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Excerpt

    Prayer for Jackson

Dear Lord, fire-eating custodian of my soul,

author of hemaphrodites, radishes,

and Arizona's rosy sandstone,

please protect this wet-cheeked baby

from disabling griefs. Help him sense when

to rise to his feet and make his desires known,

and when to hit the proverbial dirt. On nights

it pleases thee to keep him sleepless, summon

crickets, frogs and your chorus of nocturnal

birds so he won't conclude the earth's gone mute.

Make him astute as Egyptian labyrinths that keep

the deads' privacy inviolate. Give him his mother's

swimming ability. Make him so charismatic

that even pigeons flirt with him, in their nervous,

avian way. Grant him the clearmindedness

of a midwife who never winces when tickled.

Let him be adventurous as a menu of ox tongue hash,

lemon rind wine and pinecone Jell-O. Fill him with awe:

for the seasons, minarets' sawtoothed peaks,

the breathing of cathedrals, and all that lives--

for one radiant day or sixty pitiful years.

Bravely, he has ventured among us, disguised

as a newcomer, shedding remarkably few tears.

    To a Young Woman in a Coma

You haven't gulped down your allotted portion

of joy yet, so you must wake up. Recover,

and live to bear children--a girl and a boy--

twins who kiss in the womb and fox trot

on your bladder shortly before they're born.

Find your way back to us. Landmarks include

the lines on your mother's pierced earlobes,

jagged crags of your boyfriend's chipped tooth.

Come up from the basement. Climb those damp

plank stairs and reenter the squinty glare

of consciousness. Grip the rickety handrail.

Go slowly, past jars streaked with mushroom

dust and enriched mud from the house's bowels.

Let your name be written in orange marmalade

across the breakfast table. Reel in your soul.

Tell it to float back, through the portals

of mouth and nose, into its flesh envelope,

so you may enjoy the privileges of being

flooded with pain, inhaling rank hospital

food fumes and seeing your family's patient,

inescapable faces, too beautiful for words.

Surface, even if it feels like you're crashing

through a plate glass window. There's too much

left undone. We can still smell the out-of-doors

all over you: daffodil bulbs, rye bread

and cider. So wiggle your toes. Groan.

Open those gunky eyes. You need to grow older,

have those babies, try to describe what

the other side was like, go ice skating.

    Nearby

When the spiritual axe fell, did you wake up inside The White Orchard ,

that snowy van Gogh we both admired? Are you lost in his chilly

idyllic painting, under skies filled with white dots he smeared in

with his thumbs? How dare you. How dare you die. Now you

express an absolute restfulness. A sober way of existing, unlike mine.

A shot of tequila gleams on the table. Its vinegarish drip

gilds my innards--that's my report from the salt mine

of the senses tonight. You're supposed to be a ghost now, living on

in shipwrecked tatters like a shredded sailboat sail; sans dirty linen,

gritty winds, and the bane of shaving every day, which you hated.

Once you began to lose your mind, you wisely refused to shave

or be shaved. You put up surprisingly big fights, and I found

myself glad to see you so vehemently defying your keepers,

including me, as I chased you around with a red and white striped

can of shaving cream. Not that you could run much by then. So.

You've had a fortnight's silence. An autumnal lull. Sat out a break

between quarters in the cosmic basketball game. Come back

as a crawfish, a leek, a handful of gravel hens ingest to use as teeth,

a fake preacher who can't control his wolfish streak. I don't care

what you wear. But come back soon. Not seeking revenge

or relief, to which you're mightily entitled, but to meet your new

darkhaired niece and answer a few routine questions.

    The Bear-Boy of Lithuania

Girls, take my advice, marry an animal. A wooly one is most consoling. Find a fur man, born midwinter. Reared in the mountains. Fond of boxing. Make sure he has black rubbery lips, and a sticky sweet mouth. A winter sleeper. Pick one who likes to tussle, who clowns around the kitchen, juggles hot baked potatoes, gnaws playfully on a corner of your apron. Not one mocked by his lumbering instincts, or who's forever wrestling with himself, tainted with shame, itchy with chagrin, but a good-tempered beast who plunges in greedily, grinning and roaring. His backslapping manner makes him popular with the neighbors, till he digs up and eats their Dutch tulip bulbs. Then you see just how stuffy human beings can be. On Sundays his buddies come over to play watermelon football. When they finally get tired, they collapse on heaps of dried grass and leaves, scratching themselves elaborately, while I hand out big hunks of honeycomb. They've no problem swallowing dead bees stuck in the honey.

