Saint Sylvia
Mark him for the amniotic writ
as he stands before me, pockets full of stones.
My weightlessness will not prevent his
sinking.
The half-hearted are heavy.
The one before him was full of lead,
a crown of bullets worn as life preserver.
Seeking Daddy’s meridian eye
he fell
down. Sank. The brute jelly fish.
I draw them, grim-faced men, like the moon.
Pitiable poets who fashion garnet
daggered words, sharp as sighs. My shores froth
and churn
For all their woeful sonnets.
They cannot ignore the call, that hymn
the suicide’s siren song pitched in longing.
Sad men never float nor ever drift
at sea.
So half-hearted and heavy.
But I, the thalassic tumulus,
rippling dark; I swallow men as art.
The Weight of Memory
His hands are a call to prayer, each stroke an invocation.
My eyes shutter with the weight of memory.
The old home, with its tin roof and dirt floor, guarded by a chorus of ancient trees.
The jumble of scraped knees and paper bag skin huddled beneath them; the sussura of leaves. He
sighs in the hollow of my neck. I return, a rush of brackish river and dragonflies.
Zephyrs stream from my mouth. I am deified by this sacrament.
But all of my idols have feet of clay.
Prayer Slippers
I explore your tenebrous forest, bellowing my low song.
Here I am, there I am, comecomecome
Bare breasted, belly plump and creased like a wine grape;
Full ripe and heavy. The chorus greets me timorously but I am less coy.
I line them up, el duende, el poeta, el insurgente, el musico
I set them in the niches of my chest like a consecrated automaton.
No man could burn a woman like me for I am a stone chapel.
Instead he’d remark on my utilitarianism, my thrift;
My gift for turning bread crumbs and ink into stew.
We’d go to market, I the fatted cow, all cud and frothy milk.
(What to-do with a man like that!)
So come my little wonders, my unconscious collectibles, my disparate hodge-podge.
I will fashion you into a garment, bind you with scarlet cord;
Wear your prayers on my feet like slippers. (Aren’t I clever, woodland man?)
Shuffle me into your bed of bough and melancholy. Feed me cakes of apple molded by smoke.
Peel away the crackled lining.
For I am incombustible.