-untitled

one thing i noticed was the
luggage on the second floor. no
one else lived there with her. no
one else climbed those stairs. she
was surrounded with the quiet of
her home. untouched rooms. the
dampness felt even then in the dry
heat. in one room on top of an armoir
was a quiet, muted-blue suitcase. empty
or not, it's contents moved me (when was the
last time it was used). i knew vaguely of her family
but i couldn't tell you when the last time she saw them was.
how her routine melted into theirs. i don't even remember the drive
to her home, but i remember the heat and the time we sat huddled in the car with all of our luggage. we had never seen a place like this before. i had to reorientate myself into her home. dry hay lay on the ground floor of her main room. her kitchen was damp and dark. everything was green outside. her farm surrounded her. her chickens welcomed us from inside her kitchen, huddled under unused stairs. we fed her goats by hand. the baby one with a bottle. the cats we didn't touch. she fed us ripe tomatoes and olive oil and bread. we drank lemonade. she broke open a watermelon. my mother was so young then, but she spoke with so much clarity and kindness. her two daughters, herself, and this woman she had never met, but felt the world of.

what i learned from you:


how to burn your family
how to pierce hearts with hot needles
how to dull the emerald
glass in the magic
ones  


i learned how to toss hope
into the ocean
and watch as tides
billow over fearful eyes.


i learned how to sever,
to cut clean lines from a muddled heart,
how to scrape open old wounds,
bring dirt into
old homes


i learned how to pick
at white blossoms,
**** out their sweetness


how to turn blindly to hate
as if it was easier. and

in the end i learned how to hate.
a strong chest
filled with it
fixated with it
bones that would leak of it.


but i didn't hate those
who built homes strongly.
who looked into eyes like yours
and saw freedom.


in the end
i hated  your heart,
your fear
your blindness.
in the end i hated your
dismissals  
your cruelty.

in the end what i learned from you was
how to hate
you

You said the anger would come back
just as the love did.

I have a black look I do not
like. It is a mask I try on.
I migrate toward it and its frog
sits on my lips and defecates.
It is old. It is also a pauper.
I have tried to keep it on a diet.
I give it no unction.

There is a good look that I wear
like a blood clot. I have
sewn it over my left breast.
I have made a vocation of it.
Lust has taken plant in it
and I have placed you and your
child at its milk tip.

Oh the blackness is murderous
and the milk tip is brimming
and each machine is working
and I will kiss you when
I cut up one dozen new men
and you will die somewhat,
again and again.

i'll eat your cherries
that stain my teeth
when you offer them
as forgiveness

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don't you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn't it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
*******?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
I told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
I stood up in a cafe and screamed
I'M IN LOVE,
and now you've made a fool of me. . .
I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I've never been in one of these things before, I said,
these triangles. . .
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had
a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,
centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and
sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.