Long-Legged Spider Keeping Up

Of a deeper color than jade

is the pond by the road,

cupped between spring-forested hills

in Michigan, where I pay rent now,

and I would give my jade

and my emeralds, if I still had them,

to belong to these hills and to this pond

or to the fruit of the trees.

I belong only to the road:

each cornfield I drive by cuts neat rows,

even-measured furrows into me, running

endlessly beside me, like a long-legged spider

that barely, mercilessly, keeps up.

And I ache for a home

that I never was born to, for a country

where I never belonged,

homesick for a people whose language

I understood but could never speak without

an accent--

a moth forbidden

from crawling back to its chrysalis.

Beneath the corn and the soy is the soil

I call mother, in whose warm muddy realness

I dream of immersing myself,

hogs and Holsteins lazing over me,

spread open to the unobstructed Iowa sky--

in Minnesota or Illinois, in Wisconsin or Missouri,

somewhere just off I-80 or I-94,

not farther than you'd drive for a fill-up or for

2 for $2 bratwurst

becoming, finally, one of a million farms,

each unique yet indistinguishable among

the million--and all the shame

of realizing I have no use for their uniquenesses

gone with my face, gone with my name.

I love her like no one else could,

this placid mother

who turns her tits to face her litter,

all born knowing how to suck,

while I stare at her spine and wonder

how I never learned this trick,

this skill that automatically comes with being human,

a buy-one-get-one-free at the Farm

and Fleet. I don't think

these softball-dusted girls, these sunburnt

boys in white t-shirts, know her face--

too busy sucking to look up. But I

have spent--oh, decades now--

imagining what her face might look like

if she smiled on me. And if I had money I could buy

a John Deere tractor, but I could not

turn myself into one.

Влюбилась

I read, when I was in Russia, a poem
whose author was fascinated
by the femininity inherent to his beloved's verbs:
вошла, she said, услышала, влюбила,
ла, ла, ла, la la la la ~
and I know what he heard there, because
when I see your emoji,
the spellings you've chosen for their exact shades
of meaning, your use of — where someone else
would use --,
I know you. And in knowing I
love.

You don't have to have a face or a voice to be
a person. All that you need
is a self to express, and
self-expression.

Sonnet LXXXVIII

The mornings I’m alone and aching,

resplendent-mouthed and open-skinned,

the lashing rain is flung, retaking

the earth in fits of fickle wind.

And silence in the autumn hallways

is warm, expansive, safe as always,

a living thing that fills to blur

the corners with its fluffy fur.

The air is cold behind my shoulders

and underneath my sinking breasts

and on my thighs, presenting tests

that prove my bones as dense as boulders

and force my innards to revive:

I am alive, alive, alive.

Значение имени

In Moscow, on the street
one Sunday between
the pale tubes of neon lights, recently extinguished, and
the rhinoceros-guarded façade of
a gentlemen's club,
a young woman I have not met since asked me, "и ты --
как тебя зовут?"

and I answered truthfully.
"--Красивое," she said, her eyes
breathing, her mouth
open like a split fruit, "как песня, ты
песня, песня--да?"

"Ну да," I said, tilting my eyes down, down
to her split-fruit mouth in
surprise--
"как песня."

Как песня--я песня,
народная песня,
рождественская песня,
старая, святой песня,
запрещённая, так же,
как все суеверные, красивые лжи запрещённые--

and in the wet breaths of her eyes were
древние крестьяне,

крестьяне, которые танцуют по кругу,
забытый хоровод,
француженки с толстыми косами и
молодие люди;
томятся; ищут любви.
В глазах были карие глаза, светлые волосы,

тысячу лет назад,
в то время, которая мир забыл,
в стране, которой язык уже не говорят.

In her small, plump face, turned up at me, I
could read that her "Красивое" was
earnest, that her breaths were
alive, that песня meant something
big, bigger than a continent, as big as
history, and imagine
my astonishment--
because in English, all it means is

me

Sonnet LXXXVII: Audacity

In its demesne the rolling Shinto bell,
your brightest laugh that spikes the screen, the spine
of a dimetrodon, is a design
that's locked in a genetic, verdant cell;
each inhalation's perfect, tapered swell
spreads visible along with its decline--
this tiny, living thing that is not mine,
creating body from a dust-made shell.

I could erase it, cover it with sound,
could amplify, repeat to match my mood,
accompany its tones with tinny psalms.
For all I cannot touch, my hands surround
its boundaries; I hold it here, subdued
in incorporeal yet heated palms.

Туул гол

The year that I died,
Saladin at Al-Karak strode in through gaping archways.
Karak's echoing hallways were not then so undefended,
but the sky was as empty,
as impenetrable and deep and as deeply blue,
and as deeply blue and empty as the sky over Khatan Tuul
in the year that I died.

She is an almost worthy lord:
she sucks the willows through her long, splayed fingers,
and the sturgeon dart in and out,
piercing her belly where she over-boldly bares it to the sky;
the sky is a window that looks through itself,
a mirror that paints my secrets on the faded grass
more vibrantly as my search moves east.

