ALL RESPONSES |
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In the mirror, a little girl, hiding behind experience,
a woman who lives in the present, holding fate
in her hand. There is some doubt, and always
hope in the long, steady strokes of a comb. |
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curling
insecurities
clenched fists
of hair,
i will realign you.
Unfurl you like
sensitive
nerves.
Untie your whisper
knot into a yes scream.
Fuck
each cringe.
Tinker with each
nervous coiled verse.
Hairs,
you will
fall
in reams red--
a book written in pain, unread
a vision of fear: this
strain and strand
proceeding
her body.
but will it hurt?
no, you will feel nothing.
you will just
hear
the separating of
scalp
the sound of beauty
becoming
which
is
your
ground. |
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There is always someone
watching, and tight-lipped,always,
for the veiled fear of being un-loved preys on
us all. Let them
look, for shame
there is none here but I and my tangles;
perhaps someone can help me make it through
to the ends? |
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A mirror darkens or clarifies
gives off an unbiased reflection
not so paintings
of women created by men
dancer by Degas courtesan by Renoir
Raphael’s madonna
allusive accessible.
Women eat for these men
are not angry. Matisse
paints wife and mistress
at tea in the garden.
Women breakfast
with curled hair and rosed lips
and are clean for these men
like the woman in Bonnard’s painting
washing in the bathtup upstairs
near the window her long hair golden in sun.
She bends, washes with suds
please keep the cloth slightly on.
In Slewinski’s rendering
the woman combing her long red hair
seems to be doing it for herself.
There is private pleasure in the shape
of rounded shoulders, lowered head
hypotenuse of hair.
This is the way a woman
whose best work is lost
would have made her
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She hears him
lift a can, pour beer
into a tall glass as sure
as a house key slips
in a lock. She dislikes
this plastic paradise
of comb and mirror,
the thickening scars,
the courted sleep.
Their fights are all
her mind recalls
after seven years:
the fists, the remedy
afterward. She does
remember an August
marriage, his dark
good looks. Now sitting
beside this bed of snow,
the room becomes a jail
cell. Her fingers can still
pick the lock and she lives
for yet another winter day. |
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she doesn’t resemble the woman who rose before
her to get clean in the shower
at 5 a.m.
her hair nearly at her feet
she slumps forward
while her favorite cotton robe
resists her falling away
like fog
in the not yet light of drawn curtains
the room smells of turpentine
cigarettes and stale sex
she eyes the mirror warily
absent knowing two lazy fingers
trace her breasts
the other hand hoping the brush
will bring him back
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Strands of experience
segregate between comb's teeth
grouping ordering
hanging by
depth and origin
stretching wild curls to greater lengths
She, longing
to rectify
restructure
rare red ringlets
to straighter visions
planar plains
singular orientation
taming volume so envied by others
into quieter designs
Watching,
I remember submerging my face
into her mane
she sat astride me
facing the headboard
gasping
shuddering
she quivered her finish
I opened my mouth into the lush drape
wanting to drown
drinking her being
fearing the coming distance:
My lock strand separated
pulled tight
eventually broken
off by Desire
to change What Is
into What She Wanted To Be
Untamed
into Controlled
Bouncing
to Stilllness
Screaming Passion Fire
to Calm Control Stillness
Curly to Straight |
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She recalls long hair days.
Brown then, right for
pulling back with rubber binder
or braiding into pigtails
or letting loose after
washing with pails
from the corner rain barrel
and camay handsoap.
Today she perts
the short grey-white shock
parts the cowlick to its own device
blow dries it all into its own life.
(Pats a little spit on the errant lock.)
Does it for herself.
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the child’s heart mimics
how the flowers drift in monet’s pond
the fragile grip of tip and surface
stem and frond
her back so butter smooth in aging
her eyes undisplayed
the daylight sped from them too soon
the day her father finally floats away
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I worry
Brush
This country is in economic, educational and structural crisis
Brush
My nanny left us after her car made it over a bridge which collapsed into her rear view mirror and our big move is to fondle one another at airports
Brush
I worry
Brush
I worry about Audrey
Brush
I worry she won’t have enough melanin in her skin to survive the strengthening sun
Brush
And I worry she’ll miss every opportunity to meet and greet interesting people because her school friends assure her that the most suitable treatment for a bad case if the sniffles is prayer.
