I ask myself

what items

I want
in my culture

created

newly and justly
to contain

my needs

the world

isn’t a text

to be deciphered

it's a new creation

a cloud
enters you

to begin in

— 15 January 2013

Today

on the bristlemallow

a splotch of pink

though bristlemallow flowers salmon mellow

petal-scattering rose

for the lake Veronica favors a balanced biome

tadpole hatches

lapwings & kiskadees to eat them

start with iris throws

drum of hammers on the half-tiled roof

whine of electric saw

drone of diesel-powered moto

cadence of castellano

— 16 January 2013

Speaking of Which

Speaking to an Argentine man

is equivalent to interviewing

the person who invented the box

works only inside the box

cannot hear the words of someone

outside the box no matter how

informedly, how articulately

how insistently she speaks.

— 17 January 2013

Polarities

hair / feathers

cunt / dick

animal / plant

ears / skin tags

money / stamps

male / mail

power / outage

mountain / plane

bird / brain

head / egg

rebel / yank

mercy / war

shit / pot

fog / lighthouse

box wine / chateaubriand

come alive / cop it

broke / flush

green / polluted

sword / trowel

sudoku / anal sex

socks / mittens

hoof / nail

sink / toilet

shit / chocolate

crab / stroke

galley / head

oar / wand

bean / brawn

sincere / camp

academic / savant

bread / art

— 17 January 2013

As Spring Turns to Summer

out Santa Cruz way, I keep wearing

this itchy black wool sweater

saggy, all over pilled, elbows thinning

crusty with egg at the left wrist

speckled white with feathers

& dust, tiny scraps of paper

cat & human hair.

Northern California seldom warms

to straight-up T-shirt weather.

Some Junes are very cold

like the June I bought this Armani

on a morning that felt like snow

this sweater that zips & cowls

even snaps beneath my neck

& replaces the itchy black wool turtleneck

knitted by some woman

during the war for a soldier

handed somehow down to me

to wear from freshman year

until my fifties — resewn over & over

at armpits, wrist, & neck.

I have nicer zip-ups from Old Navy

a thick white soapy cotton

a soft gray wool

for wearing when I’m out

but the itchy saggy black sweater is only

for home, for a cat to curl up on

preferably with me inside.

— 29 May 2013

Argentine Road Trips

Driving to Mendoza

we chose the longer road

because Route 40 tended to flood.

Switchbacking down from Colomé

on yellow gravel & dust —

a surface so bad we didn’t

notice the flat tire

until the rim bent.

The rental car company said

fix the tire or buy a new one.

We spent a whole day

learning city streets & the language of tires —

gomería, where a man showed us

the tire shredded inside.

A new one from Goodyear wasn’t cheap

plus I left my diary there —

still, a week later

they were holding it for me.

Cafayate to Asunción

took three days in our new Citroën.

Three hours one evening we waited in

a mile-long line for gas.

30 kilometers we drove

on a freshly paved one-lane highway

where semis coming at us

forced us onto gravel shoulders.

At the Paraguayan border

customs stopped us —

No, you can’t drive across the border

even though you own the car.

For 50 pesos

Carlos in soiled Bermudas

let us park it in his yard —

we never thought to see the car again

but 30 hours later, there it was

dusty & unharmed.

Every drive, however short

involved the police —

Show me your papers

where do you live

where are you going

are you carrying fruit?

Sometimes two or three

uniforms conferred

in this generally idle occupation

part of keeping everyone employed

but never a problem

because we were gringo.

Driving back from hiking in Jujuy

dreaming of showers

after three days of dust & llama spit

we reached the final stretch

of the road home —

washed away.

— 2 June 2013

I remember

I remember holding Mike’s hand, also his arm before stepping off the curb in Salta because cars came fast & never stopped for pedestrians.

I remember a man flinging his arm out to stop me from walking off the curb into the path of a speeding BMW in Geneva, Switzerland. That would have been in 1971.

I remember being afraid of cars in Salta because the drivers seemed so obsessed with their own intent, so indifferent to, so uncaring of others. I wondered how children survived.

I remember seeing the word quesillo painted on small boards outside houses & wondering what aquesillo might be — little cheese, stretchy band of mild white cheese, eaten as an appetizer or dessert, smeared with jam, sprinkled with walnuts. Once I stepped past a small sign & through a door, into a dim room, on a table a cloth, hard cheese, jam in jars. Quesillo? I said. How many? a slouching teenage boy asked. One. He took the quesillo from a plastic food storage container, slid it into a brown bag. We ate it in the car. It hadn’t much taste. It was like eating an irregularly shaped slice of white American cheese.

