Proposals

Fall Romance

I want to marry a terrorist,

get grit in my khakis

while I squat to pack munitions,

a blush of gunpowder on my cheek.

When we rut

I want to be hardly there at all,

a crater burnt and sifted after.

Knowledge

I want to marry a machinist,

to stand on the lot of the plant

in my hard had and visitor's badge watching

while he fits metal together,

measuring it carefully once it's in place.

I'll wear pink lipstick and a cotton dress

and bring baskets of warm cornbread

he can pass around.

For lunch we'll sit

on upturned buckets side by side

and his coveralls will smudge my thigh.

When they whistle as I walk away

he will smile at his steel-toed boots,

knowing what he knows.

Invention

I want to marry a used car salesman.

We'll make up stories

about the people who will drive

away in the Camaro or the Escort wagon

as we soap the windshields -

Real Honey, Runs Good, 1 Owner.

On Saturdays I'll dress up in the bear suit

and wave to the people driving by

in their old beaters.

As we leave the lot every night

we'll pick a different car,

depending on how we feel and

drive away

into the Porsche-red sunset.

Travel

I want to marry a nomad,

feed him greasy meat

wrapped in flat bread

cooked on a hot rock.

I want to smell rain

and know when to put up

the beasts.

I want to be sold for spices or camels.

When I come to my new husband

I want to spit and curse his eyes

before I dance.

Postcard

Postcard

Our ghosts ripen within us

making us tender.

Looking behind,

the brown hills bruise

with distance.

The Purpose of Deer

The Purpose of Deer

"I can understand God's purpose for most animals, but what is the purpose of deer?"

Julie at Lake Alice

I. April, 1983

I carry my knees like broken sparrows to Garth's kitchen.

Garth whirls up milk and honey for ulcer burn,

picks gravel from knee meat, bandages elbows.

I beat out droning Saturday morning litany:

don't know, can't remember, never saw before . . .

I have stopped even pretending emotions;

I'm no longer shuffling that old dance.

I am a single mechanical note

sounding on the current of that hot juice.

I am beyond shame or gratitude,

beyond the whole writhing maggoty mass of my humanity.

I have leapt clear of the wreckage of heart and mind;

I hang suspended above it on an amber thread.

Wrist scars, cigarette burns, childhood bruises,

all B&O railroad quaint from this height.

My hated father and I have never been so alike

or so separate;

we are identical objects under glass.

This is completely predictable tragedy

in glaring black and white.

The buzz saw edges closer.

Cut to the heroine struggling.

Her mouth opens, but you hear nothing.

II. September, 1983

A new movement has begun. There is no score.

The ripe moon of this season exposes

real heroes without names

riding in and out of my white rooms.

I claim to be rebuilding myself,

stretching my limbs at this transformed barre,

but I begin to see the gift

these people slyly leave on the counter

while I talk, talk, talk from the other room.

The gift is a secret about who we are.

It is this.

Clinging to the hem of existence,

dragged by gravity,

logic pointing the other way,

we push upward.

We do not turn on each other like beasts

but share bread and bear witness.

Under the milk-filled moon

we do not howl for the dead,

but dance.