A bear-boy likes to stretch out on the floor and be roughly brushed with a broom. Never tease him about his small tail, which is much like a chipmunk's. If you do, he'll withdraw to the hollow of some tree, as my husband has done whenever offended since he first left the broad-leafed woodlands to live in this city, which is so difficult for him. Let him be happy in his own way: filling the bathtub with huckleberries, or packing dark, earthwormy dirt under the sofa. Don't mention the clawmarks on the refrigerator. (You know he can't retract them.) Nothing pleases him more than a violent change in climate, especially if it snows while he's asleep and he wakes to find the landscape blanketed. Then his teeth chatter with delight. He stamps and paws the air for joy. Exuberance is a bear's inheritance. He likes northern light. Excuse me, please. His bellow summons me.

Let me start again. True, his speech is shaggy music. But by such gruff instruction, I come to know love. It's difficult to hear the story of his forest years with dry eyes. He always snuffs damply at my hand before kissing it. My fingers tingle at the thought of that sensitive, mobile nose. You've no idea how long his tongue is. At night, I get into bed, pajama pockets full of walnuts. He rides me around the garden in the wheelbarrow now that I'm getting heavy with his cubs. I hope our sons will be much like their father, but not suffer so much discomfort wearing shoes.

    The Naturalist's Wife

He was a stricken puritan when we met,

a bit of prude and a clod. I saw his snapshot

in the family album, as a kid, grinning,

the skeleton of a prehistoric horse sprawled

at his feet. He had a condor egg in each hand,

and he held them, even at age ten, as though

they were the breasts of his beloved. Why

this picture made me mad to have his hands

on me is anybody's guess. He looked a bit like

a newly hatched cuckoo, with his funny jutting

tufts of hair. After he became famous,

on his birthday each year, a Swiss rabbit fancier

would send him a crate of rare hares. The first

time he kissed me he prefaced the peck

by wondering aloud: "Now, how many bees

have visited this little flower?" I twisted the sprig

of mistletoe he'd given me and whispered

under my breath, "Far too few." I did resent

some of the sights I was later privy to--

such as his sketches of a dead elephant's

stomach contents. During the third or fourth

year of our marriage a strange revolution

took place, and for a while, the government

of his tongue was overthrown. That was hard

to bear. Our sixth-born son (the co-discoverer

of oxygen and of a breed of green lizards

who pose for photographs when the weather

turns warm) journeyed far and wide,

like his father, slept in fossil beds,

adapted to dark caverns and practiced oratory

at the seashore. But he wrote me each week,

homesick for the whistle of my dented copper

kettle and the reek of my heartsease tea. Who

stands the chance of living the longest? The unhappy

salamander pinched in the heron's big, tweezery

beak is offended by the question, which I

therefore withdraw. My husband willed his library

to an untaught wildman from the woods.

It included a volume of essays about dew,

a monograph on what clings to the feet

of migratory birds and the autobiography

of a squid named William. My husband,

fingers sticky with pinfeathers and speckled

with ink stains, has been dead these ten years.

When we are reunited, in heaven, or purgatory,

or at some bird sanctuary, or on an overgrown riverbank

(I really don't care where), I know he'll still

be obsessed with finding out why different varieties

of gooseberries vary in hairiness. Hand in hand,

we'll perch on a low branch and watch a tree full

of weasels hissing and showing their teeth.

    Yom Kippur in Utah

Come sit in the absolving shade of a plane tree

and contemplate the forgiveness you crave.

Lists of sins you committed during the past year

are whispered back into existence. They sift

into consciousness, surprised at all the attention

they're getting, shy as mice and houseflies

who find themselves canonized. You haven't

done enough for anyone you love. You've

neglected your parents. You spend eons sleeping.

You're envious of everyone--your silent

father, puttering around in the garage,

assembling ships in bottles, his beard

white as a christening gown. Even the squeaky

front door makes you want to trade places:

it opens and closes so easily. Now, out of nowhere,

it's snowing. Broken white lines slant across

your visual field. Sloppy, sleety blobs splat

on shake roofs, streak the smoke-darkened

brickwork of Victorian homes that rule

this part of town, just south of the graveyard.

