You Must Remember This (4 page)

Inside the asylum

there is a woman

who is luminous

inside her skin.

The car murmurs along the evening street.

The engine mutters its age with a guttural thrum.

The woman wears white cotton

underwear and a loose shift.

She sits in the darkness of the courtyard

beneath the greater darkness of a magnolia.

Its waxy leaves are coated with dust

rising from the road beyond the wall.

She hears the sound of the passing motor woven

into the sound of clinking utensils and the chime

of wine glasses being cleared from a table.

Her thoughts are as flat as a table

as she takes a ballpoint pen and copies:

the building sense of momentum

                                                    
as he entered the strange city

She traces the words

in pale blue ink on white paper.

Strange might not be the perfect

word for the city

but she has always suspected

there is another one beneath it. Tunneled

with caves and scattered with old bones.

Entering those ruins

to make marks upon the walls

might be the only trick she knows

and so she lives inside the pale blue

walls. She knows there are no men

with wings, despite the stories.

She does not look to the sky

for gliding silhouettes

to blot out the starlight.

She prefers to become a silence

and filter out through the slatted shutters

into the open

window of the passing car.

The Sinclair Gift Emporium

The man smiled as the heavy door closed behind him, yet he was

perturbed. His palm went flat on the counter, rapping the glass with

a gentle clack.

“This doesn't work,” he said, then removed his hand to reveal the

slender cylinder.

The gesture was somewhat theatrical, as if the shiny silver rod were

the fine bone of an android. The clerk looked at the pen and said:

“Let's take a look, shall we?” The man nodded his consent, and with

a deft twist the clerk removed the cartridge and examined it.

“Perhaps you were unaware this is a custom cartridge?” The clerk

raised his eyebrows and waited. When there was no reply, he contin-

ued: “You see, this particular ink is silent.”

“Silent?” asked the man.

“Yes, silent,” said the clerk. “Much like the
t
in listen. Inscrutable, I

know, but some of our clients simply can't do without it.”

The man stared warily at the clerk who stood behind the counter,

his hands folded before him.

“Was this perhaps a gift?” inquired the clerk.

The man nodded, perplexed. “It seems she would have sent a note,”

he added.

“Perhaps she did,” said the clerk with a placid smile.

“You mean—” said the man, his voice trailing off.

“Was there any card at all?” said the clerk. “A blank one, perhaps?”

The man reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a crisp square

of vellum. He studied it, then said: “How exactly does one do it? Do

we need a flame to read it, like lemon juice?”

The clerk smiled broadly now, and instantly looked younger. “Not

at all. Just cup it over your ear, like this. Then wait. It's more a feeling

than anything else.”

The man held it lightly, like a delicate leaf, and placed it over his ear.

“Good Lord,” he said, as his face went strangely still. “She loves me.”

Rather Than Read Another Word

Perhaps you could loosen your self within your skin.

After all, you've worn it

since childhood's earliest onset.

No wonder it's grown tight. Soften the muscles around

the eyes and there in your knotted

jaw unclench what's held by habit.

There is no need to talk. Let your tongue grow fat.

Listening can be a balm. Those lines in your head

are still forming, and not of their own accord: we

share the tools that deepen them: emotion, repetition,

emotion, repetition, and the requisite mouthfuls of air.

The Last Expedition

When you settled in the soft silt

of the bottom

you were on your back

looking up through the wavering

water toward the light

and something happened

to your eyes: they grew

solid as the river

stones that line the bank.

Damn, you said,

when we pulled you

dripping from the water,

I can't see. I can't

see at all.

We laid you on the nubbled

deck of the pontoon,

your sodden clothing

wrapping you so tight

your nipples

pushed like fat thorns

through your shirt

and you kept saying

in a calm voice:

I'm blind. I'm completely

blind. We did not

notice the gill-slits

until later

when you began

convulsing on the deck

the thorns grown

into fins

your body one long

muscle as you

flexed and writhed

until you shook

yourself into the green

current and were

gone.

Holder Strand

It was there I discovered him,

the drowned boy

out on the cold flats.

I rolled him over with my boot,

flipping him like a slab.

His dark wet locks

were breaded with sand

and the memory of blue

hovered everywhere

just beneath his skin. It was

me at twelve, I think.

Or maybe thirteen.

The way the sodden

clothing wrapped him

flecked with bits of weed,

the wet jersey pasted

to the wicker of his ribs.

He was raw boned and solemn,

black cuts in his knuckles

from bashing rough rock.

I cannot tell you how long,

how many years have passed

since I have been myself.

II

Oil and Ash

What's organic emits carbon when burned so animal

dung or dried seaweed picked from rocks or a child left

too long in the sun will all eventually rise toward the place

we used to think God lived: among the clouds on a big chair.

So apparently it's come to this: the way to save the sky is sell

the sky to those who would release ash into it, through pipes.

I understand this economically, and I'd rather not

mention the resemblance to prostitution, but when I open my

mouth it also fills with something called sky, each inhalation

drags sky across the fine hairs of my nostrils stirring them

in patterns resembling the locomotion of centipedes.

The inverted trees of my lungs filter sky into blood a shade

darker than a cardinal, blood so red it seems it should sing.