Today Means Amen Page 3
like a head-on collision, humans
would enter the party in the second
half of the last minute of the last day.
Just in time to fall in love with
a stranger and coax the ball to drop
like a disco egg and spill out a fetal
new year. By then, the dinosaurs
would all be asleep, black-out drunk
from their 30-minute binge.
Imagine a world war that lasts
a heartbeat. A century passed over
like a page in a flipbook. A baby
conceived and buried as an old man
in the same moment. You and I
are not dinosaurs and we are not
buried yet, so think of your heartache—
the one festering inside you at this
very moment, the poison doe
nuzzling itself against your throat.
Picture your anxiety, your midnight
panic, your fear, your perennial doubt:
each of these becomes not even a word
in the book, barely a grain of sugar
in the bowl. This is not a devaluing
of your pain but a dethroning.
An adjustment of the microscope’s lens.
Look up. The fireworks have started.
Kiss me. They will be gone so soon.
A Stranger Died in an Avalanche
The angry manner in which
God wiped this one away—
like dust atop a piano, one petal
out of place in a still life. I picture
not his body but the flowers
shoved like rush hour passengers
into his mother’s hands. His mother,
who is not a widow now but not
unlike one, the way childbirth
is a bodily vow. Why do we give
flowers to those closest to death?
White lilies are beautiful, yes,
with their blank faces, their sad
necks, but his mother will not
need more reminders of wilting.
I do not know this woman. I did
not know her son. He loved
someone I love and that is all. Death
twice-removed is a curious event.
Not as paralyzing as our house
on fire; not so far off that we can’t
smell the smoke. I think of books
left unread, mornings spent not in love,
bodies choosing not to touch.
And if it is possible, I am thankful
for death because I am thankful
for life, because I can smell coffee
brewing, I can feel my mother
brush hair from my face, I can
lay lilies on her kitchen table.
The Origin of Breast Milk
It began after the rape of St. Agatha,
a woman of God imprisoned in a brothel
for a month for rejecting a suitor.
She did not cry, even as
the shade was drawn on the first night
and the worst, most tired
parts of men found
themselves at her bedroom door.
Her first lover was a boy,
no older than fourteen.
Her second, a blacksmith.
Her third tasted like wet stone
and looked like her brother.
Her fourth, a drunkard, a widower.
In the morning, while Agatha slept,
women throughout Sicily
suddenly dropped their baskets of fruit
and pots of boiling water, their hands
grasping their chests—a wetness,
spilling, soaking through
every blouse. The doctors were called,
even the midwives. Women
began fastening cloth
around their torsos with twine.
Months later, months after
Agatha’s breasts were cut off,
one woman weary with a colicky babe
untied the twine, pushed
the angry mouth to her nipple.
The child coughed at first,
then quieted, and it was all
so familiar. It was the way
it had always been but gentler,
the taking, the giving.
Beautiful
It has become a struggle to get dressed
in the morning without hating yourself.
In the mirror, you see a sack of fruit,
a loveseat dragged to the curb. You know
this is not true. You know this is the plight
of those with mirrors and cloth and legs—
yet, still, you do not want to leave
the house. It is spring and you are dough
before the kneading. The man who
loves you from across the country tells you
your body is his home but you do not want
to believe him because why would anyone
want to live in a sand dune. He is a tourist
in a warring city. He only sees it when
the lights are on, before the shadows spill
like blood into the streets. Do not leave
the house. Do not even open your doors
when he comes knocking knocking
knocking with those words that can
make you feel but can never make you be.
Teeth
The woman I am tutoring at the adult
ESL learning center has a tiny diamond
in the middle of her tooth. Technically,
it is her lateral incisor. I know this
from the hours I’ve spent at the dentist,
staring at the charts, memorizing
a family tree of gnawing to distract
myself from the stranger’s hand
crawling inside my mouth which, I tell
myself, feels nothing like drowning.
I lie to this woman now, too. We are
practicing English sentences: useful ones
like I would like to buy two please
and yes, I love America. Her hijab
smells saccharine. Her henna-dipped
fingernails, like cuspids, bite into
her pencil. We read a story about a man
who works as a truck driver. We read
a story about a sick boy who needs
to lie down. I ask if she understands
the word cushion. She says yes, to be
careful. We read a story about a lion.
I ask if she knows the word prey. She says
yes, Allah, and points to the ceiling.
I try to explain how two words can look
different but sound the same. I wonder
if she, too, feels as though she is suffocating
with a stranger’s hand pushing a brand new
shiny tongue into her throat. She smiles
and her lips pull back the curtain
to reveal her tiny, pin-sized star.
She asks me if I pray and I say yes.
Exodus 33:20
When he doesn’t want to look at it,
to rest his cheek against my thigh
and peer into the pink tender,
to examine where my body
becomes and unbecomes itself,
I can only assume that it is true
what they say about God:
it is impossible for man to look
upon the face of the sublime
and not be ruined by it.
The splendor would be insufferable.
How soft and quiet it is, where
the world begins.
Ode to My Bottom Lip
You fat little worm.
You perch for a bird
to shit on. You child’s face.
