My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.
I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.
A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.
I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.
Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.
A word after a word
after a word is power.
At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.
This is a metaphor.
How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.
There is nothing but blood, sky and the sun; a road and a car; a wild girl waiting at the passenger door.
She is in her night things, soft things, touch me things, but on her doll hands are the most exquisite leather gloves -- driving gloves.
Get in, she says -- and it's your name on her tongue -- but it's likely that the girl hasn't spoken at all. This is, after all, a dream.
"But there was no longer any comfort in the words. There was nothing in them. It no longer delighted Jimmy to possess these small collections of letters that other people had forgotten about. It was like having his own baby teeth in a box.
At the edge of sleep a procession would appear behind his eyes, moving out of the shadows to the left, crossing his field of vision. Young slender girls with small hands, ribbons in their hair, bearing garlands of many-coloured flowers. The field would be green, but it wasn't a pastoral scene: these were girls in danger, in need of rescue. There was something -- a threatening presence -- behind the trees.
Or perhaps the danger was in him. Perhaps he was the danger, a fanged animal gazing out from the shadowy cave of the space inside his own skull.
Or it might be the girls themselves that were dangerous. There was always that possibility. They could be a bait, a trap. He knew they were much older than they appeared to be, and much more powerful as well. Unlike himself they had a ruthless wisdom.
The girls were calm, they were grave and ceremonious. They'd look at him, they'd look into him, they would recognize and accept him, accept his darknesses. Then they would smile.
Oh honey, I know you. I see you. I know what you want."
"Then she let him lick her fingers for her. He ran his tongue around the small ovals of her nails. This was the closest she could get to him without becoming food: she was in him, or part of her was in part of him. Sex was the other way around: while that was going on, he was in her. I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.
"I know it was you," Jimmy said."
She's been elsewhere for a while. Her hair's grown longer, coiffed and clipped up by a modest silver affair; it's simplicity undermines the complexity of the 'do. Dainty white moons aglow at her earlobes; grey city sky glooms in the silk that swaths her – slender sleek; whispers as she dangles her legs from her perch. The smoky secret glow of candlelight dances, tender along the pale sharp of her cheekbones – a crisp countenance – a striking ghost amidst a fleshly crowd.
The woman at the bar is ageless – waiting for a proprietor, a lover, a father; the girl feels infinitely older. For whomever she waits, she is dear-eyed and beautiful.
He has been dreaming of this encounter – for months, days, ages since he knew she would be evermore than a playground darling of his youthful heart. Time, he has learned, will never do good between them. No amount of land, water has given him the right words for this occasion; he's brought flowers – paper white and wrapped in white paper, a precarious, thorny, street-wrought bouquet, tangled in white satin that now seems too glaring. This ought to be a somber reunion.
They sit in silence until he reaches out for her hand; captures it beneath his. She's cold.
"I'm sorry about your mother," he says.
"Mimi …" she begins.
"Your mother …" he starts.
"How is my father?" she asks.
And he's at a loss; he's come to speak of her mother, her loss. He's come ready to give her details she may want – the mangle of a tragic accident, the sort of darkclad details omitted in obituaries and will go uneulogized.
"I dine with him on Wednesdays. At the Plaza, just as you asked."
He balances his offering before her; lays it with care within reach. He is silent while she reaches out – to stroke a blossom like a beloved thing; it strikes him as an act of longing and for a moment he is sure he is well come to this place, to her.
"He orders the crème brulée. Every time. One for me, one for him.” And still, she will not look at him, and when she speaks, something airy to her tone suggests he may not understand her, anyway.
“How is my father?” she asks again.
He gives her hand such a squeeze that when she does turn to him, he looks away, ashamed; stumbles, speaks blind.
“He misses you.”
“Rivers,” she says, like she’s just now seen him; smiles, like she has been waiting just to do so for him. “How was your flight?”
“Long,” Rivers responds, releases her hand to flex his fingers; binds them ‘round her wrist this time.
She is smiling still and he is breathless as she raises his hand with hers, links their fingers and dips her head to kiss their crisscrossed knuckles.
“Thank you for the flowers.”
And he has nothing left to sway her with but please. “Please,” he says, “please come home.” And her audacity to look shocked, hurt, even – burns him more than anything Phineas Gage has ever had the (un)grace to do.
“Of course I’m coming home. I wouldn’t miss the funeral.”
Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.
Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;
While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit
Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,
Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:
With such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,
What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?
It’s a princess’s chamber; Bobbi Pascal’s room smells of clean linen, Chanel No. 9 — seemingly no place for thoughts of madmen.
