Fruit, Body, and a memory
Fruit
I often take words
from deep inside of me
and pass them around like a lemon.
This is an acquired taste, I say.
A disclaimer on one side,
an invitation on the other.
Many names and many uses,
even the skin.
But even the skin steeples toward
the moon when peeled away.
Knife ferrying itself forward,
a soft glide around the body
when the blade is sharp
and intimate with its enemies.
A hand appears with its palm up,
a river waiting for rain.
Not mine.
The steeple is now an arrow.
Now a sky. Now a drought.
Water turned inside out,
running farther and farther away,
many-hooved.
On Sundays, we ride the carousel.
Not the ponies though,
nor the swans
nor the griffins.
We stand on the platform.
Circle. Surface. Flat. Earth.
This is the world that spins
even when we are sleeping.
This is the trip that gets us
nowhere fast.
Nothing lasts.
You were on your back
when I fed you different
versions of my name through
my lips. Met you quite a while ago,
you know, when you had
many uses.
A knocking on my sternum.
It opens as a garden door would:
creaking off its hinges. Behind it is
absconded fruit, juice like summer
dripping down the wrist of a
hand that is also a river.
Not mine.
Your love bites like a lemon,
you say to me, teeth bared. Blood
on the tongue.
You say to me, tell me again how
this is an acquired taste.
•
Body
Remember the first time.
How painfully the train
pulled away from the station,
the fingers of prayer perhaps
holding it back, all sharply worded,
pointed like silence, and just as futile.
I was going away.
No plans.
Just following my own wandering.
Is the exit this way, or is it that?
But it’s an entrance, too,
as a matter of fact,
tuned to E minor, and two-way,
like a tunnel.
Here the light travels in and out.
Tourist carrying the weight of what
it had done.
I mouth the names of the places
as I pass them.
City after city after city.
He.
Entered me like a confessional.
Left as he would a conservatory.
Barren and wintering.
But now.
Everything is radical, a revolution
of flowers opening and closing—
peony eyes, lily heart, hibiscus hands.
Even my hipbones have bloomed
to puncture the ground.
My desire is intact, I’m sure.
The trapdoors in my skin hold the sun.
City after city after city.
For me, somewhere, I’ll land
where they bury their loved ones
like they’re still sleeping.
•
a memory
We settled our little sibling rivalries with kitchen implements. My dad would let us choose our weapons, although the knives and anything with points and tines were off-limits. We were left with mostly ladles and spatulas and turners to choose from. Still, there were rules to govern this savagery.
First: No hitting on the head or face.
Second: Take turns, but only swing once.
Third: It ends when someone cries.