ALL RESPONSES |
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Carry the offering.
Look for someone to take it.
A barbeque, a party in the forest
across the estuary, on the island,
with its apples and oats
whispering secrets in the dunes.
Cross mud flats at low tide
with an offering for evocation,
lifting burdens for villagers, for
parents and siblings, for friends.
Oak-smoke floats from woods,
a signal that August Feast begins.
But hurry. When the tide comes in,
there is no return from the island. |
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of the flowers youth, Katayoun write in your poems
sands push sidewalls for collecting
the Raad o Bargh
paintbrushes in the hourglass
twisting down
man
in colored sand.
paintings drawfar into the ocean
the water brownsun held under
and born deep in Minnesota
hitting the paper. as lovesongs
Miss America had could've sung
maybe a new Iran
and the tulips -portraits of youth,
stubborn Fall colors in blood
smiling
inside the year of life
held inside a palette's knife.
carving hieroglyphic art
the bronze places you've been dreaming
as that baby
thrills wrestling
the new freedom. smoothing the hour's glass
carpeting deep a Persian brown hue.
my friend, Katayoun, she is a river below us,
ploom below the ocean
long thin white pools
will crest the shores tomorrow.
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The day after I ran into you
I knew you smelled like something I needed.
I peeled the clothing off me and was hit by that image, every time
like running through the colored sheets on strange backyards
the wind blowing their fragrance against my face.
I smiled often when tangled around you and breathed lighter
when the silk of your robe touched my lips.
Too soon after many years, only your empty steps were left.
The fullness of you dropped somewhere along the way
somewhere I could not go.
The scented sheets never washed again. |
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I leave you outside of what you are
Outside of Deus Ex Machina
The cicada only needing to rest
By the leaves and whatnot of its dress
Your questioning of what is real
Your endless know-it-all
Of Mephistophelean wings
Keeping me written to what is real
Somewhere down the road I age
And disagree with everything--
Yes, it was inevitable. Somewhere
Down the road I age
And I know knowledge is not a flood
And you agree, that we both know
But somehow we have ignored time
And the trees it brings. |
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Close to the edges where I walk,
tides, cliffs, flight paths
of gulls and crows.
They exult like children delighted
by extremes -- falling stone-like
then pulling back up to bank
on invisible highways.
Yellow gorse, wild mustard --
wedding colors gable the path.
I inhale their scent of coconut,
taste and smell sunlight the way
a child does before she forgets.
Suddenly a white field opens to sea,
churning and birling around rocks.
The dome of my skull
a planetarium
open to the galaxies.
Sometimes walking I hear scraps
of voices or music, perhaps calling me.
They catch up quickly like children
I leave uncaressed.
I don’t want to believe in them but later,
waiting in traffic, I’m sorry I didn’t listen,
try to remember the words
melodies, flocks of finches
leaving a pulse in the ear.
It’s too late now to know what spirit
was singing which song and if
it was calling me to acres of bird bone,
wave shell, spin drift, where I could
lean unafraid into air. |
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You are no longer hunted;
the beasts of night have simmered
All things plain and winged
are behind you
It is your beautiful hand
that pulls me out of the dark
each morning
and the beautiful nature
lets me be with you:
all green this morning,
the colorful birds fluttering
What seems more important
is not what but how
Dark-red;
our blood is the same
blood, when it blooms
in the beautiful morning |
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You say you don’t remember
you are in love though your heart
remains filled with the same tears
What love there is dies to me
like the severed head of the ram
you carry in your arms in sacrifice
Before my eyes it becomes white
silence and even the confessions
of previous nights will not survive
Every time I write your name
on the fronts of envelopes,
I cry
What I mean to write, dearest,
is the body is so personal,
but its loss so impersonal
Please stop by the river and wash
the blood from your hands |
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If there were a child’s tumbleweed
for each time that I saw your face
staring from the market line,
or the bus stop queue--
if situations were as out of place
as a British word
in an American pie,
or you were . . . or you were.
But you are not so real gone
as my wishing you away;
you are not as much a verdict
as a trial.
And when I leave
the grocery store behind,
when I am finally out of line,
it is because I let you live like this,
and leave you lost,
with no more
than an assemblage of fixings,
without my shedding a single tear. |
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Haunted fact! The young woman in it
cradles a stolen ram’s head, there’s
one in every other house. Not always
can she find a clown though stuffed
with saw dust, the dream-filling type.
To a favorite haunt a thought returns
time. After time, too, can be a drag,
a party to the Talaban who’s most
recently stoned a woman. Is over.
Take back that thought’s costume.
Strip it bare to what it’s worth.
