Seville 1964; Confessions of a Catholic Housewife

through an archway, a woman herds two toddlers,
carries a third in her arms while she, swollen with the fourth

pitches and pends change
soon her arms will hold an infant and the wee, dark one will walk alone to the pew
mala, mala her mother will say, hurry, hurry bad girl

mala, mala will echo against cherubs and pigeons in a water fountain
to the burnt umber chamber of the confessional
beneath the dim amber light behind the priest

and into the sanctuary of prayer where even saints will echo mala, mala
and the virgin mary, pained in premonition, will remain silent as a ghost

while the woman in black veil asks for blessings

from a priest who the night before, in the privacy of a sparse green room,
questioned his god

who, from behind a shield, studies the smooth, unworked surface of his palms,bites clean
the dried callous from nail beds and brushes flaked skin from a long black garment

who deals in prayer and punishment like a bookie dealing debters
and delivers rote sentence from an airless closet
who rectifies the unwrongs of a woman wishing for some control,
for patience
for the undoingof a swollen uterus and ankles,

for a temporary return to a tight-lipped chaste life

for the unfettered newness of a man for a first milky moon unveiling and the redoing of unweighted desire

for the self-conscious curl into a historyless chest, for the giving,
and for the taking
but instead she thanks this man for penance, signs the cross utters quick prayer and wonders where in her day she will fit a rosary
and how her knees will survive a half hour on hard floor

she excuses herself with cumbersome heft into red seville,
passed wicker filled with tall yellow sunflower
passed thick tongued salesmen holding ripe fruit

back to the red tiled floors and clay shingles of home

back to her own voice, this new voice, her only voice trilling; mala! mala! hurry, hurry bad girl












.

the stuff you remember when you allow yourself to remember

yellowed sheer curtains hung dirty and angry
half in, half out of thick-paned windows; in a

tight cabin where even breeze forgets its purpose

you remember too, burly hands

and the stink of wet log; smothered beneath a canopy

of high fisted oak

and jesus shellacked there, his nose pressed to knotty pine

suspended over the low shoulder of some man's daybed

but mostly, when you think of it

you remember yourself;

a gilded beetle struggling flat on its back; lanky legs splayed

gawky

and open

and so it is here i have come to be a squatter

and so it is here i have come to be a squatter

this side of
death


shadowing door steps, taking residence in
the coffee pot
hissing at spilled drops
and early pours



and at night asleep in the dryer
arms and legs tumbled against hot sheets
baked alongside printed cottons- longevity measured in the shrink of denim

in a cycle's warm lull

and where ever i am , he waits

in the shower when i raise my arm

it is he who calculates and compares
who fingers breasts, eyes my uterus, scrapes my cervix

death who breaches life

a few cells at a time


it is here in this patter of space
that i am a squatter, in the slush of a wrung
washcloth, in the scent of spilled shampoo

in the eyes of a gray cat

sitting fat on a bath rug

how i have drowned or not

i would drown
once in the school pool with forty witnesses

and me; flailing in a snug pink swimsuit
scrambling for tile, for air, for my mother's

frantic eyes; that is how i would die
but didn't

so then again later caught inside a hard current
and undertow; glen's warning colored the jump-in

it was he who showed up downriver; who pulled me
to the brier patch on the opposite bank

and he who yanked my arm
and yelled to shut up when i cried

his tall skinny legs cutting a thorn bush path

i would drown again
several more times

on a saltless day
on a black night curve

inside a flapping mouth
gaped open like an owl's

in a small town, when we hear the ambulance, everyone holds their breath

her hands are freezing



into november's wind; she releases a boneless quail

sidles to the sink and runs hot water
into a soapy dishpan

the flowering almond looks skeletal without leaves

bony fingers tap a table top

she misses low
light most; the yellowed lamp shade

the choked 45 watt reading bulb






she will not decorate this year

the season will remain packed
tight in a clear box; a ceramic santa pressed nose to plastic

a glass snowflake will wreak no further havoc






the fishbowl on the deck has ice in it

no splash of orange, no breath
or sad float- in a cold quiet testament to change; ice cracks







oh, and what of the fish
who were?
who were?

the poet refuses an answer





dog shit really stands out in the snow

nothing to see here folks
keep moving, keep moving





sometimes i would rather have the poke in the eye



a flat line writer
pretties a page and imitates a poet's heart-beat
she labels the moon cold-blooded

i think to argue, to explain; in this town
the moon
is a tin can rinsed and rattling down the street, clean
and empty; or a scoured sink filled with fresh-dug potatoes

or maybe it's a virgin, draped in white linen, plump and expectant





i believe in ghosts

she pads through my house

in pink slippers

the world is naturally yellow


each night, while she sleeps, the earth
gathers thick, hickory smoked air inside a frozen lake of lung


then waits for the sun to make shadows of mountain
and pine





all these thoughts and it all comes down to sex

if it were possible
i would breathe you; the last morsel of
civilized air

a track and tram
in a city of hills

a mountaintop tumble
of arm and tit

a divining rod
you would tease

right before the low moan and man-cub noise;
before the pull of wrapped-ass closer





memories should probably have bright hair and clothes too

and then here; inside the nod, we part ways
in the shift and flip flop of bodies
on the cold side of cotton


the wrung rewrings, dead revisit
and a lamp post is never just as it seems






maybe tomorrow i'll write something and actually finish it

a poem that ices and drips from the eaves

and has absolutely
nothing to do with me

.

an old man speaks to his daughter

in a final day, with phone held close to ear
he mumbled;

i am in a cabin on the most beautiful lake i've ever seen

and then wondered aloud, if she too
could hear the angels

.

a ghost, a silver fish and a dozen witnesses positioned behind glare resistant glass

a mourning dove huddles an iced branch, hunched

as an undertaker in frozen rain

the starkest moon creeps early morning; its white belly sliced and filleted;

shimmies a dance across hardwood

his shirt's long sleeves
flop into coffee, drip past her fingertips into dish water

today i will ask

and he will answer

bedlam exists in the resonant clamor of pots and pans
in the precision of scoop and measure, in the dour expression of sunrise,

throwing test light into eyes

m

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