Forcing it
When the magnolia trees began dropping
their flowers out of season, I knew
it was time to let you go, but
old folks say, shock a branch - make
it bloom, with plastic wrap
water in a jar,
a little light
enough time -
some space -
wait.
Freedom is Red
The
first time I asked a man for a divorce, the Challenger exploded.
It
wasn’t my fault, but seventeen years later, I’m divorcing again
and
the Columbia is lost. I wonder if it is wise to send up another shuttle.
On
the stretch of tape not damaged by heat,
the
Columbia astronauts are laughing. Happy to be
seconds from home. When the tape ends, the newscast cuts to video
of
streaks of burning shuttle. Two arcs of light in the sky.
My
daughter wants to show me a video she found in my bedroom.
It’s a tape of her brother’s 5th birthday party. She is only
three months old,
asleep in my mother’s lap, while squealing five-year-olds in cowboy hats,
wearing
tin sheriff stars
on their t-shirts munch gummy worms they pull from Oreo dirt pie.
She
says I was the happy Mommy back then.
Afterwards, I watch
the news. See the bombs falling on Baghdad . Arcs of light
illuminating
mosques and marketplaces. Stars to be wished upon. I am afraid
because Thelma’s
son is there and Ann’s is on the way.
The
president says we must free the people of Iraq . It must be done.
It makes no sense
to me. My divorce makes no sense to my daughter. That I must
split us to make
things better. I tell her some things she is too young to understand.
I will explain them
when she is older. I pray I will have an answer for her by then.
So when I go to
court, the judge will ask me what systems failed.
I’ll mumble
something about shields and pressure and heat.
He’ll want to know if I could see it coming and I’ll say,
I
thought something fell away at launch, but wasn’t it supposed to?
Like when I was five and we watched the first men fly into space
on
their way to the moon. Didn’t the rocket break apart?
Didn’t a fire ball fall to earth? He’ll tell me
that was the old
way.
When Baghdad falls,
where will it land? Who will be left to be free?
When all of the
bombs have burst in mid-air. When the red plumes are
burned to ash and cinder. To which victor will the spoils go?
If I get the table
and he gets the chairs, should the children stand over the table or
sit plate in hand?
Does it matter now which one of the thousands of shields failed?
The Poet is Freed
I.
A swarm of
snapdragons bends itself east
to
hear you, into- the- air- believe- me woman.
It knows you will
pierce verse.
The
voices before you -
the
first few - they were people,
bad
as rhododendron raindrops
in
the cathedral. Dangerous
as shards of broken
glass.
This boarded-up
building
was your chrysalis,
until
underneath stars
a blanket of smoke,
the mosaic color
of mangoes,
crawled into your
mind.
So travel to the
edge of jazz barely breathing;
a
pocketful of pressed flowers in your torn t-shirt.
Dance in downtown
puddles, through the
blues, bird droppings, sweet as
a swarm of
snapdragons.
You used to play
he, she
you, me
us
they.
II.
I am walking
through this poem
aware of breath and
heartbeat.
My footsteps give
me away - alternately
right as rhododendron rain then tentatively
tip-toeing on buckling
bridges of language. Forgive me
swarms of snap
dragons. Sometimes
a girl needs some
pretty piece of language
to rest upon her
head like a tiara.
Feed me fragments
of mosaic mango.
Sometimes a girl
needs a bit of sweet language
she can roll around
on her tongue.
Lie
to me. Tell me
it
is as easy as bending east, as easy as leaving
Little Rock on the
next sliver of dawn
to find the edge of
jazz barely breathing.
Tell me No
creature ever falls short
of its own completion.
Tell me to piece
together torn bits of language
to make a map to
anywhere that is not
boarded up. I want
to be dangerous
as shards of broken
glass in the mouth.
I want to hear the
voices from before the creation
promise me: No
creature ever falls short
of its own
completion; wherever it stands,
it does not fail to
cover the ground.*