But there are Little Girls in the world who know better (remember, suddenly, too much), Little Girls with doll hands, birdbone’d fingers perfect (ripe, as some might say) for picking — picking locks, disturbing sham sanctums, stealing smokes, shells along the shoreline.
Little Girls who invite madman after madman into their homes; Little Girl rooms upturned by madmen. Even Bobbi Pascal’s room — especially Bobbi Pascal’s room — reeks of devils, ghostly flowers.
“I’m tired,” Phineas Gage says to the dark, “I just — I just want —”
She curls, a white petal sigh, dark tangled, in the cold sheets of a four poster bed; closes her eyes and this could be her room, a sister’s room.
“Phineas?”
Hours (days, daddy?) later, morning bleeds pale through frail bridal curtains; Bobbi Pascal isn’t surprised to find an unexpected guest — in her bedroom, even (especially). Relieved, perhaps, at the sight of a girlchild with limbs that fold and tuck into the white linen — make a little girlshape so like her own.
Slowly, Bobbi unbuckles the straps of her Manolo’s, kicks them to a corner; her hands are shaking (summer nights seem so far away); she’s shaking; pulls back a corner of the covers and crawls in.
Two Little Girls wearing yesterday’s dresses and bruises; it feels like the proper thing to do, to hold each other close — like natural twins, pale sisters — forehead to forehead, eyes so close that features blur (like crying, perhaps, alone before a mirror).
“Are you all right?” Bobbi asks.
“No,” says Phin.
The midday sun hits; disapproving glare through the high windows; there’s no time (no need, really) for why are you here or can I stay for a while.
“I need to leave — I need —“ Phin whispers.
“Take whatever you need,” says Bobbi.
Bobbi stays in bed while Phin goes through her closet and packs up one of her trunks like an expert jetsetter. When the wildhair’d girl is all set to leave, smartly dressed in one of her own Lepore numbers, Bobbi has to ask, “Where are you going?” — isn’t offended when Phin only shrugs.
In the doorway, Phin pauses, turns to give Bobbi a smile that stings somehow, aches in her bones (their bones).
“Bobbi?”
“Yes, Phin?”
“We’re going to be fine.”
“Yes …” says the White Child to the musegirl, “Perhaps …” Bobbi pauses, unsure. “Phin? … Be good?” and she’s not even sure what she means, but the words come in a breathy plea and the Gage girl, though she doesn’t respond, leaves with soft silver bell laughter trailing behind her – so Bobbi smiles, too.
“Goodbye.”
Les jamais sont les tojours.
- Paul Verlaine
You would have understood me, had you waited;
I could have loved you, dear! as well as he:
Had we not been impatient, dear! and fated
Always to disagree.
What is the use of speech? Silence were fitter:
Lest we should still be wishing things unsaid.
Though all the words we ever spake were bitter,
Shall I reproach you dead?
Nay, let this earth, your portion, likewise cover
All the old anger, setting us apart:
Always, in all, in truth was I your lover;
Always, I held your heart.
I have met other women who were tender,
As you were cold, dear! with a grace as rare.
Think you, I turned to them, or made surrender,
I who had found you fair?
Had we been patient, dear! ah, had you waited,
I had fought death for you, better than he:
But from the very first, dear! we were fated
Always to disagree.
Late, late I come to you, now death discloses
Love that in life was not to be our part:
On your low lying mound between the roses,
Sadly I cast my heart.
I would not waken you: nay! this is fitter;
Death and the darkness give you unto me;
Here we who loved so, were so cold and bitter,
Hardly can disagree.
The sun sighs, casts a dream haze -- blending sky-earth, earth-sky -- over the pristine sort of green-blue, blue-green given shape, vague lines by the lace-trim of carrot flowers, bridal decked for their arrival, it seems, to the estates -- an estuary -- so this, this is where the tides go.
(I'm here. I'm here with you.)
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: -feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: -that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on -
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft -
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart -
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
I know salt marshes that move along like one big
trembling wing. I've noticed insects
shiny as gold in a blues singer's teeth
& more keenly calibrated than a railroad watch,
but at heart I'm another breed.
The audacity of the lower gods --
whatever we name we own.
Diversiloba, we say, unfolding poison oak.
Lovers go untouched as we lean from bay windows
with telescopes trained on a yellow sky.
I'd rather let the flowers
keep doing what they do best.
Unblessing each petal,
letting go a year's worth of white
death notes, busily unnaming themselves.
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