Moon Is Always Female (2 page)

of strangers and of luck. By flight
he
meant

flying and I mean being flown, totally

beyond volition, willfully.

We fall in love with strangers whose faces

radiate a familiar power that reminds us

of something lost before we had it.

The braille of the studious fingers instructs

exactly what we have succumbed to, far too late

to close, to retract the self that has extruded

from us naked, vulnerable and sticky,

the foot, the tentative eyestalked head

of the mating snail.

To fall in love so late is dangerous. Below,

lights are winking out. Cars crawl into driveways

and fade into the snow. Planes make me think

of dying suddenly, and loving of dying

slowly, the heat loss of failure and betrayed

trust. Yet I cast myself on you, closing

my eyes as I leap and then opening them wide

as I land. Love is plunging into darkness toward

a place that may exist.

     Arriving

People often labor to attain

what turns out to be entrance

to a small closet

or a deep pit

or sorrow like a toothache of the brain.

I wanted you. I fought you

for yourself, I wrestled

to open you, I hung on.

I sat on my love as on the lid

of a chest holding a hungry bear.

You were what I wanted: you

still are. Now my wanting

feeds on success and grows,

a cowbird chick in a warbler’s

nest, bigger by the hour, bolder

and louder, screeching and gaping

for more, flapping bald wings.

I am ungainly in love as a house

dancing. I am a factory chimney

that has learned to play Bach

like a carillon. I belch rusty

smoke and flames and strange music.

I am a locomotive that wants

to fly to the moon.

I should wear black

on black like a Greek village woman,

making signs against the evil eye

and powder my head white. Though I try

to hide it I burn with joy like a bonfire

on a mountain, and tomorrow

and the next day make me shudder

equally with hope and fear.

     Excursions, incursions

1.

“Learning to manage the process

of technological innovation

more productively” is the theme

of the speech the man beside me

on the plane to Washington

will be saying to a Congressional

subcommittee. He works at M.I.T.

He drinks a martini, glancing sideways.

His watch flashes numbers; it houses

a tiny computer. He observes

me in snatches, data to analyze:

the two-piece V-neck dress

from New York, the manuscript

I am cutting, the wild black

hair, the dirt under my stubby nails.

It doesn’t scan. I pretend

I do not see him looking

while I try to read his speech,

pretending not to: a neutron

bomb of deadly language that kills

all warm-blooded creatures

but leaves the system standing.

He rates my face and body attractive

but the presence

disturbing. Chop, chop, I want

to say, sure, we are enemies.

Watch out. I try to decide

if I can learn anything useful

to my side if I let him

engage me in a game of

conversation.

2.

At the big round table in the university

club, the faculty are chatting

about wives, marriages, divorces, visiting

arrangements. They all belong

to the same kinship system. They have

one partner at a time, then terminate.

Monogamy means that the husband has

sex only a couple of times with each

other female, I figure out, and

the wife, only with him. Afterwards

the children spend summers/weekends/

Sundays with the father.

Listening becomes eavesdropping and they

begin to feel my silence like a horse

in the diningroom. Gradually as I sit

my hair mats. Feathers stick up from

it, crow and eagle. My cheeks break

out into painted zigzag designs. My spear

leans against the back of my chair.

They begin to question me, oh, um,

do you live communally? What do

you mean, “open”? Hair breaks through

the back of my hands. My fangs

drum on the table top. In another moment

I will swing by my long prehensile

tail from the crystal chandelier,

shitting in the soup.

3.

The men are laughing as I approach

and then they price me: that calculating

scan. Everything turns into hornets

buzzing, swarming. One will

tell me about his wife

weeping tears of pure beersuds;

one is even now swaggering down

the Tombstone set of his mind, the fastest

gun; one will let me know in the next

half hour he thinks political writers

are opportunistic simpletons, and women

have minds of goat fudge; one will

only try unceasingly to bed me as if

I were the week’s prize, and he wears

a chain of fellowships and grants

like sharpshooters’ medals. Mostly they

will chase the students and drink, mostly

they will gossip and put each other

down, mostly they will complain. I

am here for the women, a political

task. They think they have a label

for that. I am on vacation from sex

and love, from the fatty broth

of my life. I am seeking to be useful,

the good godmother. We are acting

in different fables. I know the plots

of theirs, but none of them recognize

mine, except the students, who understand

at once they will be allowed

to chew me to the bones.

4.

I am sitting on a kitchen chair.

My feet do not reach the floor.

If I sit forward, they’ll rest on

a rung, but if I do that, the women

will stop talking and look at me

and I’ll be made to go outside

and “play” in this taffeta dress.

What they say is not what they

are talking about, which lumps

just underneath. If I listen, if I

screw up my face and hold my breath

and listen, I’ll see it, the moving

bump under the rug, that snake in the

tablecloth jungle, the bulge

in women’s dresses you aren’t supposed

to notice. I listen and listen

but it doesn’t go anyplace,

nobody comes out all

right in the end. I get bored

and kick the table leg and am sent

outside to sulk, still not knowing

why everybody said Uncle looked

like he was asleep when he had

lipstick on, in the funny box.