Get your money back. It won’t
work, can’t work. Break in another
slowly. Humor counts. Even if
it’s raggedy as a doll. So many
ways to fool ourselves. A happy
thought does much work, let it
cool its hot heels in the river. |
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You are mine, dark water
You are my reflection
my fragmentation
my ripple to the edge touched by stone
you are my drink of madness
and the calm cool touch of temperance
you are the place where I stand and sink
feet puddled in surprise
hand bent to scoop fragrance of water lilies to my mouth
to slake my thirst, my parched throat, my chapped and
censored voice~
dark water pouring through my fingers
pouring through my veins
traced upon my thighs
cast behind my back
my black water, my green, my sunset
shimmers and minnowed trail,
beloved, bedazzled, bequeathed as if we were in a desert
and you, only you, can keep me alive.
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...And so she said:
"Follow me to the water, there I'll play with you, I promise, I will."
Her voice was as candid as her dress,
pale and shiny as the morning sun.
Her long dark hair flowed around her face of child,
sparkly like the full moon in a winter night.
I was entranced by her voice, by her dark eyes.
The color of her velvet hat matched her moving lips,
which did not move as her words did,
but slowly followed.
"Who are you?" I asked while moving my steps toward her,
but for as many steps I took, she kept as many far from me.
The forest grew thicker and darker
but all that I could do was to hear her song.
"Come, come with me to the water,
I'll get my doll and there we'll play together."
In her arms, she carried a shaggy bag,
from it sprouted the head of a ram.
Her pale hand extended toward me, she smiled.
"Don't be afraid, see? Here is my doll."
A pink suited clown appeared in her other hand,
then she pulled it close to her chest
and that's when I heard the giggles.
Crystal drops of ice,
Their echoes bounced on the trees
growing thicker around us.
"Where are we?" I asked.
The smiling doll's mouth opened
and the words doubled into bubbles.
"To the edge of the water." I heard it say.
"To the edge of the water" repeated the ram.
And there we were.
She walked to the edge and motioned me to follow,
then she took my hand in hers. It was cold.
A bracelet of wet water drops appeared on my wrist.
I felt a chill run within me.
She smiled and kneeled.
I stared at her face and kneeled near.
A finger over her lips as to wish me quiet,
she motioned toward something laying
under the surface of the water.
I bent over to look and saw my face,
pale and sparkly as hers looking back at me.
Then in it I went.
The abyss swallowed me, but when I turned around
she wasn't there.
The place was dark and yet I could see
other people held by their ankles in the deep.
Then I heard her song coming from above,
her child-like voice singing a song.
"Follow me to the water, there I'll play with you, I promise, I will.”
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I remember you.
Just like that, dressed in your Halloween costume.
“I’m the witch of the west!”
You yelled, and then grabbed the broom
and rode it around the house, our dog chasing you
barking and wagging his tail as to say wait for me...
But you did not wait.
Not for him, not for me still stuck on a photo
and the promise of chestnuts roasting on the fire.
Remember what you used to ask?
Why was a Christmas song talking about chestnuts?
I can still see you posing for the camera,
displaying your best “witch” grin,
a bit of green and black makeup on your cheeks,
a black cape and pointed hat,
while I melted and thought of you growing up,
and of when taking such photos will become a no-no
because you’ll be a teenager
with a teen-reputation to defend...
Time is a gift we sometimes do not know
how to appreciate fully.
Time slips away like a veil,
we blink and it is another year, another memory.
I remember you, the child at play.
When life was a theater's stage made for children,
and dress-up was an every day affair.
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A tumbleweed of need--
each time I see your face
staring from the market line,
or waiting for the bus;
If you were or if . . .
but now you are so real gone,
not as much a trial
as another verdict wronged;
And when I leave you live
like this, and leave you lost,
my chest is only an assemblage,
a tear, the known lack of
and its fixings. |
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Leave behind what doesn't fit in the palm of your hand:
The ram you slaughtered before you understood
what the gods wanted;
the dark, unwieldy crosses of your youth;
the worn suitcase jagged with memories;
the rooms drenched in regret.
Bring only your offering:
Palms open like blossoms after the rain. |
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Your shoes so large they leave a clown’s impression
on this shore. Your dress long and trained
like a priest’s robe, and maybe you are. A child
pressed downward by the passions given you, the relics
grande and precious to your parents, as cockle shells
were to you a day ago, but now the tramp steam
forward under others gaze. Bent on reliving
ancient ways. Lose your youth like wrinkles
seeping under your eyes--the strain
of a dropped doll. The bent back
fresh and setting in. |
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Sometimes words
Are whales
They swallow us
Before we speak
And in the belly
Of the big black beast
We drown
In our indifference
No matter how daft a poet
You think yourself to be
Even language leaves you lonely
Eventually
That abandoned doll
In the water, daughter,
Arrived on a wave
From some distant sea
~Erica Rivera |
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