I: Exposure

Endless, endless the dust sea

from where we picked up the train, 4:30 Thursday afternoon last week

your birthing thick over my back

stars of blood like cakes soaking the sky

my eyes sliding back

ah ah

cake of blood, little baby perineum

and hair burning

we are dirt, pretty dirt and shit, my pretty—

last week, Thursday afternoon your hair

in my mouth, liquid sun and cunt

one second, two, lost

we burn our lens with exposure between 12:30 and

trickles of the rain, a torso of rain colliding at 60 mph

into my face. That is love.

Thursday afternoon we slept like pirates

little paper hats

Thursday afternoon the sun, the moon

tigers in giant hoops, sea salt

and beach roses and hibiscus

near the shore:

tender, sharp, bitter all circus

rode us, rode us, such hounds

4:30 (last) my aunt was raped

by the newspaper boy around the corner

as a girl (last) (last

week, time) last Thursday

up with the boys in the hydraulic helicopter

piercing the heavens

all their pretty bones in the sand

temperature a cool 50 degrees, and breezy

epaulets, revenge stories, she was

mine, mine, mine:

Shut the fuck up!

we all want babies, little torches

lighting the sky, who told

you your blood smelled of / was the ruins of Rome

last week we were on the train

fuzzy little desert halos

my hand kept you tight inside

we ate tuna salad on wheat

my baby girl, my blue

we were flying!

even today and when they split us

the knife splitting the torso

thorax

bilaterally at 60 mph

off the end of a cliff, off jewel of blood

in two,

the intestines will spill to the dirt,

they will take what they want and tack us

to the wall, and I will

tack you to the wall, my pretty hands you knew so well

under the sun, the sun

we will be animal meat like

they always knew

II: Milagro

In an image or a dream

Time is more

                        than the sum of our necessary

acts, geraniums potted in the noonday sun

near the office plaza

                                    are cheery and fat.

I want my voice to be loud.

            In the dream, the image

was a giant eye

                                and a bull superimposed

like Sunday Mass:

the priest breaks the bread, gives it

                                           to his disciples (all men)

and says, says

            I want my voice to be loud!

The bull was knifed and quartered

    but its eyes were alive

                                    whispering   you know

    when I will eat you              Open wide    baby

   I want my voice to be loud!  I said

            standing on the corner of Wilshire

                                                  and Miracle:

 always a corner

                                    no one was listening

the geraniums and I

                        were both wearing white

The image was the museum curator

        yelling  Shut the fuck up!

fucking girls and young bitches

                and your wedding

the night I drank too much red wine

            and ate pot brownies

brought your body like a mirage

                                    not my woman

The necessary act was

marriage              fighting off anemia, brain seizures

mother said

    you had married the techie  sick on sex

but you wanted me to help, said

                        where were you when, why did you miss it

                                                     sweetheart

we will be fucking in a year

                 where was your pretty blue dress?

Time is a more or less the sum

                        the sum

my girlfriend laughed

                                    hiding the grocery bill

underneath the sheets

heavy blood cycle    last month

  hungry for nothing   

                                              and dry and clean

In the dream,

               the bull had no faces.

            III: Return

I was the moon

                   black before all eyes

I was the harshest love

                                      immediate torn redder

than the lake we grew from

the land spare and treeless

the water so red, rich

               I could not tell our skins apart.

The lions were warm and golden

        we slept inside their furs

becoming the dream of molded paws,

                  female, sexual, high on eyes

  addicted

      Baby, we were scared.

When she came around, the moon

When she came around we would go

to the corner store to buy food

When she came / around I became

               the dream    in breasts and nothing

            fruit picked by hand we ate

pulp and seeds and red

                        all over our jeans   

      messy

We were hungry in the sun

              people stared

not realizing a woman can be hungry

                                    co-opted

        by nothing, no one

Angels’ Boxes

 

 

February was fierce

                                 with your biting my lip

June-bugs in the cold of

                                           snow-halos

             you said

 

  one day of this,   yes

I was uncomfortable, I was happy

I didn’t recognize myself anymore

 

one mirror

 

      across the fogged and white field

 

I was spark from you

                               our camera froze

 

the hesitance of snow   sheer light

                                                  as energy

a black field with only my face

reflected—

 

a source, the moon in negative

 

one day for itself  we said

 

   because there was no sight

   because they said there was no chance—

 

