My Mother's Body (5 page)

Words plain as pancakes syruped with endearment.

Simple as potatoes, homely as cottage cheese.

Wet as onions, dry as salt.

Slow as honey, fast as seltzer,

my raisin, my sultana, my apricot love

my artichoke, furry one, my pineapple

I love you daily as milk,

I love you nightly as aromatic port.

The words trail a bitter slime like slugs,

then in the belly warm like cabbage borscht.

The words are hung out on the line,

sheets for the wind to bleach.

The words are simmering slowly

on the back burner like a good stew.

Words are the kindling in the wood stove.

Even the quilt at night is stuffed with word down.

When we are alone the walls sing

and even the cats talk but only in Yiddish.

When we are alone we make love in deeds.

And then in words. And then in food.

We tie our bodies in a lover's

knot and then gradually uncoil.

We turn and talk, the night lapping

at the sills of the casements, rising

in us like dark heavy wine.

Then we turn aside. Eskimo

crawling into private igloos,

bears retreating to distant lairs,

a leopard climbing its home tree,

we go unmated into sleep.

In sleep you fret about who a lover

untouched for years is sleeping with.

Some man with a face glimpsed once

in a crowd lies over me sweating.

Now I wear male flesh like a suit of armor.

In sleep I am speaking French again.

The Algerian War is still on.

I curse, back to the wall of the top

floor of a workers'-quarter house.

The war in Vietnam is still on.

I am carrying a memorized message

to a deserter who is hiding

in a church belfry. All night

I drive fast down back roads

with a borrowed car full of contraband.

In the morning, of what we remember,

what can we tell? In the mind

dreams flash their facets, but in words

they dim, brilliant rocks picked up

at low tide that dry to mud.

Nightly the tides of sleep enter

us in secret claret-red oceans

from whose deep slide serpents

wearing faces radiant and impure

as saints in Renaissance paintings.

Now as night pours in to fill the house

like a conch shell, we cling together,

muttered words between us, a spar

we hold to knowing that soon

we will let go, severed, to drown.

A friend from Greece

brought a tin house

on a plaque, designed

to protect our abode,

as in Greek churches

embossed legs or hearts

on display entreat aid.

I hung it but now

nail my own proper charm.

I refuse no offers of help,

at least from friends,

yet this presence

is long overdue. Mostly

we nurture our own

blessings or spoil them,

build firmly or undermine

our walls. Who are termites

but our obsessions gnawing?

Still the winds blow hard

from the cave of the sea

carrying off what they will.

Our smaller luck abides

like a worm snug in an apple

who does not comprehend

the shivering of the leaves

as the ax bites hard

in the smooth trunk.

We need all help proffered

by benign forces. Outside

we commit our beans to the earth,

the tomato plants started

in February to the care

of the rain. My little

pregnant grey cat offers

the taut bow of her belly

to the sun's hot tongue.

Saturday I watched alewives

swarm in their thousands

waiting in queues quivering

pointed against the white

rush of the torrents

to try their leaps upstream.

The gulls bald as coffin

nails stabbed them casually

conversing in shrieks, picnicking.

On its earth, this house

is oriented. We grow

from our bed rooted firmly

as an old willow into the water

of our dreams flowing deep

in the hillside. This hill

is my temple, my soul.

Malach hamoves
, angel of death

pass over, pass on.

I build stories. They own

their own shapes, their rightful

power and impetus, plot

them however I try, but always

that shape is broadly just.

I want to believe in justice

inexorable as the decay

of an isotope; I want to plot

the orbit of justice, erratic

but inevitable as a comet's return.

It is not blind chance I rail at,

the flood waters that carry off

one house and leave its neighbor

standing one foot above the high

water's swirling grasp.

It is that the good go down

not easily, not gently,

not occasionally, not by random

deviation and the topple

of mischance, but almost always.

Here is something new and true.

No, you are too different,

too raw, too spiced and gritty.

We want one like the last one.

We know how to sell that.

We want one that praises us,

we want one that puts down

the ones we squat on, no

aftertaste, no residue of fine

thought smeared on the eyes.

We want one just like all

the others, but with a designer

label and a clever logo.

We want one we saw advertised

in
The New York Times
.

Are the controls working?

Is the doorman on duty?

Is the intercom connected?

Is the monitor functioning?

Is the incinerator on?

It goes without saying:

The brie shall be perfectly

ripe, the wine shall be a second

cru Bordeaux from a decent year,

there shall be one guest

with a recent certified success

and we shall pass around plates

of grated contempt for those

who lack this much, of sugared

envy for those who have more.

For the young not facile enough

to imitate the powerful, not skilled

enough liars to pretend sucking them

is ecstasy, they erect a massive

wall, the Himalayas of exclusion.

For the old who speak too much

of pain, they have a special

Greenland of exile. Old Birnbaum.

Nobody reads her anymore.

I thought she was dead.

Once she is, and her cat

starves, she will become a growth

industry. Only kill yourself

and you can be consumed too,

an incense-proffered icon.