Brush
And I worry that a women over 25 okay 30 okay 35 okay 40 is supposed to cut her hair
Brush
Short
But I can’t
Brush
Because I worry that when I have short hair my face looks fat
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Men paint what they can’t understand
in mediums felt with their fingers.
Like a mystic, the artist doesn’t hear
violent rumblings in the earth’s core
or the battering wail of strong winds, or else
ignores it. His ear is tuned to subtle
sounds, his eye drawn to sensual things.
A woman combing her hair,
washing clothing with stones in the river,
lighting a flame at the stove.
While the rest of the world waged war that day,
the observer of love reached for his canvas and,
worlds apart, drew heaven in a flash
of perception.
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Her hair,
the only thing
that was hers
and hers alone.
The mirror
unknowingly on loan
from the wife
of her benefactor
The clothes donated
by her sister,
none of her decadent
dresses of course
just what was well worn,
drab, and prone
to slipping off
her shoulder
which she could not claim
as her own either,
the soft contours
of skin were owned solely
by her lover,
for lack of a better word,
determined by circumstance.
When he kissed her,
her heart would retreat
into her hair where
it could still beat
with warm red passion
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The men put their belts back on
as they walk away
from the scanners, bags rolling behind
like obedient dogs. There is
something in the act of it--
the leather through the buckle, the
cinching up--something everyday and
intimate, like watching my mother
put her hose on, as she stood in her slip
the dress hanging from the door
appraising her, as I did from the corner
of the bed, as my father would, later
when the hose and dress and belt
shared the shadows the moon left.
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Persinette ached from head to toe
and only her little dog knew the reason why.
The dutiful pet sat and watched his beloved
owner tug and shed, then rid of the evidence
day after day. It is hard to pretend you have
a full head of hair when when you've been suffering
from Rapunzel syndrome. |
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There are privacies of the world
to confront or overlook,
a woman combing her long hair,
auburn hair, a bounty,
electric, in competition with
the glory of her skin,
her curving,
ivory-colored back.
They reduce a to-do list
to an hour alone,
to something
that feels good, feels
close and small
as a hand mirror (oh!
her eye’s spidery lashes),
and as large
as the universe of the night-
blue quilt she sits on.
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between the bus station and the alleyway
the old men play at making worlds
of baguettes and tarts eaten
coffee comes in the tiniest of cups
the marketplace is now two slips from closed
the awnings of one shop still hanging on
and a boy chases a blown balloon
from the hand of just another clown
Meredith moved here years before
her eyes are bright as puddles in the night
shining solitary light up from the ground
that a poor lamp gave away
She made this street her moon
her place of wonderment,but her soul,
still remembering, rushes elsewhere
from the drain of her bath to the sea |
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her words are justly ripe
achingly moist
searching half empty orchards
for stray fruit hanging heavy on
crackling boughs
wearing frost
a false death
the hours drag across her skin
each a winter passing
the land and its color
fades to a dismal hue
for only children play in the mud and snow
this is the place where
worlds break and
fires of never ending white ash become beds
tangle of hair
smoothed of burrs
as mother sleeps
arms folded over flies
she strokes her red hair
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With her red hair
and white tunic,
she is disguised
as an afternoon
when she leaves
she becomes
one afternoon
in the many
afternoons of his life
whenever she comes
to visit, it is only time
that has intervened
After, he watches her
brushher hair, the strokes
of his world falling,
falling with everything
winged, yet fragrant
He believes all that burns
between them is in vain,
is transient
is speechless
She believes
she is precious; yet
she guarantees nothing
but his ashes
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She sold it once
gave it actually
a charity
for wig making
for those who
chose to lose theirs
She wonders
about choices
was theirs
as charitable
to themselves
hidden under hers
Friends that day
waited at the bistro
didn't recognize
after the cut
apologized
offered compliments
Landlady Mabel
peeked at her arrival
called police
surely an intruder
she insisted
and a stolen key
In a bit of seller's remorse
with a draft at her neck
called her mother
reassurance
support
the comfort she knew
She has begun to watch
in her tortoise-shell comb
for the inevitable
for the fade
as in the likeness
in the family portrait
Slowly strokes them out
the memories well aged
offers them
long again
to the nesting finches
by her bedroom window
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we don't think of
the capillaries
in our genitals
either
those thin threads
sown by
impossibly
small hands
seams
that pull
bodies effortlessly
together.
