Sappho
i: In Egypt
Mummified crocodiles—
her shredded
songs curved with the dry
sticks of their tongues.
Strip by torn
strip, unknowing
servants applied them
to the mummy’s solemn
ribs, & what ancient
paste
could have saved them
from sifting to trays
of shriveled olives
& pomegranate
ii. Ellipsis
Her songs restored, thus:
unraveled to vacancies,
whole sections traded for
an arid hush, slender omissions
abrupting into strains
of a nervous lover—my tongue
breaks up & a delicate fire
runs through my flesh—
her body ravished
by a need so deep
only this forged
rhythm could keep her
from breaking down,
from seeing that the fires
which rage inside us are a kind
rehearsal for death.
& how to edge closer
to that mystery than such
silence
iii. In Lesbos
Her town market
preserved,
its teeming
inventory:
oyster,
wine flask, figs
& golden bracelets
the punctured intervals erasing
half her city
so the streets are lent a new,
imposed syncopation:
anklebone cups
honey
chickpeas
each piece
parceled & perfect,
as if it were the first time
sounds were used
to signify the world:
crocodile,
pomegranate,
the words curving, still wet
on my tongue.
The Chase
I hate that the word
I spilled in anger is still
traveling away from us
into space, particles
striking each other
in a commute unending,
a mini comet
with my fury as that tiny
pinprick of fire out front.
When my body’s gone,
I’ll still be the record
of all the words I say—
that slow, irregular
Morse code rippling out
to the stars. But some day
millennia from now,
some unfathomable
life form may catch,
in their alien equivalent
of an ear, my future
long since past—how,
with my next words,
I hunted down that ridiculous
quarrel, how I trailed it,
shadowed it past pulsars
& through asteroid belts,
far past our galaxy’s
milkiest rim. I hope,
whoever might overhear this,
that they’re as patient
as you, my sweets,
that they don’t turn away
before they hear how I sent
the smallest emissary
of a kiss stowed in a capsule
of whispered syllables
to hazard those hurling
fires uncharted,
that unnamable dust.
Witch Doctor
She may not got
much teeth, but
if she likes you
she’ll make
your skinniest hen
lay a double-yolked
egg. I knocked
on her door,
still learning to shed
all my muscles
had acquired:
the rigidity of curb,
my step aligned
to the obedience
of crosswalk & yield.
She mixed herself
a bowl of yolk
& ashes—the sticky
pulp of birth
& departure—slicked
her hands with it,
& darkened her body
with a second skin,
exhaling incantations,
slipping in & out
of two languages
like a high heel
& a clog. A breeze
lifted from the lake,
& as she washed,
& tempera dissolved
to the water basin’s
wood, she sang
her dream:
the snake’s
scaled rainbow
coiling the grass
as it tunneled
out of itself,
the clouded membrane
finally torn
from its eyes.
Originally Published July 21, 2012