Long, grassy and partly unfenced, the cemetery's

arranged by faiths. Jewish section, Catholic area,

the Christian hills--all with separate entrances.

Each plot boasts its own address. Pink

or dark marble stones decorated with roses,

praying hands, crosses or stars (a young boy's

marker is chiseled with dinosaurs) preserve

curious names like Wilfred, Adeline, Barnett--

solid citizens who knew the virtue of eating

three big home-cooked meals each day.

These upright neighbors' titles belong

on granite slabs, in pretty typefaces

with lilting flourishes at the ends of letters. Be

positive and philosophical when confronted

with pain, they say. Sleep in Jesus. Sleep

in belief. The Mormons here can convert you

even after you've passed away. That's how much

they care about your salvation. Did the past,

that greased but creaky machine, hum along

to a more complex rhyme scheme than ours?

Were its griefs worthier, more ornate,

better attended? Were our dead elders

read to sleep more completely? Were they

better versed--supplied with richer texts

mourners felt embedded in as they sipped

home-brewed oblivion at wakes? Or were

our forebears' sufferings just as blunted,

obscured by the billowing scrims of religion

and tight-lipped denial, their spirits struck dumb,

cinched in by belts, girdles and trusses? The snow

downgrades to rain. It pinstripes the glittery

windows. There's a bright line in the latest MRI

of your brother's skull. Is that some kind of shining

path too? He's on his way to the Cayman Islands

to go diving. Fish hang in the clear water, festive

as Christmas ornaments: crimson and gold, orange

and lime green. Puffers, rockfish and rays wait

as he struggles into his wet suit to enter their element.

And what on earth are you doing in Utah, so far

from your duty, where it's believed dead spinsters

and stillborn infants wed in heaven? Here below,

in the realms of honey and mud, steeples snag

the sky. The air smells serious and holy as a felon

or a church elder wearing Dad's brand of aftershave--

a bracing, South Sea island scent favored by

that kind-eyed, grizzled man who sired you,

who likes to eat sauerkraut with tiny meatballs,

whom you love along unseeable frequencies

as he wipes his mouth with a white napkin

and urges you to confess everything.

    The Story of Toasted Cheese

    Toasted cheese hath no master.

--a proverb

Toasted cheese hath no master.

Streams of priests running

from pink bungalows faster

and faster were seen reading

The Fronds of God ,

prophesying disaster.

Indoors, toddlers munched crumbs

of ancient wall plaster.

You slapped her for calling Dad

a "majestic bastard"?

At the mouth of a sacred cave,

kneeling in gravel, he asked her.

The ostrich race will take place

in that picturesque cow pasture.

Will you have the oysters Rockefeller

now to begin your repast, sir?

Her premonition consisted

of "seeing" her dear sister

romanced by a sandblaster.

Monique loved the rough, comforting

hum of that scruffy black cat's purr.

The botanist finally recognized

(tears filling her overworked eyes)

a rare, blue, Chinese aster.

    A Nautical Tale

Her jailer and her tailor posted bail.

But a sailor stole the mailer

containing the ill-fated payment

from the safe in the bondsman's trailer,

tripping over a low railing

around the trailer park's carp pond

as he made his hasty escape.

His shipmates always joked

that the old salt had an ocean-soaked

peach pit for brains, or maybe a caper,

and that this short shrift upstairs

(which untold cruel years at sea

worsens rather than repairs)

accounted for his twisted, driftwood-gray

malaise as well as his famous lack

of restraint. Lifting her skirts

and her bail, he kidnapped the burglaress

in question, leaving a trail

of barnacle shells and tattered writs.

On board, the crew, drunk and groping

for their wits, heard her salivate

under her gag, as the whaler breasted

choppy waters. Finally he untied her,

amidships, seized her by the hips

and roughly kissed her peppery lips,

while the cabin boy (also a kidnap victim),

screamed repeatedly, "Y'all better call me

Mister!" Weeks later, by the time

they'd reached the island chain,

the female thief was frailer,

and those nail holes in the cabin boy's hands

and feet had healed into typical blisters.

    Loss

The world cowers and draws away from you.

Lisping rivers whisper watery rumors,

like Your dad's in jail, but he'll be back

for Christmas, armed to the teeth.

