Hindsight
I’ve seen demons, each one tossed
in its hurricane of scarf—
they were foreign, carved and painted, they protected
a temple. Shall I invite
one home with his bug eyes, his
fangs? But that’s not the conversation
we should be having, you and I:
let’s go back to our early letters.
See how the ink splurts out
of the capital “I”? See the tremor
blurring Y-O-U? Each ink blot a cocoon
in which a demon larva battens
and dozes, oozing out its time.
They live for decades in manila folders.
This species is indigenous, end-
ogenous. They secrete
venom. But warmed, scrabbled free,
released to air, they
rise, each new-skeined wing striking an emerald shimmer,
a flash of quartz—
I could have
seen you better, I
know that now.
Sunfish Midrash
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice?” Genesis 18:25
First the spade slicing fat earth, the satisfying heave
of soil onto grass: I poked with my fingers to pull
naked worms. At seven I learned to torture
as I pronged the fishhook into spasming flesh
and dropped it in the stream. And learned to kill—
“If you desire the world to endure, there can be
no absolute justice”—not when I yanked the sunfish
through bright air, hacked off its head
with the not-quite-sharp-enough knife, slit open the narrow
belly, ripped out its guts—all this I learned—
“If you desire”: blood on my fingers, I wiped the blade
on the grass, and how the body sizzled
in the pan, my pride and hunger sizzled as I ate—
“absolute justice, the world cannot endure.”
“Flying white,” a classic Chinese calligraphic
brushstroke, ghost of a figure, not laden
with ink. I still eat fish. I observe the hibiscus,
its pleated white paper satellite dish of bloom
receiving whispered messages from some heavenly
realm where letters aren’t shaped in blood.
And, till action—
Castanets in the inner ear, a concert of cicadas
chiming to fanatic sea gods as olive trees
curtsey. Those gods care not
a whit about sexual shame. The face
in orgasm: tragic and
comic mask speckled with foam.
Sacrifice required. The girl will be tossed
from the steed at full surge, lie crumpled
on sand where only hoof prints hem the shore.
We rested briefly on the strand, then rose to shake mica from our hair.
Years later, waves still seethe in the inner ear.
The gods leave traces.
We’re streaked and scarred, but still we persevere.
And when, years later, that face startles again
we won’t
recognize the beauty we had thought.
