly:
won’t you celebrate with me
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my one hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
–Lucille Clifton
The Memory of Snow
The souls of women float just above the ground
as if walking on the memory of snow.
Ready to be air if struck, water if kicked,
stone if belittled, fire if ignored.
The souls of women laugh lightly in most moments,
beaming pinpoints through the skin. It makes you
want to touch. Priestesses and party dresses.
And so you touch. Shocked to find flesh, you
notice a bad memory. Soon each woman is the
same woman and her soul is bitter lamplight,
bitter, insatiable lamplight.
The souls of women reel and swoon with
art and moon and business meetings. They
encircle bitter sisters and float just above the ground
as if walking on the memory of snow.