 

 

 

 

 

Les fruits du matin

 

 

One of several known species

                  of bird who frequent the Pacific coast, migratory lemons

peeled for afternoon, bitter mint and the rinds dropped in a pail by the door

 

small, white teeth

easily parched in cloth under pillow

                             

                              diagrams, grids, diastole

heart merging the endangered swallow, its delicate eggs

                                                     

                                                      viscerale et immobile

     around my waist and I like it

 

                       red haunches   pale apparition of skirt

 

                                                           we collide

 

as if a rabbit we stole from the pot deep brown velvet feet un seul

    you take dans ta bouche

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simulcra

 

 

 Inside the lid

                        is the mark

 

the hand raised above flesh

does not return

 

                       cold rain, children not

    shocked by our kiss

           

               among the crowds holding hands

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going Out of the Gate

 

 

In my other life

                                    I remember how it was to touch,

 

            to be touched.

 

When I fucked her

                                    it was easy

my hand sort of slipped through the sheets

            like a small fish on a mission

 

to get back to the eternal sea—

 

until my hand stopped, my body rocked forward

 

  & I woke up.

 

It was easy I said

It was easy we said

                                    and then we separated

and rejoined and separated

without vigor or notice

 

                        and then after a while I couldn’t call her

                                                            on the phone

because it was too much not to fuck

                                    when we met

 

or rather have a good long conversation over lunch

or tea, a hot liquid, soothing

                                                 which gives pleasure to the eye

as giving from tongue does

                                                & receiving if lucky

the slight shudder in time

 

            of skull swiveling, hair

                                                   picked up by a force of wind.

 

Like on the train,

            all the people packed in lines, shoulder to shoulder

feet perched on rests

                                    cramming for a view out the dirty window

 

 

a harsh skyline of sand dunes & western sun

 

& no one can bear to look at each other.

 

If she were my lover sitting next to me this second

I don’t know if I would recognize her braids.

 

Somehow there is not enough air—

                                                            at night the bodies

float, horizontal    such as over water

 

with a given touch

                                    and the cars speed over the rails with force

 

and we are all sure we will get to where ever

 we are supposed to go.

 

I only recognized her braids at my door,

 

surrounded by orange trumpet flowers and night hummingbirds.

 

Every day after, a slight wind picked up,

                        a ball of sand and plant debris

speeding in the parking lot

                                                against friendly cars,

which we watched & thus were unable to leave the house.

 

First it was the bedroom,

                                    out of a sense of privacy,

then the bed.

                       

It was easier to fuck

                                    when we imagined another beside us

            not our lover—

                                                a gift

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monodic

 

 

                                            with Rebekah

 

I first saw her

so alive almost fell over

all the little hairs

taming the skull

 

soma recycled like cloth

mosaic-fielded skin

sun-made

 

the theater of waist performing

sweetheart come-out-of sand

fallen into disuse

and burnt

 

slice in her room

shoes with

dress with buttons

wrinkled by heat

 

reverse-shadow braid

hiding a mirror

your hands clutch the

reverse-shadow bird

 

I such

I put the story under the mattress

safety deposit

for us until deaths

 

to heart our possession

you stop and stand in the middle of

rocks hit with hammer

street bloody hands and scream

 

 

 

 

 

Locus of Motion

 

 

Sleepy hand

           

               making water in the desert

   the same red earth

 

          fingers across         

polished by rain

  all night

            lonely to dream—

 

 

I fell in the earth, my heels            

                                 clung to the pine

 

                          bloody—

 

 our eyes combine

                        behind white gravestones 

 

         no water     no water in the body,

                         

                                     it has left

   your hand    

 

inside me   

         whom you have spoken for

 

 

 

 

 

 

Retablo in One Gesture

 

 

Moon over the graying clouds. 

 

My wife and I watched the water

                              for the better part of an hour.

 

So she turned and left upshore

                                           where the stones were whiter

                        for her shoes,

 

and I sat facing the gray     the trees were absent   

                                                                        from us.

 

No daylight.

 

We walked to the pier, and my wife

                                                     

without the touch of her hair—honey

 

   or the salt           

 

followed the double-boarded fence of rotting wood

                                                                                         

marking the line of the coast by foot

 

her braids spotted   a destination

 

many years ahead, a small sway

                                      shorter since she sheared them.

