_______
Amaranth Borsuk
Dun dove, I’ve come
to ask what aerial
warble we might make,
put out so like
white hair, like strands
of heron in far
air, our dust blown
skyward, rising bright as
felt light towardhorizon,
come to doze, Dove,
blind, dumb, undone in
pathsof dusky seed,
dwell, and, senseless, ask
which wounded, whichdear
deer sound to sound.
The earth turns and the moon
slowly backs away—
an argumentwe’ll never see the end of.
Freed for summer, we fortifyourselves.
Have you been moated by the one you love?
O
Flags in red and blue wink
over bandstands and car lots.Most nights
I’m ice-green: colder than deep ocean,
though not sodark.
O
What becomes of us when the sea pulls out
that finaltime? How will the mirage-sails,
mired at such distance, find theirway to shore?
Our sandcastles will still erode, days willlengthen
into days, we’ll always have a face to face.
O
A ring is a link in a chain. It might
weigh down any hand. And whyweigh
anchor when the sand’s so warm? The ocean
scares me. Thebeach is prickly.
O
The shore is mostly spilth:
What we throw out neverleaves our orbit.
Besides moon, nothing else comes close
exceptthe occasional coal casino:
a meteor or its kin.
O
We’re not lonely hearts. We stick
to ourselves in the heat. Westick
apart. July’s all swelter and we’re mostly
water. UnlikeEarth, we deplete.
O
If sunset’s the sky’s lunula, then moon’s
a lamina. We scale oneanother to reach it.
What are rings for—small trapeze
forhands? Terminal bands on birds?
We circle what we can’tspeak.
O
Her greeting on the soccer field, a hush-hasty, swallowed ‘lo,
withered my trumpet flower and I folded in like a feathered fan.
Ungodly plain with her small face like skim-milk bee-stung,
butlovely where cow-like—the glossy eyes—I like in his lovers
what reflects myself; but I won’t share my epithet.
He shivered and flicked away a halo of horseflies.
On the otherside of the field, the children began not touching.
I pressed my heel into the turf again and again with my trademark
precision. My husband jingled moonily, so I asked him
to invite herfor dinner or a weekend because if I saw her, he could not
seeher, though I knew she would not want this from her dopey Oh andUh.
With her listless invalid beauty, her need for a herding hand, who
could not feel sorry for such a beast? I tightened his hitch
on thegoal post. The other parents mingled, grazing
at the buffet, and she hoofed away in flats. Gus, whom I asked to watchher,
winked along with the sequins on his vest.
He looked sleepy, but I couldn’t let it go. I followed her to the dipand watched
her chew and chew a piece of celery. Was this ignoranceor spite? I wanted
to bite her, but instead, I poked her with thepin-end of my gadfly brooch. She bolted.
He’d had too much scotch and hung his arms around my neck for peace.
My peacock molted. We all dragged ourselves across the grass.
Clung to by night’s blistering
star-wedge, we edge closer,
keptapart by touch.
Spun upon us: moonlight bent,
as we are, atthe window’s
chip-tongued waist.
What name is given
to this friction? Bed’s
debris of spark andfray?
Call it fissure: span
of fire where we curve,
elbow, cleave, andsettle,
working back and forth a breach.
Even in sleep, we test our mettle.
The satyr is in love with Cynthia; he visits her mother’s gardendaily.
Mummy married a sailor, forbade her to see, An Officer and aGentleman,
so you know a god-thing was out of the question
(the family portrait sags).
The sitter locks the windows, but the suitor won’t be dissuaded.
Ina fit of madness he eats the wisteria like grapes and licks theforsythia
blossom-bare.
Insatiable for things floral, his hoof prints in the sweet alyssum, thesatyr
roots in the honey-buds, disrupts the carpet beds. Hestutters.
Each fruit he touches explodes to over-ripe, thenrots.
(His earth-beard tickles,
Cynthia says, fingering the T.V.’s static.) Poulticed to keep fever off,a girl,
or most, will see herself half-empty. In migraine,eyelights scatter and twitch: her brain,
radioing for help.
Wishing to be Doric, she turns loricate, lost in transmission. She’sVictorian (it’s hard
to be proactive with a mother so protective).Cynthia hears him calling her out
of her private cowering, butfears the casing’s teeth. Her mother turns on the sprinkler,
so thesatyr drinks,
and, like a setter, his ruddy body leans: he can’t help but point herout. He stalks the garden
turning soil with his hooves, then tunesin for Cynthia’s evening broad-cast.
(I’m his wentletrap, she says,he’s going to climb my rare bone staircase
to the clouds.)
One day he sucks the snail shells dry, the next, the jasmine smells likeurine
or eucalyptus and someone’s crushed the saxifrage. The aloe’slanguets lose
their spines. The garden smells of sulfur or ofsewage, the rosemary and roses
of exhaust, but by day three
of Mummy’s watch, the satyr, adjusting his sautoir, makes his sortie.She hangs the laundry
out and leaves a saucer of milk for Mr. Redon the retaining wall: porcelain scraping stone.
(Cynthiaprickles.)
Mummy says C’s hardened, so she takes the ice packs off, grindshoneybush
for tea. She wants to eat cut grass. If the garden’s goneout of me, she thinks,
then I’ll go to the garden. It’s morning.She smells the doughnuts frying.
Whata tease: the deep
plumeria smell of oil pretending to be light — it may glow amber, butit’s molten stone.
She’s always preferred the dark and the sea. Thegarden’s gone all heavy: the fruit,
water-logged — a deity will dothat.
Cynthia lets the starlings have it. The satyr’s left his calling card inMum’s azalea: a live
butterfly winks beside her hero’s credo: For aGood Time, Fall. The other side
he’s plagiarized a bit: This TooShall Pass, Go Chew Some Ice. Cynthia buries the billet-doux
in her blouse.
This night’s errant wish: to not be orant, but cormorant,
cornute-beaked perfection, a feathered venus
who comes up with agrouper in her mouth. In the orient
she’s an ancient lure—notornate, as the sparkling jelly-
spike used now with such aplomb, buta naked
swish in water too sharp for escape. These aren’t
youraverage birds-of-prey, they stay close
by when tethered.
Does it matter that this is what I’d like? Bedraggled,
wet andmolting, lips a cupid’s-bow
capable of all kinds of new sounds,
to ker and kraw from kitchen to bedroom, to bring
you fish, topeck the leash? Gomphrena flower
mistaken for clover, a badger doesnot become
a bird. Take what you’re given from thighs tochin—
take it in.
- Heaviness
The lemons are alive with falling bees,
pucker-drunk, returning less andless to
the tallest branches, their wing-song a
series of nestedcircles. We are rocked
in the sheer echolalia that can’t be
drone. Weare drained and drawn in—
we are drowned.
Each phone callis harder than the last.
We return less and less to the list. We
arehard-pressed to speak of this—
instead, we tend Harlan’s rosebushes,
histrees, and sleep each night in infinite
regress, go deep and deeper intonight’s
abyss. We miss appointments, see
distress in each bee’sflower-faltering.
We tune in natural frequencies.
Our friendsunshell our faults like bitter
seeds. They have advice. They think we
want them to know best, but we want
only to keep falling from the nest.
Listen: each stamen’s a staff to which
the music cleaves. We’re toldthe
eccentric bee is not bereaved— a pause
between two notes is just arest, of
which each rusty song has many. We
half-hear, watch thehoneybees stuff
their pockets; our cerated hearts will not
be turned.The body’s emulsion for each
day’s impressions. When we’re grave,
we arenot dust—we’re wax.
