Two Poems
A Thin Line
Once, I saw a river of bats
stream like black confetti over my head,
fan out across the valley,
wing and swerve to swallow mosquitos
in their thin throats. Imagine:
their winged hands in the dark air,
their nipples and warm bellies and tiny shouts
bouncing back the geometry
of moth wings in an ocean of night.
I have a friend who placed them side by side–
two skulls meticulously cleaned: wolf and bat–
the same slide down the nose, hollowed caves
for eyes, even those curved canine teeth.
Almost identical except one was tiny,
one could be crushed to crumbs
between two fingers. He set them on his table
made of black stone with fossils
spiraled like shooting stars. We crouched
on the floor, eye to eye, to see.
There’s not much between us
on the sinewy earth. The sky
is an eggshell that keeps us warm.
Things repeat themselves– and then startle
in their newness, the way bones are
rivers for awhile, and then become river
beds with curves and sockets
where life pooled and chewed.
Memory, too, circles back, the thick
resting weight of your hands on me
like a bat wraps her shawl of wings
around the warm planet of her pulsing heart,
the ice-light of stars a breath away.
Listen to a reading of the poem “A Thin Line”.
curse
maybe there is always a moment
of knowing loss before it arrives
feeling the space we will leave already
filling and welling up as a wave doubles
back rushing into itself even as it pulls
out to sea easy to say from here perched
as I am in this wide field of far where
I study that fire making marks
like wing prints in snow where
the rabbit tracks vanish into glittering
blank we lived a year on the heat
between us falling into tongues skin
I never knew hunger like that on the streets
with no queers we walked side by side
not touching the simmering between us
polishing linden trees and jugglers at traffic lights
the snowy cordillera behind the city rising
clear in a rain-rinsed sky and towards
the end I felt us crest felt that wave
thickening into us even in the dissolve
we sat in the crowded café not talking
our tongues fat and quiet and still
dumb as time in honey mute as spoons
I think we barely touched fingertips
under the table half-filled coffee cooling
in cups din of talk around us and under
the steady hum of cars on the avenue
trees in their muscled slow language and worms
twisting under the grass and under
your tongue your mother’s curse sat
like a stone worse than death she said
and we were quiet and helpless as we filled
into our bodies our breath blood yes our love breaking
over us more than we could bear
but what choice did we have
some hollowing between us inside
us some hiss of air leaving even
as it was rushing back in
A Thin Line was previously published in Terrain.org
curse was previously published in Nimrod International Journal for Prose and Poetry.
Listen to a reading of the poem “Curse”.
