The Feral Child Speaks*
You think my silence sullen or stubborn
refusal to learn your speech. You imagine me
noble, standing in what is named
“garden,” every gate open. But many gates
have long grown shut, their vines tangled
scars of mending. I can only know
so much. The paths I never used vanished.
Now you want to teach me words
to thank you. I
can’t. Other ways beckon—
the crack of chestnut shells, two rocks
touching, aches in a melting snow bank,
music you deny and know,
almost. You don’t like yourself
without clothes, afraid I’m what you are.
What you call language is for me
itself—sounds, and stranger than any
other stream of wind, not music
I hear humming in my ears,
voices to move dreams, make sleep.
You should have first killed me
before I understood what it is to live
like you. It’s what you’d want
not to live as me. You bring a book
and ask me to find another. My mind
sees the book you brought,
itself without a similar.
What made your mind a house
and mine a nest? You try
to teach me with drawings of boys
who do what I don’t, but I’ve seen
the serpents your language
makes, the ones you carry, gate
to gate, searching for one left open.
x
Sphinx
When he flees, she lies down
and sifts the last hour
x
to find its remnants.
She remembers just wind
x
throbbing in echo,
the mirage of fabric in her fists,
x
a scorched tongue. Nothing
remains but his absence.
x
She touches herself
to confirm the wound.
Sleep Storms
Violent weather
in the night’s climate—the sheets
and blankets advance
x
then retreat. The hours—
never neutral before—keep
their shadowed backs turned.
x
Even our dreams are
crowded with shadows, and skies
fill with black blossoms
x
promising no fruit
but fire. We await sunlight
like a long-planned, still
x
uncertain departure, day
another strange place.
Amanuensis
In the dim
resonance of rock
rolling waves of sound
stick and stop
stop in me
x
I carry words
as I am allowed
from him
to the flat page
where my stylus
slackens
in holy pause
an event ended
x
the dictated
sleepless dream
I never dreamt
passed on
x
the seethe
and ache of stone
not its source
well overhead
in free air
A Four Year-Old’s Drawing
I see why every child wants to draw stars
in front of the black half of the moon:
if you spill ink at midnight, everything
is a trap, and who steps around borders
without edges? A four year-old
feels stars deserve every seed bed in black sky.
Even if stars won’t grow, they can at least
bury night in flecks of light. Some things
resist paint—they’re all we cannot name.
That’s where tears bead, the lost part
of a night sky. “The stars behind the moon,”
she says, “should try harder.”
Love in the Computer Age
Computers think us
beds of mussels, shells open,
or shut—binary.
x
The proportions and
patterns of zero and one
make this moment un-
x
like others. Sometimes
I lie in a bed with you
and break every
x
likeness to see seas
again. Each second is green,
another awkward
x
swell, another invention
of what current is.
At the Museum
An exhibit before the exhibits
looks like a bowl but is a funnel—
if you drop a penny into the slot
Lincoln rolls down a track then circles
like a roller derby star, entering
high on the wall and—sometimes—maybe
it’s my imagination—he parades
a little higher before his circles shrink
x
and the black hole swallows him up.
On a visit long ago, my daughter
missed the track and dropped her penny
right in. Face up, Lincoln slid on his back,
no arms or legs to stop him, and vanished.
She just laughed. I gave her a nickel—
my last one—and she repeated the act, sure
the bowl wanted feeding, not teasing,
x
and I wanted the coin to return.
Not for the money, but because desire
is the longest path a person can take—
I like to hear wheels’ edges resisting
gravity. What other magic can turn
falling into a lost star’s arc?
Tantrum
I hugged her hoping
she’d return from fish or flame
to “presentable.”
x
She rippled, rigid,
slack, delivering waves over
the horizon. Back-
x
pedal, or dam her
withdrawal? Some trickle raised
torrents and we ran
x
along the river.
I’m told harder means better,
but anger gushed
x
new tongues and—locked—we
fit like enemies.
Morning Meeting
The pigeons hold court—
crumbs call them to this bench
to decide nothing.
x
They eat cake donuts
broken and cast by workers
from a shop nearby
x
where no one friendly
works. The bench is empty.
The pigeons half fly
x
onto its seat and
down again, happy in their
good fortune, happy
x
in their company, welcomed
by a low-slung sun.
Chicago Springs Forward
Today’s weather allows repairs at last.
A glazier climbs a ladder to replace
a pane cracked in October, a fissure
through every winter view, through snows
and thaws like a before and after scene
where nothing changed. My neighbors—ready
to be freed—leave their inside voices, shout
small talk, smile hard, and squint into daylight
saving’s sun. Unwrapped and undivided,
they want to be the same inside and out.
This candor is their latest hope, their new
face for a new season. When light drops,
they’ll be at home again, looking out of
open windows, wishing the sun around.
