Poetry

These two dead painted themselves
before a mirror, but now, flour-dusted, they blush

under the powder, less than bloodless,
and, yes, eyeshadow shadows the draws

they sucked into their cheeks, but those hollows
also shimmer, belied by porch lights-

You drove this way once and found God, or re-found
Him (and who wouldn’t?)
a splintered table, through-bolted, and the wide Pacific,
gray clouds layered three fingers thick atop. If you were here,
you’d carry a bucket and a heavy rod
to the surf edge and cast long.

I thought I understood time,

how a day began at five,

how I began in 1954

after the war and before

the war and during the war

my father fought alone each night,

like everyone else–

Here is my compass    my parting gift 

Flattened pennies    half a heart    would do

but this is my chosen pact:    point of reference 

place of convergence    no one’s destination 

Say burgundy, mauve, off-purple range
estranged, the pink remorse that timed
the cloth store I created there
its wild forlorn, the need for open

Don’t get me wrong.
I’m a modest girl, couldn’t even strip off
at one of those nudie hot springs out west,
the whole place a flotsam
of much-nursed areolas and buoyant

Years after I left, the bees began
to build in the places I used to fill
with the syrup of my anger—
ten thousand bees performing

This time is sacred for the good or bad 
it could become but isn’t yet. For the phone 
that doesn’t ring but might. 
Ma nishtana ha-laila

All the flies in the valley were buzzing at the windows, wingflits
fizzing the afternoon bright as sparkling water. As they
were our only neighbors, we climbed the loft ladder clothed
and descended it naked, proud not to have clocked our heads

Naked on the front porch, the moon unfurling its light
as though for a picnic, our yard is silver
and set for feasting.