I remember seeing a giant South American snail crossing the road. I remember seeing another after a car had run over it. After that I regularly stopped to move snails to the side of the road. I always moved them to the side they were traveling toward. In the woods Beth & Sarah & I found hundreds of empty snail shells. I thought about the snails emerging as butterflies, giant butterflies, drying out slowly, floating upward, tipping stiffly from side to side.

I remember my blue bicycle, one or the other tire flat every time I went to ride until Mike installed Slime-d tubes & Mr. Tuffys.

I remember digging out Tribulus, aka puncture vine, the prostrate, 3-thorn plant that carpeted any empty space, grew a meter or more in all directions.

I remember common purslane, aka Portulaca oleracea — purslane & puncture vine wanted to be our garden, along with Opuntia, common name tuna, aka prickly pear. We welcomed locals who asked to pick the crop, the fruit too dangerous, not sweet enough for our stone-fruit-spoiled taste.

I remember backing into tuna spines, pulling them out of my wide-brimmed hat.

I remember Miss Vee climbing a tuna, peering down at me.

I remember Miss Vee working Tribulus thorns from her paws.

I remember Clematis campestris overgrowing the tuna, that aggressive twining vine, ever-sprouting root web, blossoms of tangled white hair. They called it barba de viejo, old man’s beard.

Though I didn’t know all the names, I remember knowing the weeds better than some of my paid-for plants.

I remember Miss Vee sprinting down the empty acequia while I walked along the sandy path.

I remember her as a kitten, crouching in brush, hoping to catch a bird.

— 21 June 2013

Letters Come Like Small Animals

Come, candle & maroon

cilantro, green, come braid & fist.

I have prepared for you

sequences of a cathedral in blue —

no tornado-heralding downshift

to ivory plum, asparagus cream

when I say your name.

Do I draw water

a portrait, curtain, bridge, or conclusion?

Bosh fling into the spore a grew long: fling

on flew the spore, ol’

green heard. Fling on

as a hand did try to chalk the sun

to races — nurtured in the dark —

if we had put our ears to the ground

we might have heard the horses.

There is no sun in another room

but let it come out

rocking in its chair.

This is your second chance to

build a cool kitchen with free cats circumventing

like a seam on a purple yellow sari you watched spinning

as it stood on a bus.

Some of us have taken off our wigs

the immense colossal weight

of our hope. Sex is part of it

the wound

of anticipation under thin cloths

of appetite

cantankerous mutiny eating through the nipples of our breasts.

Or is this what god thinks?

Or am I what god thinks?

Or am I alone?

Stones rock. Stones, rock, rockstone, stonerock

an escarpment on the wander.

Phantoms spring from your mind

and run you around like a fox or a rat

through back alleys

in the first canto of the final canticle.

Her hand composed him and composed the tree.

I mean this is measuring not

pageantry, dear sweet

silly blind Rooster

the old as simply that — but the struggle in

my flip point

doll or duck whose end ties

to you trickley jams

the bud part erasing.

Now I will rest yes in the arms as it were

of my lover he is great with a pitchfork

he loves all our senators —

grieving eagles.

So softly a lunar beam closes

as she charges his porringer

from a piggin of steamed milk.

The desert moves like a museum made of light

along the boundary of the useful

farm, what a thin light, the road swinging

uphill its two directions, the slushy ruts

this distinguished boat

now for oblivion, at sea, a

sweet and horrid joke in dubious taste —

I stole the leaded smoke-blue windows.

Two figures, unbeknownst to each other

soldered at the head, bodies angling

out like a roof

not even metal smithing nor the even-marking tires

the soles of defunct shoes

a trestle terror on the dark train —

over what? held by what?

Terrible, immense abyss —

if there’s someone falling here, half

dark half sun, like embers, into thoughts

and leaves the shapes of bottles

frostbitten, the boat in his hands

is best and when she talks of tying up her hair

his bones of such is coral

raised up out of his grave.

As a missive I proliferate

your pigeonholes of pleasure

and some geese will say

that maxim scans a lot like S&M

does. Improbable skin.

I think it’s the locked doors that have made me drunk.

I could howl out of every lock and paper-clip.

Letters come like small animals, curled in relative

warmth. Their alphabets shift when I turn.

Fierceness itself was

what made the lily flame.

