7. still life

new monster

dive into
high gold
as if it were

water.
searching the
caverns
of my body

for you

silence

waiting

veronicate

it might be  enough,
i think,
to wait--

i learn it from
the empty parts--

from the spaces,

where the gold
settled

where the gold
flows
thickly,

thick
enough.

raucous freshness

the gold was time
or longing

the gold was the root
of my tongue

all tastes at its base.

i was untethered
but i didn't notice.

sky had stretched, scratching at itself like trees' leaves,
over the lintel of the door like
a smear of blue paint.

i had been still in a corner
amidst dead leaves,
covered in them,
like a bad dog

with my back to the door

as its hinges
moved.

dearest

something
i had dug
through
for

down past
what had seemed
impenetrable

through
solid

or what had seemed solid.

i dug two holes through it
and wore it
like a mask

i had dug
through

to see you.

the gold was
veronicate:

something i filled
something i
pressed

pressed my face
into

roses

the moment before the shot, the hunter
seeing
sunset light
ripple across the doe's back,
splash, break gentle
and drip down
to pool in the leaves
to soak down into dirt.

everything fluid.
even the barks of the trees
fluid with shadow.

resonance

no point in swallowing
i let it roll
from the corners of my lips

overfull and
unfed...

the buck with
its golden horns

its nostril rimmed
with gold

as if it were
a statue,
so still.

the scent of pine
almost blue
in the nose

i was not choking.
i was not choking.
i was not falling
into the pool,
the water so clean
spotlessly clean
because everything
in it
turned to gold
and drifted
to the bottom.

i do not dare you now
because there is nothing to dare,
i am so still

i was not alone

because god lifted me
in his golden palm.

ich grolle nicht

you thrust deep
into the heart
of each cell
of my blood
a gold coin

so that i am flushed
and heavy
with your
worth

veronica

i just
stand
sodden
in this
rain

clothes pressed
heavy
to my
skin
it is
wrong
to be so
wet

zinc metaphor

open split
open
split
open like
a shell
like a shell
with its cream
center so
smooth

i will bury the lightless
inside-bone cavity but i will be told the truth

i will mouthe your image and spit it out like bone
i will crown your brow with brown hide
i will cowl your visage with a broken membrane in my mind
i will do such things
i know not yet what they are


zinc metaphor:
too heavy for plumbing

i wept in a dream

a day of love and war i spent wrapped in a dream, weeping, constant weeping, for you, with your skin like a map and your arteries and veins all opening and closing like the mouths of hungry birdlings.

you kept me a seedling, pounding the ground down over my head with the flat of a shovel.  in the fall you would cut the wood for the winter and then spiders would get into it.  i was a girl in a fairy tale, in a tower, but i became the haunting.  haunting myself i crossed lintels and sills.  i left scratches on the panes but they showed only when the glass was fogged.

i am in danger now so i have to leave.  just keep in mind how much i wept for you.  and stop punishing me, because the asparagus was as thin as a rail and it was too expensive anyway.  it's all nonsense anyway.  there was some blood on the windowsill, just an old stain, and the words in the glass read

i love you too much to let you go

but it was nonsense, as much nonsense as breath.
and the asparagus got all salty-red-wet.

milton

it was a warm spring day when you locked the door on the tower.  when you closed down the windows.  you put your finger up and up as if you were trying to unlatch something but instead it closed everything.

and i thought to myself, i am not that person, scratching and raging against that lock like a hoyden.  i was outside the window like peter pan, watching the action; i watched that sick little simulacrum in the room enact her beastly tiny passions. 

because you punished, she was punishable.  so she must be guilty.
something about her must be guilty.
something about her
must
be guilty.

quietus

when i arrange my love as if a smear
of yellow-gold encrustment on a wound,
infected like an unattended tear--
upholstering skin--the letting of the blood--
when i abide my love but bare, a place
cavernous empty, echoing, empty, caverns--
when i regard my love within my face
its undiluted strength a weft that ravens--
when i address my love, when i address
my love with terms of love, when i belove
my love with terms a dove would creel to press
bare from its beak, when i my love behoove
when i behave with love as if addressed--
when i think any paucit word is clearer
than those i shed, but cannot break the mirror.

meditations of the beast

i cleaved down
to the vein of gold
and out spilled
dawn colors

pink as faint
as water in a white bowl
with just three drops
of blood in it

purple-blue like a pulse
under the wrist-skin


but these were just
imaginary, licensed by
a mind not at rest.

the gold ran true, though,
true as my heart.