Reading at the Sculpture Gardens, 4/5/92

“Just never settles in the house of a woman not ready for the sun.“– Ellen

I was one of four readers, I haven’t read here since 1986 with John Oliver Simon. They said I read well. Nice to put the faces with the names. I get lots of strokes and compliments. Ellen who goes only by her first name because she’s been married so many times, said it was nice to be able to put the name in the face together, said that I draw from many sources keeping the reader interested. 

4/5/92 

Angel’s Gate, San Pedro

LIVING WITH BEARS

LIVING WITH BEARS

We are all immigrants and what sustains us 

is the failure of desire and need.

Each question you resurrect from the debris of childhood

I want to believe in, but I come from a long line

of bear worshippers who survived the potato famine.

I don't eat red meat. Icons in dark niches, guttered candles, 

a menorah, and the ritual of our bodies—

there's always an ocean, a continent, or a lover in the way.

One of the wounded, you're trapped in the dark heat of the city

instead of feasting on onion domes in the Red Square with me.

I taste your words as if they were ripe

huckleberries pale with bloom in late August.

But I'm omnivorous. Did our tongues really find the faith?

We could spend a lifetime looking at the ground, or love.

The phone rings, your exlover reminds me

with silence, of what we have in common.

Kiev celebrates a millennia of civilization.

Sasha says in Russian, There is no verb to be in the present. 

It is understood. We do not live with white bears, 

tovarishchi, are you all capitalists, then?

We are the same people. We are breaking the images.

He says, Afghanistan is Russian for Vietnam,

pulling on a cigarette with his good hand.

An idea called napalm has melted his face.

An American vet trembling like a lover, offers a light, 

and touches his hand, the half-formed word brother on his lips.

The steppes have no natural boundaries.

No more bison, cossacks or mongols sweeping the open plains.

I am lost on the limitless horizon. Mnogaya leta.

Voices sing with the quality of wind on the land.

The future is no more uncertain than the past.

And yes, the failures between us are what we know best.

But even at fifty below, the arctic pools, the polinii

don't freeze over, where in winter the bears come to feed.

Within the earth, wood grows upward without haste & without rest.

Sometimes I hear it in your voice —

vulnerability slips in and we find sum totals

have nothing to do with tenderness or faith.

A brittle sheet of gold foil tremors 

the geography of who we are.

7/28/89

L' APRES-MIDI

L' APRES-MIDI

     —For Bruce Isaacson

in homage to Robert Sund & Georgia O'Keefe

You have found me out,
slipped in clean as a knife,
your poems lucid as a white room
in late afternoon where
I want to stand before you
pre-architectural. Slip off these words
into something more comfortable,
reveal the inner curve of femur,
the hollow of pelvis framed
against the purity of desert sky
& feel your breath sing against my ribs.

Where my breasts flowered
your disembodied hands harvest
brilliance arcing on blank pages.
We burn against the night's silence
lost, looking for home.
I taste your words on my tongue,
dreaming them as if they were alive,
incandescent as flanks of white horses
in the rain—your poems shed light,
nuzzle breathless in my ear.
It's not so much the words themselves
but the way they touch
the muddy river where, for a moment,
our tongues found truth hidden in the roots.

There is a curve of eyebrow,
an alluvial valley that speaks
of such tenderness, we turn stones,
& turn them again. What does it matter
if the sun will die, your kisses like stars.
The physics of writing consumes us.
Not ambivalence. Not the other sin.
It cannot hide serpentine from the river—
the brightness from within—a burning moth
circling the pale fire of your eyes.

You tell me : too many loves in our past
& slip into the Paris night, well armed,
calling it by the clear light of poetry
because love also requires such brutal attention.
Can one name the instant when the heart
of the untamable beast ignites or dies?
Afraid of what it might be,
in the naked room, what are we then?

4/18/89

COMIDA DEL MUERTE

COMIDA DEL MUERTE

At the outpost on the edge of civilization

there they were, black and wheeling

against bright storm clouds,

a vortex of condors cantilevered and herring-boned

at right angles to the sky.

A thermal updraft juxtaposes bird against bird,

until feathers weave the wind into funnels.

Seeking new heights, they spiral

in apocalyptic formation and make quenas

with their wings; group mind gives shape to the wind.

Caught between two worlds, a Quechua woman

palms intis from gringos who steal

small pieces of her with cameras

and in return, she gives thanks to the sun.