[original lines taken from poems by Tom Clark, Clark Coolidge, T. Zachary Cotler, Connie Deanovich, Emily Dickinson, Stacy Doris, Robert Duncan, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Elena Fanailova, Susan Gevirtz, Noah Eli Gordon, Kate Greenstreet, Mộng Lan, Giacomo Leopardi, Osip Mandelstam, Malinda Markham, Bernadette Mayer, Shane McCrae, Sandra Meek, Joseph Millar, Hilda Morley, Paul Muldoon, Lorine Niedecker, Ethan Paquin, Kathleen Peirce, Elizabeth Robinson, Leslie Scalapino, Brenca Shaughnessy, Lauren Shufran, Heidi Lynn Staples, Wallace Stevens, Georg Trakl, Stacey Waite, Rosmarie Waldrop, Margaret Walker, John Wieners

— 25 June 2013

Transformation

I hang by my feet to sleep

leathery wrapped

shoulder-to-shoulder companioned

at dusk

our maelstrom unfurling

like swallows

conferring at one

patch of sand in the San Lorenzo River

whirl of ash skyward

rows of soldiers below

never-ending touch-&-gos

spangled mallards in 3-duck formation

scan for landing

every pass a tighter curl

lock on target, shallow glide

into splashes & skids

the water scarcely disturbed

next to Ray on the plane

a woman suffers a heart attack

(it wasn’t something he said)

Afaa’s class in Boston takes on Mother Courage

someone is always standing

at ground zero

detonated transform

body to mist

body heat to heated air

better to dissolve completely

than live grievously injured

bystanders spattered

in south Florida

early-twentieth-century hunters

looked forward to spring

for targeting rookeries — heron, ibis, egret —

killing the nesting pairs

for feathered hats, not hate

their families so poor they ate gull eggs

still, people ask

how can it happen here?

so placid with insular contemplation

innocence does not equate

to protection

the spring wind pummels new-leafed branches

borrows orange petals

iris & agapanthus blossom in their place

flowering maple is not maple

but Chinese lantern, Indian mallow

cousin to flannel flower

My Anger Will Ebb

After all

my friend, alone in her house

a half mile from the boat

aflame as if in a Greek tragedy

is alive & well

reunited today with daughters & spouse.

Far away & helpless

as she was close by & helpless

I waited, she waited, so many waited

sure he would be caught

sure she would survive unmarked —
we are all marked.

A boat in a Greek tragedy would be a trireme

three ranks of oars

one above the next above the next

a beak for a prow

better to ram, to pierce

the enemy boat.

The dogs, locked inside all day

burst out of doors in frenzied relief

like the children denied playgrounds

the workers denied work.

Meanwhile I walked up Soquel

jaywalked across Ocean

climbed the Broadway hill

to watch the hybrid rose — orange, yellow, & pink —

bloom careless & sprawling

above the chainlink fence.

Anger is sullen, is pouting

is dismay at the world refusing to cooperate

is armies of men with guns

is war, is death

is a 19-year-old killing his life

with killing — ablaze in a boat.

My grandchild studied my knee to find marks

where the ladybug might have bitten.

In the shop a woman
held a paper towel for the slug
to ooze up & onto —

carried it outdoors.

I didn’t want to come here today.

I wanted to stew in anger caused by too long fear.

Yet the sun shines, the bus runs.

I could sit @ the Scotts Valley Peet's

knowing we would read

we would write

fast words on slow paper

we strangers & not quite friends.

— 20 April 2013

On the Way to the Playground

I push, she rides the

stroller down Chestnut

nasturtium, I say

I need to take a picture of this rose

tires inflated

fabrics orange & black

lavender, jasmine, penta, calla

I need to touch, she says

fingers to yellow petals

palm to pinkest crowns

— 24 April 2013

Bags Don't Come Free

Saturday morning

I plan to ride my bike to Target
to buy front-closing bras

for post-surgical Esther 

but the fog is down —
the temperature's barely 50.

Instead, I bike to her house
where no one’s up. I unlatch
the chicken house ramp —
Say hello, chicks, to the new day —
park in the basement
& snag the key to the little car.

I drive the route I’d meant to bike
along river, ocean, harbor
via East Cliff, Murray, 7th, Brommer, 41st.

Target's not even open

then they are, but they don’t
stock front-closing bras.

I walk through the dark mall & outside
& into Kohl's to find bras.
No one’s here. Thousands of bras.
I haven’t bought a bra
in 45 years — a nursing bra
I tried once & tossed.