You slug of lust. I used to
hate the way you protrude
from my silhouette, elbowing
your way to the front
of the photo. How you always
betray my sadness, drag it
quivering to the surface
like a newborn seal. O tongue
dance partner. O kiss or leaf
blower. You have carried
my worst and best poems
to the world. You have tasted
the darkest parts of bedfellows,
blood and salt, and you
have hungered for both.
You swollen rooftop.
You waterbed of mouth.
I’m sorry I never saw you
for what you are: a cliff
words hurl themselves off.
A ledge lovers hang from.
I Was Asked to Speak at Your Wedding
When I stand to give my speech,
everyone at the reception stares blankly
at my exposed shoulder. I notice
a barnacle the size of a teacup
growing from my collarbone.
Bundles of fish hang from
the chandeliers like metallic
earrings. I can smell their death
like fresh-cut grass. When I try to
say how happy I am for both of you,
minnows spill from my mouth,
hundreds of slippery lies, slapping
wet and hard against the banquet
/>
table. I sit, ashamed of the mess
I’ve made. Stupid animal:
his hands, nothing like fins.
Someone hands me a conch shell.
When I hold it to my ear, I can
hear your lovemaking, the sound
of your bodies breaking.
Gardener’s Daughter
Blackberry briar. Hunter’s
daughter. Ocean-eyed mermaid.
When my sister needs to talk,
I extend my arms toward her
like a child asking to be held.
I turn my palms upward
as if donating blood and let her
empty the contents of the day
on me. Her words file out,
orderly at first and then a swarm,
spilling over me like the soft
swell of a mushroom cloud
until I do not remember where
I begin and her need ends. Once,
I held a newborn baby
in my arms—three weeks old,
naked as truth comes. She felt
so small. Her heartbeat: a moth
I trapped between my palms.
This is how to love the healing.
If my sister’s eating disorder
were a person, it would be
a teenager by now. I imagine it:
doorknobs for knees, long
graceful fingers like the legs
of ballerinas, the beaks of cranes.
It would have a favorite book.
A locker combination. A best friend:
her. I tell her I won’t let her live
in my house if she lets it sleep over.
I tell her I can’t see it
but I know it’s there. I tell her
nothing and just let the cloud
of her day rise like dough.
Milkweed woman. Catacomb
breast. This is how to love
the healing. To be not the sound
but the receptacle. To be not
the therapist, but the stop after.
To be not the paint, not the blank
canvas, not even the sweat
of creativity but to be the bed
the artist crawls back to. Tonight,
I rub my sister’s shoulders. My thumbs
mistake her back for the staircase
in our childhood home. She tells me
she is scared, that the waves
are rising and the ship is begging
to become driftwood. The hounds
are howling tonight and the moon
is so full it could burst. She tells me
she has been symptom-free
for three weeks. Three weeks. It feels
so small. A newborn. A whisper.
A fluttering of smothered wings.
But sister, this is what it’s like
to heal. To get up again and again
after the waves come. To retrain
the hounds of your body. Dragonfly.
Child of stone and moss. You are
dancing this dance you know
by heart. You are crawling out
from under yourself. Spring drinker.
Sap collector. You are drawing
a map to forgiveness, where you live,
where you already are—you just don’t
know it yet. Perfect isn’t where
we’re from and we wouldn’t like it
there anyway. Big sister. Little Dipper.
Who taught me how to sing
the way light streams through
a window. How to live boldy
and without shame. Sister,
when we were little, I didn’t know
what it was like to face the dark,
twisting woods behind our house
alone. Sweet sapling. Falcon of
a woman. When I think of what
courage is, I see your hand
reaching back, leading me into
the forest, into the unknown.
The seam of your shoulder,
the horizon of your voice, saying,
“Look. I’ve got you. I’m here.”
Blackberry briar. Gardener’s
daughter. You were made to walk
through this. You were born
to travel that long journey into
yourself. Look into the distance.
I’m there if you need me.
Arms out. Ready to listen.
Ready to sing. Sweet sister,
I’ve got you. I’m here.
Telephone
When I ask if you have fallen
out of love with me and you
do not answer, I picture you
holding a tin can up to your ear.
I imagine a string tied
to its middle, like a leash
around the belly of a fat
silver worm. The string,
an escaped vein, runs down
your arm, over your knees,
along the bed, up my chest
and into my skin like a fish
hook or a feeding tube
threaded between the bars
of the birdcage around my heart.
I wonder if, when sketching
the rough draft of the body,
the Designer was afraid
our lungs would be too much
like wings and float away.
Floating
He finally passed and we were
grateful. The living crave clarity:
Yes, I am alive. No, he is not.
Dementia gives none of that.
It starves those who remain
dry on land. My grandfather
spent the past two years floating
in the river that divides this
world from the next. One by one,
we offered to pay the boatman
to oar him to the other shore.
It’s okay, we’d whisper when
we thought no one could hear,
you can go now. As if death
was a secret he had been keeping
for years. What I wouldn’t give
to see what he saw in those last
dream months, what images
kept him here, long after his body
was able to be a body: the cow’s
udder in his mother’s hands;
sunlight migrating down
my grandmother’s sleeping body;
the soft, steady bleating of
a sheep giving birth.
After Googling Affirmations
for Abuse Survivors
You have a fundamental right to a nurturing
environment. Oh, what a home I have