Incarnadine (5 page)

loved the spirit most

so to remind them of the ways of the flesh,

those of the old god

took one hundred prisoners and cut off

each nose

each pair of lips

and scooped out each eye

until just one eye on one man was left

to lead them home.

People did that, I say to myself,

a human hand lopping at a man’s nose

over and over with a dull blade

that could not then slice

the lips clean

but like an old can opener, pushed

into skin, sawed

the soft edges, working each lip

slowly off as

both men heavily, intimately

breathed.

My brave believer, in my private re-enactments,

you are one of them.

I pick up in the aftermath where you’re being led

by rope

by the one with the one good eye.

I’m one of the women at the edge of the hill

watching you stagger magnificently,

unsteadily back.

All your faces are tender with holes

starting to darken and scab

and I don’t understand how you could

believe in anything that much

that is not me.

The man with the eye pulls you

forward. You’re in the square now.

The women are hysterical,

the men are making terrible sounds

from unclosable mouths.

And I don’t know if I can do it, if I can touch

a lipless face that might

lean down, instinctively,

to try to kiss me.

White rays are falling through the clouds.

You are holding that imbecile rope.

You are waiting to be claimed.

What do I love more than this

image of myself?

There I am in the square walking toward you

calling you out by name.

Again this morning my eyes woke up too close

to your eyes,

their almost green orbs

too heavy-lidded to really look back.

To wake up next to you

is ordinary. I do not even need to look at you

to see you.

But I do look. So when you come to me

in your opulent sadness, I see

you do not want me

to unbutton you

so I cannot do the one thing

I can do.

Now it is almost one a.m. I am still at my desk

and you are upstairs at your desk a staircase

away from me. Already it is years

of you a staircase

away from me. To be near you

and not near you

is ordinary.

You

are ordinary.

Still, how many afternoons have I spent

peeling blue paint from

our porch steps, peering above

hedgerows, the few parked cars for the first

glimpse of you. How many hours under

the overgrown, pink camillas, thinking

the color was wrong for you, thinking

you’d appear

after my next

blink.

Soon you’ll come down the stairs

to tell me something. And I’ll say,

okay. Okay. I’ll say it

like that, say it just like

that, I’ll go on being

your never-enough.

It’s not the best in you

I long for. It’s when you’re noteless,

numb at the ends of my fingers, all is

all. I say it is.

The wings behind the man I never saw.

But often, afterward, I dreamed his lips,

remembered the slight angle of his hips,

his feet among the tulips and the straw.

I liked the way his voice deepened as he called.

As for the words, I liked the showmanship

with which he spoke them. Behind him, distant ships

went still; the water was smooth as his jaw—

And when I learned that he was not a man—

bullwhip, horsewhip, unzip, I could have crawled

through thorn and bee, the thick of hive, rosehip,

courtship, lordship, gossip and lavender.

(But I was quiet, quiet as

eagerness—that astonished, dutiful fall.)

I could hear them from the kitchen, speaking as if

something important had happened.

I was washing the pears in cool water, cutting

the bruises from them.

From my place at the sink, I could hear

a jet buzz hazily overhead, a vacuum

start up next door, the click,

click between shots.

“Mary, step back from the camera.”

There was a softness to his voice

but no fondness, no hurry in it.

There were faint sounds

like walnuts being dropped by crows onto the street,

almost a brush

of windchime from the porch—

Windows around me everywhere half-open—

My skin alive with the pitch.

for Lily Mae

The job was easy: I tucked

them in, kicked off my shoes, listened for

the floor to go quiet. Everyone

slept except one: outside her door,

she paced, she hummed, holding

the edge of her torn

nightgown. Pointing, I told

her: to bed.
Your
bed. But she would not

stay there. She was old,

older than my mother: manic, caught

up in gibberish, determined to

sleep on my cot—

At first it was just to

quiet her. I could only sleep

if she slept, and I needed relief

from myself. That is how she

became a body next to mine

whether or not I wanted there to be

a body. She climbed

into my bed. I let her

sleep hot and damp against my spine.

All night she rocked, she turned,

she poked her spastic elbows

into my calves and slurred

her broken noises in the dark. All the old

fans went round in clicks

those summer nights—and she rolled

in bed and kicked

me in the head and I was

happy. No words, no tricks,

I just didn’t love

my loneliness. My mind

felt cooler

with her there. Beside

her, I could have been anyone.

She had no word for me and not the kind

of mind to keep one.

And if she kicked

me, some nights, just

for the fun of it—who was I

to disappoint my one?

Sometimes I imagine I

was someone she won

at a fair as the wheel spun

under the floating, unfaltering sun

and clicked each lucky one

and one

until I was happily undone.