No clerks in sight so I scan

rack after rack — 1500 styles of bra. 

Only three close in the front

in 38B, so I buy them
from a checker who asks me
do you need a bag? No

though I think about how
I will look walking outside

then in, through the empty mall
back to Target & out to my car
holding a beige, a black
& a salmon pink bra.

The checker calls me back
& hands me a black cloth bag
marked Kohl’s — I thought
she says, we’d given
these all away. She doesn't know
I pass no one

while walking my Kohl's bag
back to Target to shop 

for placemats, napkins, & a spatula.

Do you need a bag? No 

thank you. Let my housewares

share space with Esther's bras.

— 27 April 2013

La Blanchisseuse

Though she knows

smoothing cloth

how to smooth a cloth

on a flat surface

how to scrub a stain

how to warm the irons

to iron, bite off thread

tie a knot, restitch

a raveled seam

how to cut from yardage

the idea of a sleeve

to fashion a shirt

for someone else

though washing
sewing, she’s looking off

beyond a world

of fingers on cloth

of lye, of steam

undermining

the weave of labor

the dour distraction

of indoors.

— 28 April 2013

Argentine Losses

most people don’t write

at a distance, they don’t exist

plants don’t write

my cat, never

— 1 May 2013

Wild

quirquincho

the screaming hairy armadillo

digs the hole I fill daily

next to the garden wall

wild, the young hare

beds among zucchini

shiny black eye

wild fountains of sand

los ocultos architect

underground mazes

wild, the giant snail oozes

across asphalt

pink-rimmed pallium

wild, the parrot flocks

patrol fruiting vineyards

the sky screams

wild foxes, bald with mange

one by one, dead

for the black vultures feeding

wild, the turquoise-spotted toad

buried overnight

in the sprinkler box

wild, the whistling heron

yellow plumes fan

along the riverbed

wild slaty-breasted wood rail

the plumbeous rail

deep in the pond lilies

wild, the vines

bearing cayote squash

scraped & boiled for jam

wild cactus, the prickly pear

long spines spear

my hat’s crown

wild, the verdolaga

common purslane

succulent scourge for the weeder

wild, the dung-feeding beetles

noon mists of grasshopper

palm-sized bats at dusk

wild pink-spotted hawkmoth

wings battering bathroom tile

under the cat’s paws

wild, the tyrant flycatcher

morning’s choral voice

benteveo

benteveo

— 4 May 2013

I Still Have the Floorplan

We look off

as newborns look

into other space

where a door opens

onto a room

& farther doors

to further rooms

of the infinite house

where others live

whether we know

them or not —

known space

we’re hoping to

resurrect from

first memory

every time we

reconnect to

our commonplace.

— 16 May 2013

The snail's

lucent

cracked shell

operculum-

pinioned

exsiccating

body mass.

Scratched

the crow

awaits

our passing.

— May 17 2013

Miss Vee

I know it’s unreasonable

especially for someone like me

who doesn’t cry easily or often

to tell you how often I cry now

how I might show up at your house

unable to say a word without crying

but if I try to explain

it comes out sounding

like something Elizabeth Bishop said better

in a poem that’s in a book I’ve lost

along with the rest of my books

all my journals & my mother’s journal

half my clothes plus everything else

Mike didn’t bring back in his luggage

when he returned from Argentina

things I don’t even ask about

like the chenille throw Susan gave me

the fossil rock Ben gave me

material things I cared for

yet those are the least of it

so far behind 

horses cropping alfalfa out windows

that leaked in every rain

onto the windowsills & down 

along the badly set & poorly caulked frames

wet that streaked the paint

of many colors — kiwi & mauve

jalapeño, sunset, goldfinch

erasure

so swift & violent

I scrubbed every trace from my computer & the web

every picture, every glimpse exists

only in my head now

how foxes walked

softly on small feet

how parrots tipped forward & back

on wires holding grapevines

how doves paraded beside the pond

balanced on rocks, dipped their beaks to drink

how toads floated on loose limbs

at the pond rim

how as a kitten

my cat fell in the pond

how she must have clawed her way

up from the water

how I saw her — legs bent, belly dragging

back to the house

where I lifted her, wrapped her in towels

a shivering frightened small cat

the same one who arched her back, fur high 

swagger-hopped out to take the fox

before I grabbed her

rushed her into the house where she would be safe

I miss her more than the mountains

burning red at dawn
more than the llama-wool rugs

beneath my bare feet

more than my red plush chair

— 20 May 2013