I was turned inside out by the sky
in the year that I died,
and my name became the steppes;
my bright hope became the Altai and my hate Baikal,
and Sakhalin was all that amounted of my purpose.
But Saladin tore forward,
fueled by the condensed flame in his own belly.

There were flames that year,
when my lord turned inside out
and his insides were nothing but meat,
meat and terror and the desire to be covered,
painted over with saffron and jade.
I am a painter

and his bones burnt up, and every arrow
was the arrow that opened me to the blue-razor Eye.
I felt my armor peel like skin,
and I faced forward.

My body was left at Al-Karak,
my doors burned to ash and my ashes blown westward,
the idea of a fortress,
resonant,
with nothing to echo but the faded grass.

If Saladin comes again to Al-Karak,
let him flow in like winnowed grain;
let him fit doors to my doorways and meat to my bones.
I will paint him emerald as a virelai;
I will paint him vermilion as an Atlantic sky,
and he will fill me with his name,
with hate and with hopes piercing bright,
like the scales of sturgeon,
sucking me in with the vacuous blue that precedes the flame.

Khatan Tuul and the sky reflect each other,
transparent and impenetrable,
beyond the Altai,
behind Baikal.
Now I dart between the willows and unfold across the steppes;
now I am vast and animated.
But if Saladin comes again to Al-Karak,
doors will fly up against the sky.

I am a painter

Knowing

The Ibuprofen's red stare burns
through the desk drawer, blazes
four inches into my belly;
I know; I don't touch it, but I know
it's there, and I know so am I.

I can take two, just two of the
sleeping pills, just two and I can't
find the scissors because I hid them
one day when fear was stronger
than sadness, but I know
they're there, and I know so am I.

If I went to the hospital they'd scold
after they saved me but maybe I'd pay
that price for the distraction of what
comes first--a new kind of pain,
a sensation I've never felt, and I don't want
to tell you because I love you, but I know
you're there, and I know so am I.

Apology

Every

I am so
angry
that I don't want to get dressed,
that I don't want to take a shower,
that I don't want to eat;
I'd rather sit on the couch and be
angry,
the ache on the sides of my head spreading
around and down to my neck, shoulders, back.

I want to scream at someone,
but my throat's not working;
I want to smash a window,
but that wouldn't help me escape.
I want to punch somebody,
but no matter how much force I put into the blow,
it lands too softly
to be felt.

That's the nightmare I have,
over and over--
I can't touch anyone; I can't feel anyone's skin.
I'm trying to hurt people,
but nothing I do reaches them.
And rage builds up inside my face,
and I can feel it shrieking, hear it slamming against my sinuses;
there's no room for more but it keeps
growing.

I can't go anywhere
or do
anything.

My Mother Wants to Know

My mother wants to know
why I don't have babies yet.
She wants to know
why I don't adopt them,
why I don't select one and bring it home.
My mother wants to know
why I can't be happy,
why I refuse to accept
that life just isn't going to be that great.

But it's not about reproduction;
it's not a matter of He won't sleep with me? No skin
off my back. Who wants to have sex
anyway? I'll just adopt a baby and that
will be all the love I need.
It's a matter of Right and Wrong, as in,
it's wrong to use your kids for that,
wrong to let them watch you live in miserable disappointment,
all the while telling them you want them to be happy
--Do as I say, not as I do--
wrong to to let them think it's normal for parents
not to love each other.

But--says my mother, confused--
people do that to their children all the time.

Uh, yeah. I know they do.

Wedding

He doesn't care about anything

and I don't care

about him

Zoe is a poet

Zoe is a poet
and she says she isn't
but the lines she pens between
SCREAMS OF CAPITALS
all dashed out breathless
like a child with news of the
stock market crashing, the hospital
falling down; and Mama's
too tall, too all, too forever,
between the
SCREAMS OF CAPITALS
are too full of beauty
for their unintentionality
to make them
meaningless.

Ball Gag

I just want to be in love with someone who comes to me and is like,
Listen.
There are like three hundred guys out there,
and I'm not gonna have time to commit seppuku,
can you hold them off for a bit?
and I can be like,
No problem, boss. I have GOT THIS.
and then we quote some Buddhist scripture at each other and
I write a tanka or something and head out there
to die fucking gloriously
before the compound goes up in flames.

I wanna be in love with someone who is like,
God dammit, woman, how many times have I told you
not to fucking LOOK at me after nightfall? and I can be like
Well how the fuck else was I going to find out
that you're not ACTUALLY a talking polar bear?
and I can harness the winds until I find
the troll palace and wash the tallow
from his shirt and bring him
back to my castle.

I want to love someone who says to me,
This is a beautiful rondeau--
but I, like Dian, cannot be pierced
by the golden arrows that arc out from Nox's unfathered egg.
and I will say to her, Lady,
here is where they have wounded me,
and maybe she will let me fetch her goblet
and maybe she will touch the top of my head with her fingertips;
maybe she will allow me to drink the wine of oblivion
and watch her dance, beneath the stairs
and past the forests of silver, gold, and diamond.