I never got there, into the hot

wet heart of the kitchen gossip,

to sit twisting the ring on my finger

worn smooth, saying my hubby, my old

man,
him
. I never grew up, Mama,

I grew off, I grew outside. I grew

like crazy. I am the calico

mouse gnawing at the foundations.

The sweet snake is my friend who chews

on the roots of the hangman’s tree

to bring it down. I am the lump

under the tablecloth that moves

stealthily toward the cream pitcher.

After years under the rug like a tumor

they invite me into the parlor, Mama,

they pay me by check and it doesn’t bounce.

I’m giving a speech tonight. Do they

think I’m kidding? The walls I write

on are for sale now, but the message

is the same as I wrote in

blood on the jail house wall.

Energy flowing through me gets turned

into money and they take that back,

but the work remains, Mama, under

the carpet, in the walls, out

in the open. It goes on talking

after they’ve shut me up.

     Dirty poem

Snow lies on my fields

though the air is so warm I want

to roll on my back and wriggle.

Sure, the dark downhill weep shows

who’s winning, and the thatch of tall

grass is sticking out of the banks,

but I want to start digging and planting.

My swelling hills, my leaf brown loamy

soil interlaced with worms red as mouths,

my garden,

                why don’t you hurry up

and take your clothes off?

     Leonard Avenue

Two floors down I loll

in warm cinnamon-scented water.

Box piled on box on box,

up under the eaves you float

in turgid bloodwarm sleep.

Bundled in my robe I climb

bearing coffee steaming incense

on the chill stairway air.

We’ll drink it dabbling in bed

on the shore between waking and sleep

where you enter my wetness and I

take in your warmth.

     Limited but fertile possibilities
     are offered by this brochure

We cannot have monogrammed towels

or matches with our names on. We cannot

have children. We cannot share joint

tax returns. We don’t have a past.

Our future is a striped unicorn, fragile,

shy, the first of a new

species born without kind

to hostile kin. We can work together

snarling and giggling and grunting.

Every few years we can have a play

as offspring. We can travel. We can

go away and come back. We can shake

each other rattling honest. We can have long

twining soft voiced phonecalls that leave me

molten and fevered. We can make each other

laugh, cry, groan till our flesh shines

phosphorescent, till heat shimmers in the room,

till we steam with joy and streamers of light

run down the insides of our eyes.

We can love. We can love. We can

love.

     Intruding

What are you doing up, my cat

complains as I come into the living

room at two in the morning: she

is making eyes through the glass

at a squat ruffed grey tom. He fades

back, only the gold eyes shining

like headlights under the bird feeder.

Retreat with all deliberate speed

says the skunk in the path

at the marsh’s edge, tail upraised

quivering in shape like a question

mark but in meaning an exclamation

point.

You are too near my nest so I will

let you believe you can catch and

eat me, says the whip-poor-will

leading me through the thorniest thickets

uphill and down ravines of briar

as it drags its apparently broken wing.

This is my lair, my home, my master,

my piss-post, my good brown blanket,

my feeding dish, my bone farm, all

mine and my teeth are long and sharp

as icicles and my tongue is red as your

blood I will spill if you do not

run, the German shepherd says loudly

and for half a block.

In the center of her web the spider

crouches to charge me. In the woods

the blue jay shrieks and the squirrels

perch over my head chittering while all

the small birds bide silent in the leaves.

Wherever I march on two legs

I am walking on somebody’s roof.

But when I sit still and alone

trees hatch warblers rapid as sparks.

The price of seeing is silence.

A voracious furnace of shrew darts

in the grass like a truncated snake.

On my arm a woodnymph lights probing

me curiously, faintly, as she opens

and closes the tapestried doors of flight.

     The damn cast

It’s a barracuda, you say,

that attacked, swallowed your leg

and choked to death, still

attached. It’s moby prick,

the plaster caster’s bone-dry dream.

It’s a Beef Wellington with your thigh

as tenderloin; or a two foot

long red-hot getting stale in the bun.

You can no longer sneak from behind

to tickle or seize. For ten minutes

I hear you thumping up the staircase,

a dinosaur in lead boots,

before you collapse carefully in the chair

face red as borscht and puffing steam.

We find a freemasonry of the temporarily

halt: people with arms in slings,

men limping on canes, women

swinging on crutches, cross the street

to ask your story, tell theirs. But

the permanently disabled whiz by

in their wheelchairs indifferent.

They know you only visit

at difficulty. By spring you’ll

be running up my stairs two

at a time, and you won’t remember

the mountain that loomed in each building,

the heavy doors fortressed against you.

All of you I can still touch,

I cherish: how easily torn, how

quickly smashed we are. Each street

bristles with impaling machines.

I say,
Take Care
; yet we can’t

love in armor, can’t dance inside tanks,

can’t wave at the world from a barnacle

shell. The same nerves that melt

us to butterscotch brandy sundaes

scream pain hot as laser drills.

Inside that long egg, you atrophy.