Hillsborough, County Down, September 15, 2012

He must have thought it another bloody

rough and tumble scrum,

a bone crushing brawl

heads bashing, the thud of bodies,

skin burning, eyes mud-blinded

arms and legs slipping through his fingers.

Sin-binned.

But he was on his farm.

Sweet-scented breezes slipped

down from Slievenamon.

The Holsteins lowed in the upper pasture

as twilight flooded his fields, a buzz saw snap

from where he first played in Ballynahinch.

And from my mother’s grassy-knolled farm

where on summer nights

a hundred couples quickstepped under a canopy

like one wild whirlwind

and I, spun by powerful men like him

who radiated such heat,

I thought they had sprung whole

from loamy peat. Bejesus

he must have said to himself. Holy shit.

At the last, memories looked back at him

with greedy eyes: pricking his tiny fingers

picking blueberries, running the leather

with his brother and his Da.

He must have extended his hand

to them. Up the field, boys, his sister swore

she heard him say when she went out

to call them to supper.

And then the full press,

the kick, the thrill

of rushing them all home.

for J.

A cardinal flies straight into my window, stuns himself,

the sound of his body ripples against glass even after

he falls confounded and quiet in the bushes below.

By the time I rush out on the porch, his body is aloft,

dazed the way you stumbled out of that bar the night

before your wedding, all flurry of white

from your chiffon dress and that ridiculous veil

we made you wear. You were at four martinis

too many, so you bent and whispered against my temple

I don’t really want to marry him, I just want to marry someone

1. Then you laughed and planted a reassuring kiss

on my temple: we were thirty with college debt,

corporate jobs, and bank accounts that made us want

to croon the blues, so naturally, this was next.

I wanted then to say you don’t have to marry him,

or anybody else. That you could take that trip to Majorca,

watch cicadas swarm the air and land in glasses of champagne

the pavement later strewn with their husks. I wish

I had whispered leave him and that we’d taken off

giggling, two swans, trailing our milky dresses

through puddles, our heels sticking in the cracks

of cobblestone streets. We would have driven all night

away from the fuss of chair covers and seven-tiered

cakes, to the days of rooftop merengue in Seville,

our awkward shuffling as if we’d just discovered

our bodies, back to Luis and Juan Carlos who kissed us

under the wisteria though neither of us could tell

which was which–a phantom life, streaking past us

in phosphorescent plumage and brown limbs.

Instead, we walked back to the hotel arm in arm,

words hanging ripe and heavy between us. Within minutes

you fell asleep, and all I could do was pull off your peacock

blue shoes, weary with vodka stains, and with a washcloth

try to wipe your waterproof lipstick from my temple,

that glittering red streak, a buoy, its silhouette still bobbing

whenever I shut my eyes.

I hold onto the blue    edge of the couch

a boat to its shore      our knees the waves

chess game on the table    floating from the day

we said we’d finish        the moon full on close up

turning to look       like a mirror can it still

swallow us whole    my head on the arm rest

I flick the switch      with tongue and wrist

the pawns roll off        their heads little moons

each drop of his breath         light and stone

and light and back to my mouth

The boatyard is deserted;

slips empty, save the few holding

boats wrapped in tarp & covered for

winter. The last leaves cringing in piles or

swept into crevices

will soon be dust. Father, you read,

stiltingly, with earnest difficulty,

a child’s book to me, one line

at a time, describing this thing. It was

about death. Everything is about death.

I trace my hands against the uneven

deck. A nervous habit. The Sun will be

going down now. The Moon

will be rising. I have outlasted

many. The boats sleep in their slips.

Thinking of your father, you stop at the casino in Lame Deer

with the intention to play Blackjack.

From the parking lot, you watch a tall woman in cut-off

denim shorts carry a toddler and a liter bottle of water

as she walks the side of the highway.

The road is hot and straight but the casino

wears a rounded roof and shelters swallows in its eaves,

little mud nests plastered into edges, holding on

with dry grasses curved like fingers. At the D and D Trading Post

next door, you could buy peanuts and moldy oranges

if you wanted to, but you don’t. Instead, you buy

Gatorade and a pack of gum. Whisky bottles

and beer cans pile like empty memories beside the door.

A flyer announces movie night at Chief Dull Knife College.

Motorcycles pass semi’s on low hills despite the solid

yellow line, throw the love of Jesus at minivans and sedans.

Heat rises from the asphalt in blue waves. You are

a lone Black-eyed Susan, haunting the casino parking lot.

You don’t go in.

You listen to the passing cars, the sound

of other lives hurtling through – a whoosh, a wheeze.

Rosebud Creek dries like a cough caught

in the high-up lungs of the river it tries to feed.

You snap a photo of clouds with your cell phone,

the pale blue sky between them blank in the frame.