A bone of light falls on a hammer and sickle,

graffiti on the limestone of Puku Pukara,

the kremlin of the first Inca.

In the cordilleras, Sendero Luminosos

blaze shining paths with AK-47's.

Too much history, too much past.

We sing Que Condor Pasa?

and descend into the rings of Cusco.

When solitary creatures congregate

in all the skies of the world,

one begins to understand the uplift of continents,

but not the extinction of a species.

If my arms were feathered,

it would be easier to take

what is coming.

3/26/89

MANNA

From the whirlwind of a passing truck,
the robin's body luffed & raised
like a leaf; orange breast flashing
the dawn back into the sky.

I wanted to stop the car, mend
the random fluttering of small wings
in their strange and useless flight,
& turn this tiny teacher of Icarus
back toward the sun.


7/8/1987

1989 Sculpture Gardens Review

FREEWRITE

From the from the wind of a passing truck 

the body of a robin luffs and raises 

like a leaf and autumn leaf 

the orange breast flashing

the color of dawn back to the morning sky. 

Tiny wings flutter randomly useless 

in its strange head over head flight 

along the side of the road, 

fragile grayness like a soft fog, 

no longer lifting into air, 

the last flight of the robin 

into another kind of world.
Early autumn
Where the steady pool of darkness 

descends upon us all 

neck broken, his head tucked under one wing 

for preparation of that final sleep. 

I wanted to stop the car, 

hold that tiny teacher or cousin of Icarus 

in my hand, straighten its wings 

and turn it towards the sun 

to escape the island of death. 

Each time we witness the death 

of any living thing we feed the manna of our own death 

we die too, we witness the mortality 

of every new day. 

We bear witness to our own sleeping 

in summer, autumn's descent into winter

IN MARY BIANCHI'S GARDEN

That young man who
thinking he knew something of cycles
blamed poor old Mary Bianchi
for depleting the soil
instead of his own failure
to understand its needs.
She, who raised two generations
from that same soil
including members of my family
improved the soil each year
with chickenshit
to nourish the chard
which in turn was used
to feed the chickens
who laid strong eggs
like our bones.
She knew about cycles and patterns.
When her first husband died
of mushroom poisoning
she married his brother
and continued her work
in the garden.

IN MARY BIANCHI'S GARDEN, II

That young man who

thinking he knew something of cycles

blamed poor Mary Bianchi

for depleting the soil

instead of his own failure

to understand its needs.

She, who raised two generations

from that same soil

including our family

improved the soil each year

with manure

to nourish the chard

which in turn was used

to feed the chickens

who laid strong eggs

like our bones.

She knew about cycles and patterns.

When her first husband died

of mushroom poisoning

she married his brother

& carried on in the garden.

6/87   (possibly 6/23)? 

1993 We Are Not Swans, with Cecelia Woloch

1991 Poet Magazine, Fall issue

1990 Tight

1989 Sculpture Gardens Review

        Green Fuse

        Gulf Stream

I wrote my first draft during my CAC AIL residency at Napa State Hospital.

This typed draft is from Napa V Poetry conference, Aug. or Sept.

TENGO DINERO

These silver fish in my pocket
sing for their supper
sing for flies and oranges
under a full moon.
At Cabo San Lucas,
the wind through the arch
is like the sighing of empty vaults.
The fishing banks are open for commerce.
"Silver sinkers from old dimes
make the best lures,"
an old Indian said.
The mines are empty.
The mines are empty.
Let's lift the moratorium.
We need silver to seed the clouds;
to line the sow's ear.
The gypsy's fortune speaks in tongues
when the fish won't bite.

12/5/1985

1989 Poetry SF Quarterly, Honorable Mention, spring issue, 

1987 Sculpture Gardens Review

         Marin Poetry Review

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

TENGO DINERO

Aquellos peces de plata en mi bolsillo
cantan para comer
cantan para moscas y naranjas
bajo de la luna llena.
En Cabo San Lucas,
el viento por el arco
susurra como bovedas vacias.
Los bancos de las pescas
se abren para negocios.
"Los plomos de plata
de las viejas monedas
de diez centavos
son los mejores cebos,"
decia el indio viejo.
Las minas estan vacias.
Las minas estan vacias.
Levantemos el moratorio.
Necesitamos la plata para sembrar
las nubes;
para forrar la oreja la cerda.
La suerte del gitano habla en lenguas
cuando no muerden los peces.

tr. John Oliver Simon y Juvenal Acosta
needs correction accents
1985