Stiff as a rifle barrel.
The collar
could cut the chin
of any Marine
not perfectly
at attention.
Higher than a priest’s,
but blue, darker,
piped in blood red,
like Blood Stripes
a Marine earns.
You focus on the
collar of the Marine
straight in front of you—
still, alive, so rigid
air around him quivers.
This stillness,
rasps the light, the air
shuddering at attention,
taking blows
from half a world away.
“If you will, you can become all flame.”
—Abba Joseph
The wind is wild; the fire is not tame.
You mouth the prayers, recite the ancient creed.
If you will, you can become all flame.
You scour the Scriptures, making truth your aim.
You advertise your goodness, deed by deed.
The wind is wild; the fire is not tame.
Late March and a cold Good Friday in Parma.
A crowd in coats and scarves fills the Duomo.
The painted cross is lifted. The line shuffles
forward toward the broken skin and blood of Jesus.
I imagine what the cross does not show—
the bones of hands and feet,
the twined nets of arteries and nerves—
the housing for the nails.
He never rested underneath my heart.
There beside the keening jet
on the tarmac where
nothing truly touches down,
where they all come
when they come home
already at forever rest,
a fist, a knot, a burl
of what had been and was
another woman’s son
left where it was contained
beneath a flag
and lodged itself, fist-hard,
unmerciful red beneath my breastbone.
There it hid
until I found it,
called it out again,
my spirit-son.
Several sorrows ago
Before grief came to echo and voice
And tears to a pulsing spring,
Several sorrows ago
Before the poem
And portrait
Dared word meaning
And purpose its bastard child,
Several sorrows ago
Before each witness
Knew silence
And its deafening cadence,
Several sorrows ago
Before blood coursed with pain
And flesh knew but itself,
Several sorrows ago
When only the old withered
And we were frozen young,
Several sorrows ago
Eyes that saw not
Limbs lift in the church light
stocking feet, bald heads, backs
bent like
marmots, like
awkward planets,
like words that don’t yet
know themselves.
Only 1% of women miscarry three or more times. In 50–75% of these cases, no medical cause can be found.
—The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
At first a mistake, now a willful, recurrent error:
I mistranslate the Spanish
on medicine labels to mean “Pregnant?”
though it means “Questions?”