What you remember when you kneel behind the casino and pour

your father’s ashes among the sagebrush and prairie grass is

the circling swallows, churring a dry-throated screech,

and the sky, desperately unfolding itself

into schisms of beauty

raw and wild.

wooden bells over the lavender. in the belfry alcove, the hum
of ghost bees. abuela at her loom threads the last butterflies and indigo
and hangs the festival chili peppers to dry.  

her hands put me to bed with my sisters, Nina Bell and Maya Blue.
we crescent each other’s bodies. the blood-purple of yarn tangling over
our fingers and mouths, knotting the bird-shaped place of your absence.

when I speak your name, the butterflies fly out of the loom cloth.
their wings cover our mouths. we cup the pooling moons of each other’s faces
and whisper in the language of lost daughters.

that my words would tremble the lavender instead of your memory
that I could gently speak for you, to whisper,
to keep you from the infinite exile of your name.

at dawn the bodies of my sisters are beeswax at my feet.
I stand in the lavender. I call out your name
and the swarm of ghost bees drowns.

The salt you left behind, came back without.

Aspirin-clouds. Lion-mouths. The flower. The root.

The bright cry of a christened head.

Every ankle on earth. Every wellington boot.

What it’s like to make a rainbow.

The moon.

What it’s like to fall out of the world.

The moon.

Whiskey. River-weeds. Oil. Wine.

The rolling swivel of a halibut’s eye,

the freckled sunrise on the belly of a trout.

How the brain sparks. The taste of skin,

that line from eye to throat. Whether mermaids exist.

The peeling belly of every boat.

Shipwrecks. Sparrowbeaks.

The moon.

Where all the pearls are.

All the drowned bones.

How the inside of a cloud tastes.

How it felt to be snow.

My brother and I still reminisce about the year

we lived in another family’s attic.

For months we dreamt about playing outside

our faces pressed up like needy moths

against the window’s wintery pane.

Every chance he got, our stepfather

reminded us to pipe down, our mother

hinting for us to tiptoe along the attic’s floorboard

as it was still the Midwestern Muslim’s way

not to squander generosity.

Because we did not attend school

my brother and I decided to find stories

hidden between the attic’s cracks,

collecting dust. A story beneath a thimble,

an elbow propped up against a rusted bolt, a catwalk

taking shape along the sill, an epic tale about folk

no bigger than a thumb,

traversing this expansive landscape.

We told ourselves

stories, until the attic

growled with trappings,

our minds becoming little sail boats

drifting us into a tale,

where it didn’t matter

that my brother had forgotten

to bring toys with him the night

we moved into the attic, didn’t matter

that there was no radio or T.V.

We had an imaginary tribe

of people, their tooth-pick spears

glinting, their crumb sized loafs

of bread almost satisfying

our hunger to know

what happens next.

When I said I am doing so well these days,

what I meant is I will go back to a humble place.

I will get a job in manual labor, in rugged red

sand and plains towns. My book of instruction

will read, How to Clean a Steam Train. All this,

so I may live out my years to best suit your prayers.

I am working so very hard to be your own tragic saint.

Nightly, I will write you in pharmaceutical ink,

I am sorry for these and so many things. And I hope

you’ll take it like a pill, violet moving through

all of your body. When I say hello or goodbye,

I really only mean, Accept my sincerest apologies.

My penance: to exile myself to avalanche cold

and isolated form, to fall and come down so fast,

so hard, where I liked living near you there too.

And when I spoke silly of my love and awe for you,

please know all I really meant to say was,

I would burn down a city in your name.

1.

If the moon’s surface was composed of waves

the way DaVinci thought,

sun reflecting moon ocean and our dark seas’

slow shadow,

borders might be in temperatures, in currents,

in light—the fish sustaining themselves in the cold rock,

the warped water, our planet at arms-length like a hot pearl.

2.

During red tide, the waves

bring small jellyfish clear as plastic bags.

A lifeguard washes stings with a spray bottle of vinegar.

On Cornish beaches, reports say Legos

wash up since 1997 when a shipment was lost.

Occasionally, a sea monster arrives—

a thirteen foot oarfish, a log covered in goose barnacles.

3.

Third graders learn about the universal solvent.

But there are always exceptions—

during the density experiment—in water,

oil and honey divide into colored rings.

In the Great Salt Lake, some tourists in their hats

bob like corks all day, all day in the green water.

4.

Have you seen the video of the zebra

attacked by the lion? The lion clamps on the zebra’s neck.

The zebra lowers her further into water.

Out of breath, the lion must let go.

What else might collect in water?

In paintings, Monet’s bridge over the lily pond—

a dark curve in reflection. In Sunrise, his bay—dashes,

blue and orange on a wash of faded violet.