After Battle

[redcheekdays]

As after battle, we examine each other’s skin, trace the surface
From shoulder to shoulder and then down the spine, to the calf
And returning to the chest, its cavity & beat:
You are here

Amazingly whole. What you lost, undetectable. We have
Already forgotten the epithets of insult blazoned
On our brows. The high points have turned dull in the eaves
Of purpose, memory: ears tune forward. Somehow, injured

We become most familiar, sub-species unto sub
Species, and then peculiar. What ordinary causes of war
We weave into tales of centaurs, imps, & other
Animals. What makes us human is not enough to explain

The anger love breeds. The narrow stretches that pump to
And fro the heart. Entering & leaving, the blood warms. The heat,
Both plot & message: o the sweat I wipe away, the sweat
You wipe away.

Jane Austen and John Lennon in Heaven

[redcheekdays]

They call each other 'J.' John picks
red, red roses in Mansfield Park and brings
them to Jane. She explains instant karma to him.

In heaven Jane wears her hair short, sports
fringed bellbottoms and teashades.
John has meat on his bones now; prefers black slacks

and button ups, a trucker hat from Abbey Road.
They take long drives and often sing songs.
He says they'll remain lovers. Until the end.

Jane's novels now contain leather, VW buses,
electricity, space shuttles, computers, Madonna and Marilyn
Monroe. The rock'n'roll makes her sway her hips in the rain.

John likes himself with peace. This morning
he will play guitar and sing 'For He Was Rich, and
She Was Handsome' to the tune of 'Happiness is a Warm Gun.'

Jane will two-step and whistle. Alone
by the fireplace later, they'll listen to the raindrops
and doze. They will not think of Mr. Darcy

or Yoko Ono. They know why God made them
roommates. It's because the world
was their playground. It's because

an artist cannot do anything
slovenly. It's because
all you need is love.

Woman’s World

[redcheekdays]

Silhouetted
against the setting sun
women
ascend
a hilly incline
balancing
barrels on their heads
talking laughing
with hardly a
splash...

the world
rotates
on the axis
of the earth’s women

talking laughing
at life
with oceans
balanced
on their heads
without
a
splash...

Text

[redcheekdays]

I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird

We text, text, text
our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.

from "Sweet Darkness"

[redcheekdays]

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

Kissing Again

[redcheekdays]

Kissing again, after a long drought of
not kissing—too many kids, bills, windows

needing repair. Sex, yes, though squeezed in
between the minor depths of anger, despair—

standing up amid the laundry
or fumbling onto the strip of rug between

the coffee table and the couch. Quick, furtive,
like birds. A dance on the wing, but no time

for kissing, the luxuriant tonguing of another
spongy tongue, the deft flicking and feral sucking,

that prolonged lapping that makes a smooth stone
of the brain. To be lost in it, your body tumbled

in sea waves, no up or down, just salt
and the liquid swells set in motion

by the moon, by a tremor in Istanbul, the waft
of a moth wing before it plows into a halo of light.

Praise the deep lustrous kiss that lasts minutes,
blossoms into what feels like days, fields of tulips

glossy with dew, low purple clouds piling in
beneath the distant arch of a bridge. One

after another they storm your lips, each kiss
a caress, autonomous and alive, spilling

into each other, streams into creeks into rivers
that grunt and break upon the gorge. Let the tongue,

in its wisdom, release its stores, let the mouth,
tired of talking, relax into its shapes of give

and receive, its plush swelling, its slick
round reveling, its primal reminiscence

that knows only the one robust world.

On the Edge

[redcheekdays]

After your mother dies, you will learn to live
on the edge of life, to brace yourself
like she did, one hand on the dashboard,
the other gripping your purse while you drive
through the stop sign, shoulders tense,
eyes clamped shut, waiting for the collision
that doesn’t come. You will learn
to stay up all night knowing she’s gone,

watching the morning open
like an origami swan, the sky
a widening path, a question
you can’t answer. In prison, women

make tattoos from cigarette ash
and shampoo. It’s what they have.

