TANYA KERN |
I RECONSTRUCT DESIRE Both nights he comes to me I'm bleeding, complete in my lost country. Underwater sun, its occult flower on fire, the place no one can claim. I still want him inside me. This time he says he's met someone. His eyes make a mirror I fall into deeper than the hurt place in my belly. There I am, reflected. he's here to fuck me, says he can't decide. I want to get fucked, put my hand inside his pants, find no need for persuasion. for now I hold him; now, for fun, for where he puts his mouth. I don't tell him I am bleeding. I won't say his name. Before he leaves he lays entire along my body, outs his mouth on mine. I lock the door behind him. I don't say I love him. I won't ask him to come back. He will come, my blood between us. |
OTHER Imagine the mother. She searches for a daughter made to marry, forced down the long orchard to the well. No child in a white dress. Her mouth goes blind, stitches the web of evening in distress. She doesn't see the new tree, one arm outstretched. Or the tree is the mother. Too many children, a hard man. She looks for a mushroom, the certain kind. Finds one, picks off the dots and stops to watch the deer. Puts one finger to her lip and turns to wood, one arm an outstretched bough. Rooted in her time she crosses centuries to pose against my autumn night. Yes. These are her children grown and buried just beyond. How I can tell she was a woman: lightning laid her face bare. Bark striated hair. The trunk shattered and clefted marks her woman. Wounded. No. She was a native girl or somehow wild dreaming open-mouthed, fingers outstretched collecting camas bulbs for winter starch. She wants to live with animals, flaunts her impure chastity against the earth; decades march across my century. One woman's life bound in sap rings. Clay-green. A root. A home. Seed in this field of risen stone. Living open. Rough enough. |
THE BOUNDARIES OF LONGING The two walk down the road. There is almost rain and many crows. The narrow road is edged by ditches, the couple laughing and not looking. A car passes fast and close. One of them walks in the ditch laughing. Does it matter who walks off the edged grass? This is where the poem starts, the other standing in the road making a story. She has to have the crows in it and flowers, wonders if it works to leave him in the ditch. The crows want in the poem but what really happens? The couple walk between the car and ditch down to the sea, her telling what the natives say: crows are spirits, dead ancestors. Nothing happens except rain, their naming birds and flowers for each other: pussy willow, cormorant. the road ends at the walled garden, old and orderly run wild. When the air warms she will come and swim with him where currents fluctuate. She can't say how she knows this but what if the crows are still trying to write a poem? Take two people laughing, one walks in the ditch, the other falls or climbs in too. The crows can't tell if the circles their feet stir in mud and water are struggle or their leaning on each other, their progress to the road crowded by blossom. Cherry blossom, petals pink. Water the only other witness. The water separates from mud and trouble, finds one clear stream down to the sea. The crows lift wing upon black wing across the sky. |
THE RETARDED GIRL Girls wore loose flowery dresses then with all those buttons up the back. The school was brick long iron fire escapes climbed three stories high. We skipped, rolled marbles, called red rover. A little girl lived beside the Catholic Church across a bridge and hill. She wore striped grubby dresses without underwear and smelled like pee and sour powdered milk. When she came back from lunch she smelled like beer and giggled when she climbed the fire escape. Then we played the other game; under black iron boys crowded looking up her fat bare legs. Girls around the edges. Looking up. Pretending not to. |