rebellion consists in looking at a rose
until your eyes are crushed
– Alejandra Pizarnik
It is only a semblance, this rose
petalled black –
to sunrise then
we rise against
to hide in this sun until your
crushed eyes
become rose, become
a petalled green
I saw grass as brother
it threw the husk
of dawn & the riddle – I began to speak in broken
syllable & the river blinked –
the boundaries of the sun have
begun its descent
slow, feral, full of the red that brought peace to ague &
power to eye, to limb –
there is a theory of open space
where clouds meet
kite & how meets the wailing why of happening –
no sun is closer to my face
than this sun – no buzz of an afterlife
is redeemed by sip of water
no dream is begun in memory
the sharp hindrance of forgetting –
I reap the downward spiral, the
ghost of
what shall be: yesterday’s yearn
& the story
of pebbles & vows – the spiral
sows its I’s
i-
The salt and the spear
begin
to wonder
to woo to
walk – unshaken the spilt
part
wonders too
who to
call wind as the spear
knits
wonder, knits
wood into
salt
—
ii-
Large is the willow’s red – it is sound it is near – how near? as
your reach is bound to wrist to hip, that near – small is the
swollen sea – how small? as your paw is yearn is seen, that small –
What will the storybook tell? an
inch of
meng-chiao’s grass in heart or
thunder?
who will the story will? an after
thought
or what is taught after that: the
lie, an inch
above your grassless heart & art
as art –
As I sleep away my mourning, grass walks, asks, “what
is it that the children of rain remember most?” The story
answers, waters the plaint – As I seep away my morning,
grass is worm is root as this poem is awake with heal-
“How does the strange earth bear fruit, does it know
which road shall converge into dark & which one shall
be the rabbit?” I stand as it all begins to flower & then
smoke – the fruit bearing earth now rustles its feathers-
do we in our moving
move toward life or death
do we in turn sell, burn & prosper do we raze our haven as death?
Stroke by stroke drawing us
Out there? Father of rhythms,
deep wave, mother,
There is no out there.
All is open.
Open Water. Open I.
Open hearth Open stone crucible of love crux of I
Women, ships, lost voices.
Whatever has dissolved into our waves.
I a lost voice
moving, calling you
on the edge of the moment that is now the center.
From the open sea.
Whatever has dissolved in our bones
as rust
recalls –
we recall the tender
the edges recall, the stone, the work of the sea as the breaking out of open water.
—
Lines in bold are from Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Outer Banks”
