Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
–for Lucas Clark In the rain, I climb into the mouthof the cave, and Lucas is rowing throughhis dream. He says, there are so many peoplein the next life, like you wouldn’t believe.His boat has sprung a leak. He patches itwith a Polyphemus moth. His oars are twosnakes wrapped around his arms; they biteat oil-dark stalagmites. Lucas opens a doorand we walk into the woods…
You cradled our moto-X babies, our strip mall teens, and three pack a day fathers, chilled our ring-tabbed beer cans in your run-off rivers, and absorbed oilrising like mist from our vats of fried food, sucked exhaust from our tricked-out cars, we atebulbous berries by the hallock, pondered savory, illicitmushrooms blooming in your fecundforests, you gave up Douglas firs by the chevronfor our duplexes and ranches, you watched us…
In Urdu, there exists a phrase—nala-e-bebak: an audacious sorrow. 2007: When my grandmother died, she turned into a parrot. An obscure ritual was performed to determine what type of body she would be reborn in after departing from this one. An earthen pot was filled with river mud and sand, lidded by a muslin cloth and left to sit untouched for a couple of days….
Ruins A child, two sizes too small. An improvised bomb on loan from the city’s museum of modern art. A plagiarist on the street corner tapping veins for the aftermarket haiku. A chamber maid removed from the chamber. A dream where a naked groomsman asks for sour cream. The bruised grape of a borrowed afternoon. Another word for hard bread thickening in the mud. Stage…
The lingua franca around here is produce. In the morning they arrive in droves, whole crops of apples drifting down the receiving ramp, packed breast to breast, these stubborn and hopeful things. Money and I unload the shipment silently, half under the thought fog of morning, half under the shy recoil of accented speech, but we speak in our own way: I offer the fruit…