 

 

The sand and black-speckled silt  

                                                 held us near the water   

 

I couldn’t keep my hands from the rain

                                                           that came later   meeting the waves

 

and she spoke harshly behind me, my ear

 

                                from across the land,

my wife

                  that we could not know

 

 

when the tide would come in

 

that we must not wait—

 

 

She swung toward the car

                                     miles off in the white   barefoot

 

and I left her, the sea,  

        as wind picked hair up

                             from my eyes

        I turned to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She May Be a Lover, May Not

 

 

I am a man in gray loafers

 

                        if I lean with legs open and joke

 

 

              Inlet of the clavicle watches

                            

  as she turns, 

           

              smacks my mother through a plate-glass window

 

 

     Who do you look like, my beloved asks?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Always One Direction

 

 

If I could I would walk right out of here

 

the hundred lives we are meant to live   

 

                        and can’t

                                           won’t forgive the moment of death

even in elation

 

                  the gauze wrinkles up against the chin,

the skull sways,

      a clear grip from behind.

 

 

Wrap me in a clean ball and

                                                drop me in the hole.

                                                             

My hair parted evenly

 

my limbs symmetrical in the box,

 

we are satisfied

 

leapt from the carriage of a thick-bellied plane

 

one more language      embraced by gravity,

 

                                                blown the hell out of here.

 

 

  Brains, skin & meat

                              did I say you could roll back like eyes

 

I have no memory of who she was

 

            and her lover jammed on the bed

 

                                                 fucking (tenderly)

a last time, back to mouth,

 

                   and she never turning to see the face,

 

       as she came,

                              of the woman who held her.

 

 

 

 

 

There was hand and swell—

 

There was dog like an animal dog

 

            ugly ass and shine

 

dead bones

                        under the glow of a pink bulb

 

      slow shuddering of tears

 

  the sea,

                  I could have pushed her into,

                                                        or myself

 

      sea without circuit    always one direction

 

where the sand pulls out

                                         a deep caress to the soles,

    sleepy,

                        we could become—

 

            never have to see each other again.

 

                                                           

 

                       

 

White Hot Belly

 

 

Luminous and backed into

 

                         in a cotton unbuttoned shift

      where the horizon has hairy

 

 legs    Canyon de Chelly

 

                                        law of

 

            Weston abstracting the thigh

dunes thirty miles out of

                                             the Sonora Basin

                                  iris-edged, steamed

 

    or Weston abstracting the dunes

 

     I had taken off my sandals

 

curious about damage of rotaries to the physical

                                                   soul

                            my lover’s

         radiating history

 

               hair a flag out the window to senators,

 chickens, early white density

 

                    and what if I don’t want

                                                wanting you

 

In your film my head is 4 x 8

            hippocampus terrorizing a shadow

                                        a green plant good

                at swallowing flesh

 

    every time you brush behind me

 

  the camera clicks

               galactic

                            circumference     admitting to wanting to

                                                                           fuck you

                     never again     again

this light, this smoke

 

 

 

             each night we slept in       starts up

           

 

                                  a sparrow, my love

 

        we are

                       nailed up like sheep.

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday

 

 

my sweetie and I go down

low  over the whole

city take our cups

dip them all 12 nights of rain

collars up around our ears

stroll

one fedora in hand

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

NOTES

 

 

 

                  “Fourth Wall As Spatial Design for Lovers”

With debt and gratitude to Barbara Cully’s book, The New Intimacy, and Jane Miller’s book, American Odalisque, which influenced this poem.

 

 

                  “With Agrimony”

Agrimony:  Plant of the genus Euphatoria. Earlier root from agrimonia, a misreading of L. argemonia and Gr. argemone, a poppy. Argemon is also a white spot on the eye which impairs vision by leaving a blank spot in the visual field. The plant itself was reputed in ancient times to cure this condition. Also related to arges, argos, white, shining.

 

 

                  “A Few Revenge Stories”

Exposure: Refers to the common practice of female infanticide or exposure, in ancient Rome, where undesirable or female babies were abandoned in the hills and left to die in the sun; also to photography and the sun in general.

 

we all want babies . . .was the ruins of Rome: Refers to Herod’s decree in the New Testament that all Jewish male babies born that spring should be slaughtered. The Roman soldiers who carried out the task often took to the sport of skewering an infant on their spear, and lighting it on fire to kill it.

