MURMURATION
On the first day the peepers
begin to choir in the marsh,
the birds are out in droves,
starlings, roosting in the reeds
turn the brittle thicket
into frenzy, the wild racket
of unseen flapping drives
the dog mad on his leash.
These creatures, sensing presences
us simple humans can’t,
remind me what it means to be
attentive. To emerge. To know
to fight or flee or fuck. Tell me—
how might you move
if you thought you would be safe?
Look now, at the swarms of birds
dipping in and out
of one another—their collisions
and impossible resolutions.
The hungry animal they become.
GLASS HOUSE
I go to the conservatory
because it is warm, because it is February
and I’ve forgotten how
to walk through this city
with head lifted above ground
Wandering through the glass house I marvel
at this controlled utopia: pomelos, larger
than my hands, ripen lustily on flimsy branches;
ferns, misted twice a day, thrive
inside the cracking mortar of the walls
I am guilty of the same greediness, glutton
for what the world will not give me back: the desert
I was born in and never saw again, my mother’s face
in a casket framed in flowers from a refrigerated case
sparse with stock and baby’s breath
Some would say this is evidence of flourishing:
the crown-of-thorns blooming red to match
the exit sign, deracinated cacti propped up
against pipes, twist-tied to ductwork
keeps them growing toward the light
ON THE AMTRAK
All around, February fields
blur into abstraction. Marsh
mixing to river, flash of red,
the interminable ache I carry
inside, smearing me like paint
across a canvas. In the window’s
mirror, I assemble your face,
unknown to me, from parts
my own. Again, I fail to hold
the whole of it: gossamer eyes
staring out thin clouds, mute
mouth hovering along the gash
where mountains meet the sky.
So much easier to take in what
isn’t mine. In the distance, geese
are going home. Soft whacking
of wings across the water: bright
battery of sorrow. On the seat,
a book I will not read, core of
an apple half-bitten in my lap.
A mockery. My life passing by
without you in it. Clumsy me,
I feel around your absence
as if searching a bag for keys.
MOTHERLAND
after Sally Mann
The body is not a body, though you could braid
the choking vines cascading down the back, upturn
the skirt-bark hugging the hull of her, as many
are wont to want to. History recommends a woman
know how to be a tree: blood pumped to phloem,
hands broken into brittle branches, orifices
callused closed with wound-wood. I learn the word
for the way wood will try to heal the cut: cicatrix,
marked where some part detached, navel-knotted
burl left on limb, furrowing felled parts, where fruit
or fetus once unfurled. If my mother were a tree,
then she might be the last one standing: field’s-edge,
somewhere South. Sepia sky only starting to shadow.
PEACOCK FLOWER
Native to Mexico and the Caribbean
Caesalpinia pulcherrima
Begin with the language of the instrument:
Resist. Resist the cartographies they pin
you to. Resist the names they speak
into your mouth. Refuse the proboscis,
pollination, penetration. The pioneer
with his penis and his promises
of ordered liberty. Resist temptation,
or don’t, but know you have your options.
Refuse the life forced into you:
be tannic, hell-bent. Fury of red,
a noxious, toxic seed. Cover up
with slicing spines. Dream yourself
from the disaster. Take up space;
put yourself right. No. Put yourself first.
__________________________________
The italicized text in this poem is lifted from the syllabi of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, in which the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade
LA LLORONA
the crying woman
I was the scorned wife—
all spring, sounds of sirens
my only company.
The morning, unfaithful.
Trail behind the house,
smothered in seepage,
the respite I needed,
so I trudged it every day.
Snowdrops sopped,
the creek swelled
around my sadness.
I was inconsolable,
childless, a woman
they’d want to ward away:
unwashed hair, stained
shirt, same as yesterday.