Imagine the fish, gray scales

and black whiskers, growing slowly
up her back, its lips kissing her neck.
Imagine the letters of her daughter’s name

a black chain around her wrist.

What is the distance between this moment
and the last? The last visit and the next?
I want my mother back. I want
to hunt her down like the perfect gift,

the one you search for from store to store

until your feet ache, delirious with her scent.

This is the baggage of your life, a sign
of your faith, this staying awake

past exhaustion, this needle in your throat.

Eclipse

[redcheekdays]

it was not enough to be
drenched in your sun
showers; to have your
fingers trail moonlight
through my hair; for your
blazing lips to lock noon
heat between us;

I needed more than
galaxies between my
thighs; day breaks in
your smiles starlight
in your eyes; I tasted
forever on your tongue;
heard always in your
heartbeat; outlined we
on your chest

It was enough to be cast
in shadow; to have my
sundial blotted out by your
clouds; to see the negligible
pebbles in the hourglass; to
know the darkened cemetery
in your mouth was too much.

Everyday

[redcheekdays]

Everyday I rewrite her name across my ribcage
so that those who wish to break my heart
will know who to answer to later
She has no idea that I’ve taught my tongue to make pennies,
and every time our mouths are to meet
I will slip coins to the back of her throat and make wishes

I wish
that someday
my head on her belly might be like home
like doubt to doubt resuscitation
because time is supposed to mean more than skin
She doesn’t know that I have taught my arms to close around her clocks
so they can withstand the fallout from her Autumn

She is so explosive,
volcanoes watch her and learn
terrorists want to strap her to their chests
because she is a cause worth dying for
Maybe someday
time will teach me to pick up her pieces
put her back together
and remind her to click her heels
but she doesn’t need a wizard to tell her that I was here all along

Lady
let us catch the next tornado home
let us plant cantaloupe trees in our backyard
then maybe together we will realize that we don’t like cantaloupe
and they don’t grow on trees
we can laugh about it
then we can plant things we’ve never heard of

I’ve never heard of a woman
who can make flawed look so beautiful
the way you do

The word smitten is to how I feel about you
what a kiss is to romance
so maybe my lips to yours could be the penance to this confession
because I am the only one preaching your defunct religion
sitting alone at your altar, praising you out of faith

I cannot do this hard-knock life alone
You are all the softness a rock dreams of being
the mistakes the rain makes at picnics
when Mother Nature bears witness in much better places

So yes
I will gladly take on your ocean
just to swim beneath you
so I can kiss the bends of your knees
in appreciation for the work they do
keeping your head above water

Wolf Cento

[redcheekdays]

Very quick. Very intense, like a wolf
at a live heart, the sun breaks down.
What is important is to avoid
the time allotted for disavowels
as the livid wound
leaves a trace leaves an abscess
takes its contraction for those clouds
that dip thunder & vanish
like rose leaves in closed jars.
Age approaches, slowly. But it cannot
crystal bone into thin air.
The small hours open their wounds for me.
This is a woman's confession:
I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me.

Bath 5

[redcheekdays]

If it’s one drink, it will be two. Wisteria tangling
around your wrists. Here is where you buried your

father. Here is where you buried your brother.
Here is where they will bury you, when the

time comes. No wonder you drink yourself down
toward the earth. Home is where the shovels lie.

Earth and earth and earth. Stones crowd your sleep.
Granite and salt, sand giving birth to

the fortress where even your lovers sigh. Silent
underfoot. You dream yourself toward them.

You are foxfire, you are phosphorescent. Your
mouth like whiskey. Your eyes like whiskey.

You baptize yourself in sorrow, again and again.
You baptize yourself with bourbon and brandy.

You swim downward, fast salmon, heedless, handsome,
death is in you, it has captured your ear. You have your

father’s jaw, your brother’s chin. When you were born
they bathed your small body with their fears.

Each scar they’d earned became manifest on your skin.
Their love aches like a badly set bone. When the river takes

you, it will be no new baptism. Just that same, ancient sacrifice.
Just that rush, that rushing, and then you are gone.