I will barter one hundred sleeps for one day of wakefulness, I will trade you seven sleeps for one square foot of June ditch. To see you, night after night, sleep after sleep. I sailed it, cast it, sunk it in my cheek: the hook to haul me here,
But for a thousand miles of stars, no sleep. I find a clutch of hair, the girlhood grief, the words I wrote The unlit space until its atoms show, but still I can’t find sleep. My soul to keep my past a satchel I’ve said all the words to go to sleep.īut flammable I combusts on the every-other hour. With one eye open, I have lain myself down to sleep. The wish, the glass, the fish, the spoon, the dish, the bowl. Of circles, my circulatory malaise, my circuitous soul: my bowl.Īnd thus are we held and thus do we hold, Nicole. Thus, my circling, my being circled, my inner circling, my circus I became nothing for I could no longer bear the grief-shaped bowl.īut the room became the bowl then bowl of sky and bowl of sea,Įvery body held by a larger body’s grief: a concentric set of bowls. I assumed the shape of water: an exact fit in any bowl. I assumed the shape of a hummingbird, once, and once a cat,Ī motor vehicle. Mother was cocooned on the couch, lulled by her daytime stories. The fish reminded me of something, but what?! I kept and watched her.Īs she circled the ragged plastic tree, so I circled her bowl. Neither I nor the fish was new to the notion of a bowl. The fish I caught I placed with clean water in a bowl. I miss the sky from there, the milky breath and lullabies, the air, its salt. How much for another spin on the Wonder Wheel, Zoë? Can we do it all again? Ray says that when I am an old woman he will carry my bones upstairs to bed.Ī dozen years ago, we took the F to Coney Island, dipped our girls in salt. Loin of my loin, heart of my heart, salt of my salt. We trundled our rolling flotilla to the playground, didn’t notice our rings of salt.Įlla says her body is my body since she spent so long inside of me. Sleep-deprived, we shone at the flower stand, the ice shop, the ATM, The glow of those who lose sleep for love, who choose sugar over salt.
It was its own sort of youthfulness - us as young mothers - a sort of hope, We were greenĪnd flexible, we were good and kind, we wicked up what spilled, cranked salt. In the great green room we cradled our hatchlings, each other’s.
#Ghazals glasses full
So full of birthday cakes, and detangling solutions, and so much salt. No, it was thick with moms, and we did drip. Train apparatus on track apparatus on salt. The F-train platform was thick with moss, hung with birds, dense with salt I call it everything: bullfrog and robin, eyelet, square meal, dirt road.ĭid I tell you what words I’ve found for you, Nicole? I started, I guess. They’re everywhere, this July they fling themselves alongside, reveal the road.ĭid I tell you how many words I’ve come up with for “ache”? I haven’t even thought to think where I’m headed in this steel vessel on this road.ĭid I tell you about the young fox I saw? Did I ask about the goldfinches? To touch what’s becoming: to feel the road.īut I’m none of these, not really, just a woman on a bus on a road. To be the bus come to rest in its bay to be the bay: that oily harbor. I want to be the flesh around the stone, the thing consumedĪt the kitchen sink, the juice down your arm, the peel, a ribbon of road. The bus is the still thing and the world pulls past. I’m in a bus, above its wheels, on a road,īeneath a sky, near a window. Will our thirst ever cease, Zoë? Come fall, will we be quenched? I deliquesce, cocooned here with tequila. My heart monsoons with tequila.Īnd where is my mouth, and where, my hand? The room It rivers through my veins, hangs a gone fishing sign on my mind. I could become a saint,Ī garden, gardenia, mother, whore. I could become lush to match the lush outsideĮach window. Just one teaspoon of tequila.Ī little nip on this sundrenched day while I waitįor love, for what I might become, for the moon. It’s past noon, but not yet five: too soon for tequila?Ĭicadas and the dozing dog.