we dug them?
all of them
aside boundless
spools of
gravel roads.
little flaps
in cold white flesh
amongst black crops
crude lines. abject veins.
etchings in the
endless erection
of a profounder body.
holes.
we dug those,
that carry
that encounter
that connect
something deep and arbitrary
something barren and desired
something,
perhaps desire itself:
an enduring yearning
to be seen
and unseen
for miles more
than the distance
between
two
lovers
(and
two
orgasms)
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Male skin that smells like green tea
makes Ava explode into simmering dust
she takes her lover's fingers into her mouth
and licks them slowly giving him pleasure
The piano marteau* appears in the dark
flying around ; a weird bone of a dead dog
Ava starts howling
her arms shiver and her teeth cold
''L'hiver, l'hiver''** her lover shouts
as the blizzard breaks out in the room
*marteau(x)=the small white hammers inside the piano
**l'hiver=the winter (a french word)
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She is combing her hair and she thinks
about what she has become
Thinks about the tides that scour her
beach, the sparkled stars of her night
She thinks about dew falling and moist
pink petals, the softness of baby
skin, quick baby breath,
and how many times she yearned
for this quietude within, this surety
that she is just who she happens to be
She thinks about falling and failure
and kneeling in silence
She thinks about laughter that slides from her
heart as silky as hair through her hands
She thinks about hands and how many
kisses they scattered, how many objects were picked
up and returned, how many counters wiped
clean, the stirring of sauces, the washing
of dishes, the threads of her sewing,
the weave of her love
And she thinks about love and how
often it felt weightless and clean
like soap bubbles iridescent
and shining popped in the air,
or how often it felt hot as fireworks
bursting and awe-ing,
how many times she let her heart
be shaken and beaten, an old rug full of promise,
a blanket of holes but cozy and warm
And she thinks about wounds and she thinks
about worries as she combs her red hair
She no longer cares if the silver
shines through or if her hands look
veined and blotted. She thinks about veins
and the gold lode of living, she thinks about
living and the mother lode of grace
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she is wearing thin
the bristles of her brush
raking-sorting-counting
each hair
as it slips between the seconds
lash of an eye flicking tears
drip
drip
I watched her
count each drop
like broken glass in her hand
d
r
i
p
p
i
n
g
I watched her drown
in the warm salt water
of her mouth
as she sat combing her sunset hair
I couldn’t reach for her
I couldn’t be that pearl beneath her tongue
the prize that she wished she won
the ground beneath my soiled feet
gave way with little countenance. |
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I'm looking at your face, which
searches for an image that
mirrors a buried idea never
spoken in the company of others
who often do the same.
You gaze in return, hoping to find
a world tailored to your hoping.
Let's get together sometime,
you and I, reader and writer,
student, teacher, mother, child,
at the tavern down the street
where famous artists once drank
to each others' reflections.
I'll see you there lover,
tonight, before the glass breaks. |
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The way eyes reflecting become
doorways into the deep world
The slow absorption of ruin
into wholeness with sandstone
colored breasts and belly
Mirrors with their shadows
set the tone for inwardness
so that the eye may drop and ascend
freeing pearly apricot and strident yellow
The world looks back as if just born
into color, as if it gathered its skin
of glass to step within color like lapping
The veins shelling gold
the color of hair—red
a quick bright tongue lick
a cocksure scrannel of sound
To become red to balance green,
a spirit color holding the world,
visible arc of it beneath her brush.
