Schismatic at a Wedding by the Sea

 

I.

I was lost in ribs of stone, fixated

on mossy shadows of angels winging

from behind your ears. When you said

 

you didn’t trust my eyes, your words

bobbed me back from my grave

of details, but your breath

 

formed a nettle which made

me still more upset: You had drawn

attention to yourself by referring

 

—like curtains ungathered in a boat

of glass—to a place the sea

does not reflect. Mirrored nowhere,

 

not even in the belly of the moonfish:

a personal sea of tranquility.

I understood too well to choose

 

not to let your face sink

in veils of Camel smoke. I remember

mostly your small teeth, your tongue,

 

the flounder of deep-sea love between.

My dream of your features, your face,

was drowned in a grave bereaved of intrigue,

 

as beyond that instant when the beam

of a lighthouse spiders through

the misty rigging of a clipper, turning waves

 

of what might have been black glass

into bright leaves bubbling with veins

of white film. It’s the glass, I guess,

 

which intrigues me because it might not

be glass, but a medium for other things

living but centuries old,

 

like bleary oaks in the bathroom window

or heads in closet mirrors, small children,

or better still, when I was scared like them

 

(this is only one pretend reflection),

just like what I gathered deep-sea

diving with my uncle. Read my mind.

 

II.

I want to act out what I mean, to make

you see I don’t know how to act;

I can just pretend to do a thing like that.

 

I should tell you: He’s a madman,

my uncle. We dropped far down

from the boat, floating in murk, when

 

he grabbed onto me. I wanted to go,

but his hand was so cold. Dying,

I realized I was only a child, only acting

 

like I knew how to swim—as I am only

pretending to remember what

happened. To deny it is to find a way

 

of saying it is true. To a madman

the world is only a lie. Even children

like the one I’m pretending to be

 

are for me what the world is

for them. A missing world comes back:

I lie as stiff as shoulder bones in bed, the heads

 

on that wall becoming more real,

more real. I know your lips are moving

and I’ll listen even though the sounds

 

you’re making (you have to understand)

are stagnant as the body

of water from which I drew my body

 

(in wake of a drowning you just don’t

understand) is stormy, on the move. Again

I don’t know whether to sink

 

into doubt or focus on you, my vagueness

leaving your teeth half slurred

into white gowns which keep dragging

 

behind, merging with bric-a-brac

on lawns where grass turns wet and sluggy

and blue as the huey ocean. If any one

 

place can seem safe and distinct only

in the context of another, I come

halfway back to your face

 

because I have to, but only halfway

back because my nonsense makes me

Christlike. Oh sure, it isolates.

 

 

 

Among the Yellow Eyes of Succulents

 

I.

 

Raindrops, tadpoles

breaking on our noses and hearts,

exploding tiny motives in the air,

 

we once lay side by side from noon to moon.

 

II.

 

Now we’ll take a minivan to the edge

of the petrified mounds,

a surrender to the weather’s orchestration.

 

Even the mules, wet and matted into tufts,

slant toward slate.

 

Above their horny backbones,

mountains of cloud, not a hint

of white light in that body of dark vapors working.

 

III.

 

If myth is part of the mortal tale,

carry the last icon to me silently, not as a lash

but a faintly incandescent woman

 

of silica filled with ambergris,

herself cradling a tiny corset

of black thorns.