It is the slow mean defeat

of the good that I rail against,

the small pallid contempt of the well

placed for those who do not lack

the imaginative power to try,

the good who are warped by passion

as granite is twisted into mountains

and metamorphosed by fire into marble;

who speak too loud in vulgar tongues

because they have something to say;

who mean what they make down to their

bones; who commit the uncouth error

of feeling, of saying what they feel,

of making others feel. Their reward

is to be made to feel worthless.

Goodness is not dangerous enough.

I want goodness like a Nike armed

with the warhead of rightful anger.

I want goodness that can live on sand

and stones and wring wine from burrs,

goodness that can put forth fruit,

manured with the sewage of hatred.

The good must cultivate their anger

like fields of wheat that must feed

them, if they are ever to win.

We all wanted to go to you.

Even women who had not heard

of you, longed for you, our

cool grey mother who would

gently, carefully and slowly, using

no nurse but ministering herself,

open our thighs and our vaginas

and show us the os smiling

in the mirror like a full rising moon.

You taught us our health, our sickness

and our regimes, presiding over

the raw ends of life, a priestess eager

to initiate. Never did you tell us

we could not understand what you

understood. You made our bodies

glow transparent. You did not think

you had a license to question us

about our married state or lovers' sex.

Your language was as gentle and caring

as your hands. On the mantel

in the waiting room the clippings hung,

old battles, victories, marches.

You with your flower face, strong

in your thirties in the thirties,

were carted to prison for the crime

of prescribing birth control

for workingclass women in Lynn.

The quality of light in those quiet

rooms where we took our shoes off

before entering and the little

dog accompanied you like a familiar,

was respect: respect for life,

respect for women, respect for choice,

a mutual respect I cannot imagine

I shall feel for any other doctor,

bordering on love.

Here I am I think in Des Moines,

in Dubuque, in Moscow Idaho, in a cube of motel room

but where is my wandering luggage tonight?

Where is my bathrobe slippery as wet rock,

green as St. Patrick's Day icing?

Are my black boots keeled over under another bed?

Do my tampons streak across the night

little white rockets trailing contrails of string?

Are women in Alaska dicing for my red shoes?

Did TWA banish my suitcase to Siberia?

Where is that purple dress in which my voice

is twice as loud, with the gold belt

glittering like the money I hope to get paid,

sympathetic magic to lure checks

out of comptrollers before time molders?

I feel like an impostor, a female impersonator,

a talking laundry bag dialing head calls

to all my clothes in Port Huron, in Biloxi, in Tucson,

collect calls into the night: I'm lonely and dirty.

I'm sorry I spilled chili on you, chocolate sauce,

Elmer's Glue. I'll wear an apron at all times.

I'll never again eat tacos. O my wandering clothes,

fly through the night to me, homing pigeons

trailing draperies like baroque saints, come home.

Certain friends come in, they say

Your cats are your children.

They smile from a great height on down.

Clouds roll in around their hair.

I have real children, they mean,

while you have imitation.

My cats are not my children.

I gave Morgaine away yesterday

to a little boy she liked.

I'm not saving to send them to Harvard.

When they stay out overnight

I don't call the police.

I like the way they don't talk,

the way they do, eyes shining

or narrowed, tails bannering,

paws kneading, cats with private

lives and passions sharp as their claws,

hunters, lovers, great sulkers.

No, my children are my friends,

my lover, my dependents on whom

I depend, those few for whom

I will rise in the night to give

comfort, massage, medicine,

whose calls I always take.

My children are my books

that I gestate for years,

a slow-witted elephant

eternally pregnant, books

that I sit on for eras like the great

auk on a vast marble egg.

I raise them with loving care,

I groom and educate them,

I chastise, reward and adore.

I exercise them lean and fatten them up.

I roll them about my mind all night

and fuss over them in the mornings.

Then they march off into the world

to be misunderstood, mistreated, stolen,

to be loved for the wrong reasons,

to be fondled, beaten, lost.

Now and then I get a postcard

from Topeka Kansas, doing just fine.

People take them in and devour them.

People marry them for love.

People write me letters and tell me

how they are my children too.

I have children whose languages

rattle dumbly in my ears like gravel,

children born of the wind that blows

through me from the graves of the poor

and brave who struggled all their short

throttled lives to free people

whose faces they could not imagine.

Such are the children of my words.

Darkest chocolate, bittersweet,

the muscled power of horse's

haunches, the sleekness of a seal,

the swagger of a heavyweight

strolling to the ring:

Jim Beam works hard as overlord

hustling to rule his turf in winter

when only the great horned owl

can frighten him. But July Fourth

brings up the summer people

with their dogs, their cats,

their children, their dirt bikes,

their firecrackers. All summer

he collects scars and anger

trying to boss his ward.

He gets leaner, meaner.

He sulks and roars in baritone

O my unappreciated soul, all night.

He wants to be force-fed

love like chicken soup.

He wants love to chase him

like a panting dog,

without asking, without earning.

Jim Beam, you're indistinguishable

from half the men I've adored.

Being a cat you are lucky.

I do carry you off by force

and today you lie by the computer

on a satin pillow and eat turkey

and suffer, suffer your belly

to be scratched and endure

your chin chucked and tickled, at ease,

air conditioned while it's ninety out.

O Jim Beam, this must

be love: will you marry me?