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sunset is a cheap copy
of your hair, its blinding bronze.
when midnight finds us entwined
like delilah's clippings
and i, defeated, devote
myself to your pleasure,
who could believe your love's
blade has freed me, entangled,
and thus, weakened, i find myself
strong enough for you.
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when her hair draped like rain off leather
I knew that she was old, but I loved her because of it,
and her demand on hair to be straight and long eventually fell
because the ends would always kink when left alone
so, she sits like winter on a hillside, dragging out the drifts,
barely moving the age of branches with her lift,
as somewhere she hears warmth blowing
like the kiss of a cure in the love of old age. |
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Do you fight in my Heart of the West?
In a backward blizzard, my back words know better
Low charioteer slipping it all to me in a dream., asking
Where am I going? To this, the beginning
and to this its close... it is ending.
Upon Frozen grey ash matter,
in all these, watch when You are stepping - you step into The Thousands.
Washington is so deep this time of year, You are at its Zenith.
in December –
when Helena put One Thousand still.
Below in Her glowing
lay sweet charioteers,
down with horse and lion,
as her fingers pressed it against the sky,
Hang and reach - quarreling things
no more than strings amongst strangers now dreaming.
a new or in the very same a very old tapestry.
Snow - cover it
Gloves - hide my breath
Your woods have given up little else.
Stray into this mystery, birth- a marvelous liberty
These statues of Tongues
Of Rood Sounds heard digging
- earth biters as spades, severed speaking.
I am the Rood,
the eldest Tree, marbled in steel hunger
in cold secrets of being, an Arc covered...
Canopy- these north wires are climbing.
are you for those Homeless in you,
who also want of things
stick frozen me to me, as the ground
Standing on the Horizon, death’s great place hewn.
my tongue, clench your hands
reaching and young
give up on these given names
the sound of them
a softness of it – in its hideaway.
Well tamped hole, I live on the now, once wild, hungry home
for words and Everything.
Earth,
Watch me eat.
Well up with it; never haggle over its cost to spend.
slick blonde riding around marbles inside now sewn shut.
Lay it out, stick it out for the Ooze of the underground -
patchwork quick - a closed door kept.
and the Morning,
You are my wife’s- and heaven at the face of her
the stairs, you drive sleep away and when inside
I hear you and leap humble
Softness of me and my changing moon.
Who moves the rocks in dreams
Or through me still stranger verse?
the mind is a lamb-ringith’ on Greece
Quo Vidas- We Kings! It merely asks,
Where we are? When are we going?
To the Wild things
and iron undoing lips
to kiss a crucible a memory
years rushes by window, still measuring
in the seventh season now it has missed
the dew on petals, as leaves hope to reveal
Loves keep this step.
To heaven- to Frost
to First measure – the lovely Road, dark and deep
It has been a long time since I’ve first seen them,
These eyes gather up in her harbors a long run Christmas
- the woods comforting me in my want.
This is My Place of worship,
you are here, freezing over
the stairway of my eyes to heaven
All my furnaces, wood to climb in
Sailing to climb Me., still devouring
I disrobe, in all my entire Bee eating
Wolves and spades of the earth
A place in my bosom,
Spilled Be Low
rooded in the words. forbidden.
Labyrinth,
Grecian wind,
Follows along
Lonely threading wall
dreams a finger
gently in the overhead...
To Helena,
In this lion’s den watch me, the floor moves
My birth day, the new world you made great!
Confirm my hope and Yearning
my Self injury, forgiven. I feel you in the body
do you love again
Quo Vidas? Where are you going?
To some frozen grey ash Mountain – comes Thousands.
Me, one pilgrim of Vesuvius climbing her face,
Lilies bound to be bound to them,
Stallions, lions or men - Underneath in these caverns,
Molten – at this the midpoint of my labyrinth.
