Notes From A Woman Soon To Be Divorced

DECEMBER

Endless south

I woke up and saw that it was winter. There were no birds, etc. Every piece of clothing inside my house was clean. Thank God. I looked into the mirror and saw that my eye was bright and black. Piercing. Wonderful. My lips were almost open. Beautiful. But my hands. Hands? Were very sad. Beating something. Like birds flown into their endless south and still trying to fly further. Ridiculous. I noticed my heart seemed to be saying something. There is no winter. Am I awake? What was it saying? There were words on its lips. Entangled with the soap in my hand. Soap? I was trying to clean my wings. They were brown and bitter. I was old. It was winter. Try to overcome that. Pretend it is summer! The tulips, etc. Brown and bitter, my wings that I tried to clean. With white soap while my heart said something and I listened and heard nothing.

There is no waking while things like this are happening

They try to get the zebras to talk. That makes sense when you live out in the jungle. Because already the lions speak and the great giraffe sings, apparently. This is told to me by those who have struggled with wild things. Great warriors with pain splashed on their faces. One leans down over my body. (I have just been ripped apart by a lion.) Do you hear them speaking he says in another language. I hear them. It is song or something like words pasted together. Like a tight thing you would hold and never want to let go of. I notice my hand lying by the river. How beautiful! Try to wake up. Try! But the wild wind and the zebras and the warriors are singing. Their noise carries me up. There is no waking while things like this are happening.

Remember when we loved each other?

To say I loved you would be like saying I need you to pick this sunflower
Or I wish you would please now come home to me even though it has been three years
To say that I am kind of dying here and getting old
Would be like saying
Help
What in hell happened to my face?
Remember when we loved each other?
Down by the water, etc. At any rate, let’s turn the page
At this point the only thing left to talk about would be
How empty this cup is. This one I was drinking from.

These were the things I was trying to say
I would not beg you but if I begged you would it make you come home?
Because I could get down on both knees.

There is no hell so let’s talk about something else

My hands still look like the map of a child’s planet
Thank god
Your hands are like a cow who has stopped moving in the field
Who has cried real tears
Who has cried real tears?

Our dead boy we folded in his suit
The policeman we handed over dollars to
The nun we gave real cake to chew
And to the strange waves we rode
We gave our drowning heads and hearts
That is to say, we drowned

There is no hell so let’s talk about something else
The fields of people wandering

JANUARY

Hell #2

Be quick
With all you have to say
Slither it like a snake

Green make your eyes
And take in the air for future use
Believe in witches
It helps
Soak under the foot of a man
Until he falls inside the dirt
Throw away the road
It goes everywhere

Hell #52

I want you to draw me
Darling sailor lover
Plump on the brow of your ship!
A monkey in my arm
And my white dress adorned with the faces
Of your children
I want you to hoist me up over the shadows!
Strong captain mine
And have the orderlies shake out the bees
From this lovely nest
This nest of ours!
I want you to ask the sun
If it would come down here for a while
We could picnic, the sun and me
My darling warrior!
In the thick nest of words
That don’t make sense
Howling
Is our best
language

Hell #89

First, there is a blue warrior ship
Then there are rats waving from it
And yellow bananas
And a girl with a strong voice
Screaming mantras

You must draw this
Until you are blue in the face

FEBRUARY

Facts

You force me to put my head under water. I like that.
Tigers are not scared of us. You do not understand that.
We drive with your hands in shock.
Families pass by. Fever burns their cars apart.
God waves. A grocery store door hangs open. Your mouth is too dry.
The door opens. Not the door to your heart.

Heat like an ape makes itself known in the wee hours of my morning.

There is no male around.
Only a sour memory of you leaning over me.
The neighbors were watching.
Your huge body.
My panting heart.
The way the dogs waited for the ending.
We each did our part.

Your pants wet in the car
As I leaned over the dashboard
North Carolina, South Carolina
The seas parted
You threw me on the engine hood
My small ass a light to passing cars

There is no male around
So I knit
Deep knots

MARCH

Promise

Wind instead of blood. In my heart gnaws a little mouth with tiny words that turn bigger as the day grows blacker. Stupid tongue. Waiting for a boat. Its very own train to its very own velvet corridor. Tonight my father is dying. I will not act differently. I will not kill myself. I will not laugh. I will not eat too much or too little. Or banish young mothers from my sight or kill my dog or beg my neighbor to take me to the hospital or give a blow job to my new boyfriend. Will there be a funeral? I’m not up for it.

Funeral

My father has not died yet but I am here remembering a great fever I once had. Wet rags turned to flames on my head. How I languished! There was a desert to die in back then. Poems not yet written. But the thing is…I thought they would be written. And so I came back to life. Great, grand life. Beady eyes always wanting to get cool. Some ice for my swollen throat. I am just sitting here waiting for them to call and tell me that my father has died. Then what? Then I will die. And all my brothers die. And you will die, too.

APRIL

April 1

Come and get me!
Wind that brings men to knees
I have bent into the ground to be your bridge
your hammer, your song, your singer

There is nothing but this flesh left
This look in my eye
This way of turning
This nail you keep deep inside

April 2

Pride has its slender white throat
Its sacrifice of thanksgiving
Its enormous house

I lived there
Lost in rooms
With music pounding
My hair dark and long
The road outside noisy with your coming

April 10

The rose shudders
The bed shivers
The maid brings the things we will eat
Her thin waist your belt
That you tighten as you begin to speak

What do you have to tell me?
Outside the cat begins its crawl
That will last all through our long, our toothless night

April 14

We are failed light
Broken by the opening of dawn
A circle of awe and murder
Things said on cave walls

In my heart
You crept along
Until I heard the rattle
And much later, the song

April 18

O promises!
I stand on the fence
Of every beaten moment
your harsh hips hung with armor
your shoes huge boats I sailed away in

Your river is a sword
My neck, a butcher’s table
Your lips, a clock—a reminder

April 22

Hail Mary
Ancient art she
In garlands and mirrors
Her eyes stained with horror

Tell me how you will find me
On this white wave
Where children sink into summer
And all that is said turns slowly to murmurs

April 26

I’ve heard the moving fields call
My name in the shivering night
With your burden of stars
And my pockets full of light

We sing of tracks
Of ice-filled roads
Of cities, of sidewalks, of alleyways
Of your name, of your name!

April 27

There are things left unsaid
In that dark space of love
We remember what was promised
A hard ride, the dawn that comes
After two have spent their time
In battle

Go your way
My time is coming

MAY

Old story

Expect big things in your heart
I yelled at you
Sorry
Stamp, stamp, stamp
The sound of my feet
Blue river
There is water and it is not stopping
Your hat is hanging from the branch
Your shoe has been eaten by the wolf
Bears turn nervously
One eye straight ahead
Do not look back
Their claws are something, aren’t they?

Blue hat in a box

All through the years I thought of you. Through all of the wars. Through all of the brand new washing machines and all of the old ones carried away by sad-faced men. They had hard times fitting these washing machines through my doors. Sweat poured off of them. Some of them sobbed. One asked me to phone his wife and tell her that he might never make it home. Because of this washing machine, I said? Others threw themselves at my feet and begged me to take a gun and shoot them. I would not. I stepped over them instead thinking all the time of you. Always of you.

JUNE

Kick-up-your-heels opera

There was a storm
Now it is over
Done
The table is set for one

One word

Forgive me