I had the happy idea to suspend some blue globes in the air

and watch them pop.

I had the happy idea to put my little copper horse on the shelf so we could stare at each other all evening.

I had the happy idea to create a void in myself.

Then to call it natural.

Then to call it supernatural.

I had the happy idea to wrap a blue scarf around my head and spin.

I had the happy idea that somewhere a child was being born who was nothing like Helen or Jesus except in the sense of changing everything.

I had the happy idea that someday I would find both pleasure and punishment, that I would know them and feel them,

and that, until I did, it would be almost as good to pretend.

I had the happy idea to call myself happy.

I had the happy idea that the dog digging a hole in the yard in the twilight had his nose deep in mold-life.

I had the happy idea that what I do not understand is more real than what I do,

and then the happier idea to buckle myself

into two blue velvet shoes.

I had the happy idea to polish the reflecting glass and say

hello to my own blue soul.
Hello, blue soul. Hello.

It was my happiest idea.

I tell you I have seen them in their glee

diving fast into the sureness of her flesh,

fast into the softness of

her wounds—have seen them

peel her, have seen them give themselves

full to the effort and the

lull of it—

Why wouldn’t such sweetness

be for them?

For they outnumber her.

For she is tender, pockmarked, full

of openness. For they

swoop down on her wherever she surfaces. For they

eat her alive. For they take mercy on others and show them the way.

At high tide, more gulls lift from the mussel beds and soar toward her.

For they do sit and eat, for they do sit and eat

a sweetness prepared for them

until she disappears again into the water.

When I see the bright clouds, a sky empty of moon and stars,

I wonder what I am, that anyone should note me.

Here there are blueberries, what should I fear?

Here there is bread in thick slices, of whom should I be afraid?

Under the swelling clouds, we spread our blankets.

Here in this meadow, we open our baskets

to unpack blueberries, whole bowls of them,

berries not by the work of our hands, berries not by the work of our fingers.

What taste the bright world has, whole fields

without wires, the blackened moss, the clouds

swelling at the edges of the meadow. And for this,

I did nothing, not even wonder.

You must live for something
, they say.

People don’t live just to keep on living.

But here is the quince tree, a sky bright and empty.

Here there are blueberries, there is no need to note me.

In 1371, beneath the angel’s feet,

Veneziano added a meadow—

a green expanse with white

and yellow broom flowers, the kind

that—until the sun warms them—

have no scent—

God could have chosen other means than flesh.

Imagine he did

and the girl on her knees in this meadow—

open, expectant, dreamily rocking,

her mouth open, quiet—

is only important because we recognize

the wish. For look, the flowers

do not spin, not even

the threads of their shadows—

and they are infused

with what they did not

reach for.

Out of nothing does not mean

into nothing.

Knock me or nothing, the things of this world

ring in me, shrill-gorged and shrewish,

clicking their charms and their chains and their spouts.

Let them. Let the fans whirr.

All the similar virgins must have emptied

their flimsy pockets, and I

was empty enough,

sugared and stretched on the unmown lawn,

dumb as the frost-pink tongues

of the unpruned roses.

When you put your arms around me in that moment,

when you pulled me to you and leaned

back, when you lifted me

just a few inches, when you shook me

hard then, had you ever heard

such emptiness?

I had room for every girl’s locket,

every last dime and pocketknife.

Oh my out-sung, fierce, unthinkable—

why rattle only the world

you placed in me? Won’t you clutter the unkissed,

idiot stars? They blink and blink

like quiet shepherds,

like brides-about-your-neck.

Call them out of that quietness.

Knock them in their nothing, against their empty enamel,

against the dark that has no way to hold them

and no appetite.

Call in the dead to touch them.

Let them slip on their own chinks of light.

It’s not that the octopus wouldn’t love you—

not that it wouldn’t reach for you

with each of its tapering arms.

You’d be as good as anyone, I think,

to an octopus. But the creatures of the sea,

like the sea, don’t think

about themselves, or you. Keep on floating there,

cradled, unable to burn. Abandon

yourself to the sway, the ruffled eddies, abandon

your heavy legs to the floating meadows

of seaweed and feel

the bloom of phytoplankton, spindrift, sea

spray, barnacles. In the dark benthic realm, the slippery nekton

glide over the abyssal plains and as you float you can feel

that upwelling of cold, deep water touch

the skin stretched over

your spine. No, it’s not that the octopus

wouldn’t love you. If it touched,

if it tasted you, each of its three

hearts would turn red.

Will theologians of any confession refute me?

Not the bluecap salmon. Not its dotted head.

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.—King James Bible, Luke 1:26–38