--and I don't want to be tied up or beaten anymore
or reminded that I'm worthless;
I don't need somebody to tell me when to eat
or what to wear or how
I feel right now--I know how I feel--
and it'd be nice to be given orders,
but only if I knew I wouldn't be asked
to sin against myself and even then
I wouldn't obey if by disobeying I could save my beloved
even a breath's worth of an inconvenience--

but what I do want, and what I think maybe
it's possible to have without also choking
on a ball gag--those things are so gross--
is a slap on the back and a Good job, soldier,
thanks to you I'm no longer
a goddamn talking polar bear, having no thumbs
made it kinda hard
to charm angry ghosts with my biwa,

so I can throw back my shoulders and be like,
No problem, boss. I have GOT THIS,
I have always got
your back.

To Rachael

In my head, your voice
is undercut by the tenor line of an old Lutheran hymn,
and dreams that weren't of you
haunt the corners of my mind, blurred by indifferent memory.
Each time I ask, your voice
answers, so sticky I want to lick it,
and I imagine you in the shape of a paper doll,
as the curve of a porcelain cheek,
nothing but cheap nylon lace and ringlets,
and there is no thanking you, and I know
that I am an inconvenience, and I want
to stop asking, but I need
your answers.

To you who are the chirp in my jacket pocket

I felt loved

when I realized how fiercely you protect me
with little words, little ways of manipulating a conversation
to your ends

I was submersed in hot water; I felt myself
cooking, my meat turning from red to gray.
Love drove through my stomach,
a thick, wooden spear
that did not splinter and stayed
there, in me, heavy
and pleasant, enough
to anchor me so I am no longer pulled off course.

Gratefulness welled up in me,
rose in my throat and burst out;
my head thrown back, I open my eyes to the sky,
and my mouth is pushed wide open, jaw aching,
and it pours out, golden, pours up,
and when it is exhausted, I remember your words
and it wells up again,
throws itself out of me so hard my muscles jerk

I want to
lay on you all this light,
shining like yellow hair, like new money;
to cover you with it,
a shield to warm you

I want to cut open my skin and show you
the spear in my belly,
the glistening of the organs around it,
my liver, my gallbladder, my ovaries--
see how clean they are
when my skin is cut open,
when they touch the light and the air.

I want
to give and give and be empty
and be filled and empty
myself again.
I want to hold myself
up for hours and hours until
my arms give out
But what good would that do you?

It isn't beautiful,
this kind of overwhelming response,
knee-jerk, uncontrollable,
breath-crushingly intense,
and it's so obvious that I
am missing something, that I have not
had enough of Love

and that's--
that's a lot to lay on top of you,
to punish you with when all you did
was love me

so I don't know whether to hope that I
can keep it to myself
or to hope that you
would like me to love you, too

Homecoming

October is half-over--
I run my fingertips over the back of my paper-dry hand.
Dusk, like an ever-threatening rainstorm,
encroaches on the edges of the day.

And I can smell, far-off from me,
the charcoal fires
and the girlish squeezes on the bleachers;
sweaters with too-long sleeves fall
like phantoms over my arms,
and I remember

nights with crisp branches and leaves,
the bonfires, the metal scraping
beneath the shoes that let me taste invincibility,
mouth open, waiting,
an unplotted course,
the clock that struck at midnight, and forbidden kisses
in the bare-stripped cornfield beneath the low, low moon:

eagerness and too much energy,
a certainty that the future would be something
and be something to be proud of.

I no longer have a girlfriend to cling to;
there is no boy with carefully sculpted hair
and wounded, liquid eyes.
Still, I would go and watch the game,
look at the girls in their sweaters,
but there are no tickets to sell to me,
no cars I can ride in,
and the taste of beer is even more unpleasant
when I drink alone.

I should have taken more
forbidden kisses; I should have
made my bed every night beneath
the open sky; I should have
clung tighter to her sleeve--

but I did not realize
that there are twelve months in the year,
and only one of them is
October.

Virgo

Astraea, Astraea,
warm but never scorching,
like the heaviness of the winter sun through the window when my head spins with alcohol--
how many people live and die
and never feel engulfed by love?

To Astraea

I don't understand
how the universe doesn't
grind to a dead halt
under the measureless weight
of its suffering.
Could there be a counterweight?
And it is just inertia?

Questions

I wonder what other people mean when they talk about happiness.
   Do they all mean the same thing?

I don't understand how a feeling could be calm but not sad, or self-empowering but not angry.
Is it what you feel when all the other feelings go away, a nothingness that only exists in absence?
   Or is it a feeling of its own?
Is it like excitement (but without shame)?
   Is it like being loved (but without resignation)?
Is it constructable like self-confidence or involuntary like grief?
What's so great about it?
   Why do people want it so badly?

All I know is:
   there might be people,
   and these people might have happiness,
   and even though they probably can't understand me and I probably can't understand them,
   I think possibly
   that that's a very beautiful thing.

Enough

I can't believe, but
I want to believe; I want
to, I want to, I
want to, I want so much and
so, so many and
always, and that there is how
I know there is good,
because I want good; I want
to be good, I want
so much and always, and that
is exactly good enough.