three poems, from a time past, presented not out of pride but of necessity

Iron Maiden

This room is like a stone
Both of us sitting here motionless
Pressing wads of silence and pride over unspoken wounds.

When I look at you, my eyes bleed.
You are careful not to look at me at all.
If I should get up
To wash my face or get a drink
It would remind us both that we are here.

Once I called you by my name
And we laughed as at a perfectly understandable mistake.

The remote is handled with perfect courtesy:
“Would you like to watch something else?”
“Oh no, go ahead.”
“Are you sure?” “I wasn’t really watching anyway.”
Your books stacked beside you
are an unassailable wall.

This room is like a stone
And the floor is lined with knives
And I shudder to pierce in you or me
Some yet unbroken piece of skin.
If I should smile
It might pull open a crack in chapped and blistered lips
And pour forth a salty rush of red that you, or I, or both, may choke on.

They say salt water heals.
I have always been afraid of the sting.


***
Freshwater

Something broke—
ice or a storm
or a black crust
fragmented and floating
carried away on a newborn river.

A gladness like white flowers
springs along the banks.
The river breathes
in and out with the tide
of quiet awakening...

That life is still possible
that the thunder cries of birth
that the ice hatches the river
that you and I can lie side by side in the dark
talking of the stars.


***
White Christmas

I. Visitation
Snow falls from another place; layered
On trees in black-white limbs, it lies like
Eternity settled over that which dies.
Cold crystallizes air, splintering breath
And piercing silence into every throat;
Changeless it spreads, forcing blued fingers stiff,
Beating pliant flesh brittle.
Freezing, sharpening, it descends, shadow of
The hard bright dagger coming to split the earth.

II. Homecoming
Homecoming was a crawl, not a march,
A bloodied drag over frozen ground,
Toward a remembrance of warmth.
But she and he were gone to warm each other,
And on Christmas morning my father exploded
Because the juice pitcher was empty.
The sun bleeds pink every morning
Or fades up in grey invisibility.

Shall I tell you of the war and waste?
The grey lands, filled with the snap of invisible bows
And sting of arrows I could not duck—
I, the only pink and pulsing thing
In all the unwoundable cold.
I carry it with me
In my hard and black toes—
Let me sleep in sight of your fire.

III. The Party
His apartment was clean and white-walled;
Her influence was plain.
The graham-cracker cookies his sister taught me to make
Were laid on the table on a green plastic plate.
In the kitchen she talked with her friends
About the dresses– navy blue,
Which would not have flattered me anyway.
Their mothers both smiled and asked about my year
And told me to say hello to my family.
I was very cold.

IV. The Death
On Christmas morning my father exploded
Because the juice pitcher was empty.
That was the end.
Nothing was left except
The struggle not to break over
The scrambled eggs hardening on my plate.

V. The Fall
Cold is born soft
Leaving the iron air to fall
With the delicacy of an eyelash,
To blacken with the spit of a tire,
To fade with the heat of a breath.
Once I dug a foxhole in a snowbank
And lay there until nightfall.
Unthinkable: the dagger which descends
To pierce the earth and freeze its core
Comes with the lightness of dandelion seed,
Softly as a breath layering the earth
With eternity;
Draping frozen rocks and bitter trenches
With grace.