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As she brushes her hair, she asks me
to tell her a story with a happy ending;
the only one I can remember has me
going home to become a ghost,
searching each room for my sanity
I tell her instead that loving her
should be as simple as putting
a raspberry into my mouth
We both smile at each other at this;
in reality neither one of us understands
what life is or how to live in it
I pour a glass of white wine for us
and we both put it to our lips and drink |
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come sit with me in this quiet bath
let your hair down to the waters edge
where it will lay and take root
over your body
of cream and rose hips
mint and chamomile
those precious things from where
we make our tea to wet our mouths
and warm our bodies against
the trembling hands of winter
come to me now dear
let your feet trace the steps
known a thousand times before
this night passes into spring
wresting the morning from our sleepy embrace |
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She knew they were coming
Torches burning their ignorance
She had no fear of the cold water to come
yet the she feared the heat of fire |
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you are like wax
dripping from the candle
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The relationship between
the mirror
and the mirrored
is one of constant breaking,
who be the breaker
who be the broken
as fluid, as malleable, as the light
bent between them.
Imagine now,
a hand dragged
across a pond’s still surface;
the face above is scattered
in the ripple’s wreck,
but not for long. Water heals.
So too, when
from this same hand,
careless
drops a looking glass,
or in anger
thru its surface smashed,
a hundred pieces
on the floor stare back
a face unchanged.
Little could the mirror
care, a precipitous
increase of entropy.
But we are not water.
And we are not glass.
And this is the way the mirrored pass:
unhealed, worried, worn, etched,
and changed by what’s missing
in the what we have left.
As when a woman, combing out her hair
notices, suddenly,
how close her face wears time’s care.
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Naive to think that love could bring anything other
than disappointment
she brushes away remnants of broken dreams
each loosened strand whispering goodbye
The muted voice of tomorrow
struggles for air
her hands know no boundaries
her heart
closed for winter
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That would be a woman combing
her hair. That would be her mirror.
There is death nearby also, and I
wish to write about it, but it moves
in only one direction.
Outside, weather turns cold to bitter.
I smile at the woman, and though
she is lovely, I do not understand
what this means.
I wish to write a scene when bread is dangled
before the hungry and some are angry,
others greedy, some cruel; the streets are dirty,
and people smoke, indifferent to others.
My keys are in my coat pocket, and I should leave,
but it is too late before I realize there is a thin line
between pity and self-pity. |
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she said she waits for
the stage to become silent
save for dust filtering through flooded light
collecting on the worn boards
filling the gouged eyes of temperance
with a slow decisive frenzy
the din of the twilight voices
swells against the walls
becoming pinpricks in her skin
she combs her hair
without effort or knowing the tumult
she causes my blood
we wait together
faces in the mirror
reflections unassailable |
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She combs and brushes waterfalls
of a copper river, stirs the salmon
in her hair until tangled is smooth
and wet is dry –– fifty strokes a day,
a lifelong habit, for a thick sheen
to flow onto her shoulders, down her back.
Her paprika hair's worn loose and wild,
the same russet as her mother’s bound
in a French braid, her grandmother’s in its bun.
The rest of her dressed style’s austere ––
she clothes her body in a black chemise.
Men prowling the streets of Madrid
follow her red hair like bloodhounds.
When they call el uno coronado en rojo ––
the one crowned in red –– she doesn’t speak
their language, hardly hears sounds they make
releasing the air of their longing ––
psst, psst –– like deflated tires.
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The painter brushes her hair,
three soft parts form, and prepare
for a braid.
The paint begins to dress her, but her skin
is too luscious to take more color than it already has.
The woman's eye sees you, watching her,
and she doesn't startle.
The eye knows you,
she knows you, and is content
letting you watch her hair,
brushed by Wlady, her skin
touched by his knife -
blending her to such perfection.
She will dress, now, do what she must.
She will, and we won't recognize her,
out on the street.
though she'll see right into us. |
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