A friend finds himself suffering

unbearable facial pain. Another man

you admire was warned by his team of MDs

that any attempt at sex could cause

a massive heart attack. The bird perched

on this drainpipe gargles his song

so rustily he seems to be a pip-squeak

machine--feathers fake, gizzard full

of tiny gears. You can still smell

the brimstone from last night's

refinery fire on the streets this morning.

Sadness inhabits your every cell.

It erupts from pores, your new perfume.

The brave few who draw close to you

are treated to a quick whiff:

part eau de regret, part ruined brewery.

Half the planet away, a volcano's

spitting up rocks big as trucks,

then vomiting columns of water

from the lake that's been stuck

down its throat since it was formed.

Maybe you can relate to the volcano's pain.

I'd like to erect a monument

to all loves lost to me. Building

materials would be blocks of lava,

and things that start with the letter "G"--

gunnysacks, glassworms and gingersnaps,

for instance, plus dozens of bottles

of grappa Dad left moldering

in the basement when he lit out

for a crime spree. I'd also decorate

my memorial with these green gems

he hid behind the false wall in his closet,

in that trunk covered with obscene graffiti.

Oh, he'll never come home.

Thank goodness it rains occasionally,

or there'd be no hope of breeze,

pardon, relief. Everything's dripping ...

and a milliliter of comfort's wrung

from each plink of water into more water,

like coins jingling in the pockets

of the bodiless, who no longer need them.

    An Attempt at Solace

Thin ribbons of fear snake bluely through you like a system of rivers.

We need a cloudburst or soothing landscape fast, to still this panic.

Maybe a field of dracaena, or a vast stand of sugar pines--generous,

gum-yielding trees--to fill our minds with vegetable wonder and

keep dread at bay. Each night before we sleep, grazing animals file

soundlessly by us, with kind looks in their eyes. Their calm, accepting

expressions crowd out darker images that buzz and swarm as if our pillowed

heads were beehives.

Even the monks I studied were in sore need of comfort. They considered

themselves inmates, bit their sooty fingernails to the quick. I often

caught them sobbing at dusk, terrified of each sunset's accompaniment,

an adverse fate they heard oompah-ing up over the horizon like infernal

tuba music.

Everyone we love's under constant threat. A blood-smeared boat's

anchored in the Gulf of Mexico, motor still running. The virus decimates

our ranks unchecked. Its victims must choose between madness

and blindness. The aged, whose natural heat begins to fail them, flail

and rave, uncomforted. Physicians continue to nod off during surgeries.

Flies zoom through sickrooms, loud as prop planes.

It's not raining regular rain. These droplets are greasy, and they burn.

All the frogs are long gone. Are we just paper dolls or pencil sketches to

our maker, to be snipped apart or painted away at whim? We fell asleep

last night in each other's arms. This morning we wake in a strangely

decorated classroom. Sitting erect at uncomfortable desks, restless as

wild guinea pigs, we see our would-be teacher swallow pill after pill

made of dried, ground-up spiders.

    Scorched Cinderella

This sooty beauty can't yet shed light.

But soon she'll exude a myopic glow

even our cynical paperboy won't be immune to.

Her little hands are cold as Saturn.

She has the accusing eyes of some dying

feline. Her unfettered mind grinds like

a sawmill, or it tinkles like chandeliers

breezes are fingering. She ignites

ne'er-do-wells and solid citizens

alike. She demanded we tattoo an axe

and a skull on her pelvic girdle:

guideposts for explorers hoping to plant

their flags in her lost continent.

Her hair's a forest of totem poles.

Her feet, scentless orchids, cherish

their seclusion in the twin greenhouses

of her heavy corrective shoes. She dines

on hawk wings, beets and unspeakable

custards. How can any of us, daughters

of our mother's disastrous first marriage,

hope to land husbands with her around?

We suffer by comparison with every tick

of the clock. Some say that next to her

we're like stray dogs who scavenge grass

all winter, or quick lizards skittering

along pantry shelves behind dusty pickle

jars. We've locked our sister up, covered

her with tiny cuts. She insists she likes

her hair better since we singed it.

She says people are whispering inside

the air conditioner. It's getting harder

to slap her awake every day to face

the purer girl we're scouring her down to,

but she's still worth a detour,

if you happen to be passing through.