 

the knife splitting the torso: The most common punishment for treason to one’s clan or tribal government in what was Medieval Scotland and Ireland, was disembowlment, specifically slicing the victim from the jugular to the beginning of the pelvis, spilling the intestines.

 

Milagro: A folk art form commonly found in the Southwest & Mexico, often at roadside altars to the Virgin Mary or lost loved ones. Most common in homes, milagros are tin plaques which have been engraved or pin-hammered, usually depicting a body part, a natural phenomenon, or a desired object. Colloquially milagro means wish or a prayer for something desired. For example, a milagro depicting rain would ask for rain to fall in a dry season.

 

breaks the bread: Eucharist or the thin wafer believed to be the body of Christ, given at communion during Catholic Mass.

 

 

                  “Les fruits du matin”

Les fruits du matin: Morning’s fruit.

 

viscerale et immobile: Viscerale and immobile.

 

un seul you take dans ta bouche: One or a single one you take into your mouth.

 

 

                  “Simulacra”

The latin plural of simulacrum, common in English meaning an image or an image emanating to or from the eye.

 

 

                  “Going Out of the Gate”

Title is from a line from the I Ching 60/ Limitation; “Therefore the superior woman is careful to maintain silence and does not go forth/ Not going out of the gate and courtyard/ Brings misfortune.”

 

 

                  “Monodic”

Ode sung by a single voice in Greek tragedy, a mournful song, the importance being placed on the status of the singer being alone. The monodic was a form innovated by Sappho in her poetry.

 

This poem’s form and syntax are influenced by Sappho’s Gymnasium by Olga Broumas & T Begley. This poem was collaborative, written and arranged by myself and Rebekah Wright, using fragments of both our work.

 

 

                 

“Retablo in One Gesture”

Retablo: In Spanish, altar or table, usually with a monochromic single wall. Also an art form, retablo depicts a simple image against a flat background.

 

My wife and I sat . . .for the better part of an hour: Lines 2 & 3 are a misprision of My wife and I sat and watched it for the better part of an hour;  Shoreline Series, Barbara Cully.

 

 

 

“She May Be a Lover, May Not”

Title from “Who Cares About Aperture”; And Her Soul Out of Nothing, Olena Kalytiak Davis.

 

 

                  “Always One Direction”

Brains, skin & meat: Misprision of Anne Waldman’s poem title, “skin, Meat, BONES”.

 

 

 

                  “White Hot Belly”

Title inspired by Jane Miller’s title “Lost White Brother,” American Odalisque.

 

Canyon de Chelly: A canyon in a national park in Arizona.

 

Weston: Edward Weston, American photographer, one of Alfred Stieglitz’s contemporaries and instrumental in the Photosecession movement.

 

A plant good at swallowing flesh: Venus Flytrap

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Melissa Buckheit is a poet, dancer/choreographer and photographer. Her poems, photography and other writing have appeared or are forthcoming in nth position, Blue Fifth Review, The Drunken Boat, Bombay Gin, Laurel Moon, and Sonora Review, among others. Her manuscript, On the Back of the Animal Is the Mouth of the Vase, has been a finalist for the Backwaters Press First Book Prize and the Brittingham/Felix Pollack Prizes, as well as a semi-finalist for the Elixir Press Poetry Award. She is a recipient of the American Poets Honorary Prize, a 2007 Tucson-Pima Arts Council grant in Dance and her poem “As If I Were Conceived in Her Diorama,” published in Blue Fifth Review, was nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize. She translates from Modern Greek and into French, and holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Naropa University and a B.A. in English & American Literature/Creative Writing and Dance/Theatre from Brandeis University . She has taught Creative Writing and Modern Dance at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and currently teaches Literature, Writing and Creative Writing at Pima Community College and in private workshop. She also works as a domestic violence crisis advocate for the Brewster Center and teaches dance through Zuzi Dance Company. Melissa has studied Modern Dance, Ballet/Pointe, Aerial Trapeze and Mind-Body Centering, dancing and performing her original choreography in Boston, Boulder and Tucson, as a member of Brandeis Dance Collective, with Zuzi Dance Company and through New Articulations Dance Theatre. Recent work includes, Maitri with Karen Reim, Dos Bracos with Maria Villa, Narrative and when it is night, an island, performed last fall at Brandeis University.

 

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