Mammary

Hawks circle fields near the highway

homing in to catch the scent

of animals deep in the high dry grass.

So many wildflowers in bloom,

watery purples and acid yellows,

I’m dizzy in my car

blazing up the California coast:

Santa Barbara, Pismo, Salinas,

nicknamed The salad bowl of the world

with its patchwork plots

of endive and spinach,

the almighty artichoke

in whose honor Norma Jean Baker

was once crowned queen.

So fresh in her red gingham blouse,

remember? Her elation,

her perky, generous D cups

held up to the leafy bulbs

as everyone cheered. If only

it stayed so rosy, the tough layers

unstripped, the heart left intact.

If only you weren’t topless

on a gurney, Rachel,

under the scouring glare

of hospital lights,

your own sweet breasts

offered up to the surgeon’s blade.

A hundred miles north

of where you are right now

I’m a slave to this shifting view,

anything to avoid the thought

of your chest picked clean,

tender globes that fed three mouths,

now poison the body’s crop.

So I’ll imagine birds and flight

as the elliptical sweep of sharpness

cuts the pale sky of your chest,

steel beaks of surgical tools

carving out the flesh cream,

making smoke of tumor meat—say goodbye,

pay my respects

and picture them floating up,

slipping through the ceiling cracks,

two blond angels,

flying out

beyond the moon’s milky scar,

they spread their innocence

over the lustrous scrim of L.A.,

those brave, radiant girls 

wave and then they’re gone.

Strange Flesh                                                                                   

After the good doctor finished suturing my gums—

periodontal deus ex-machina of scalpel, 

thread, a trapdoor flap of cadaver flesh

stitched to the eroded ridge of my incisors, 

he paused. As if to let me ponder,

consider the foreign meat

he’d just served

to the upper room of my mouth—

jellied tidbit, a red membrane morsel

some kind donor pledged

before exiting this life.

I said nothing. Spit the last mucous stream

into his paper cup, my tongue

finally at rest in its numb cheek tomb.

What was there to say? Hadn’t I

been taught to taste the blood,

eat the body of an unknown brother?

And to what purpose

if not for mystery, 

for human communion

with every sister

roaming this frail and fallen planet?

Here’s to you, nameless one,

for inking the little O

on your DMV form,

for prettying up my smile,

giving me a sturdier bite.

We’re family now.

May the words of my mouth

be worthy of your end,

your great gingival sacrifice.

Asleep in the earth

chewing dust,

or at sea, drunk

on the watery abyss,

may you decay

in all the right places

and be glad

as I am, for the feeding.

-- Passages North, Spring 2008

The Edge

What my daughter calls it—the line

we cross when this life ends,

the last grass trampled

under hardening arches

before the cliff runs out, before

stepping into air. That night

we snuggled after tubs

she said it—hair a damp curtain,

daisy p.j.’s,  the two of us cross-legged 

on the quilt, my disintegrating Hanes  

revealing the sloppy V of curls,

a two-inch scar from groin to thigh.

“You’re a little closer to the edge, Mom”

she repeated, touching where she knows

sour fruit’s been plucked,

the bad tumor nut. Skated a pinkie

along the red dermis ridge—keloid dash

that is neither a mouth turned up

nor down. Not moon of approval

not arc of misery

but an expression hammered flat

with acceptance.

Then we opened a book

and found a fairy tale to read

even darker, more outrageous than our own.

-- Finalist, dA Center for the Arts, 2007

Good Friday Kiss 

The choir door left open, we slithered in.

Moving through the musky stacks

of bibles and unlaundered cassocks

we lay down behind the altar—

our bodies an awkward tangle on polished wood,

a snake with clothes on,

when he pulled me close, whispering his love.

Still, it wasn’t the airless sanctuary

or the dead I could hear humming

inside the church’s empty pews.

No, it was Adam’s hands that made me cringe

the first time his lips touched mine—

twelve years old and asthma sickly,

the dry, scabbed flesh and little cloth gloves

he wore to cover pink ointments

that oozed in a line down his wrists.

I looked up and saw the cross floating overhead,

draped in black chiffon for today’s Good Friday

like a negligee or widow’s grieving veil,

and suddenly revolted by the cotton-coated touch

of his fingers brushing my cheek,

I rolled away from him, forever. 

What did I know of suffering?  The flesh

pulled taut and stapled, the human canvas

rubbed to transparency?

How my taunts would come to crucify this boy,

my young heart shifting in gusts

so fast from like to loathe—

Endurance

         “…more important than truth.”— C. Bukowski