fasten myself
to the touch of the flower.
So what if the milky rims of my wings
no longer stupefied
the sky? If I could
bind myself to this moment, to the slow
snare of its scent,
what would it matter if I became
just the flutter of page
in a text someone turns
to examine me
in the wrong color?
Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle
Are you sure this blue is the same as the
blue over there? This wall’s like the
bottom of a pool, its
color I mean. I need a
darker two-piece this summer, the kind with
elastic at the waist so it actually
fits. I can’t
find her hands. Where does this gold
go? It’s like the angel’s giving
her a little piece of honeycomb to eat.
I don’t see why God doesn’t
just come down and
kiss her himself. This is the red of that
lipstick we saw at the
mall. This piece of her
neck could fit into the light part
of the sky. I think this is a
piece of water. What kind of
queen? You mean
right here? And are we supposed to believe
she can suddenly
talk angel? Who thought this stuff
up? I wish I had a
velvet bikini. That flower’s the color of the
veins in my grandmother’s hands. I
wish we could
walk into that garden and pick an
X-ray to float on.
Yeah. I do too. I’d say a
zillion yeses to anyone for that.
Invitation
If I can believe in air, I can believe
in the angels of air.
Angels, come breathe with me.
Angel of abortion, angel of alchemy,
angels of barrenness and bliss,
exhale closer. Let me feel
your breath on my teeth—
I call to you, angels of embryos,
earthquakes, you of forgetfulness—
Angels of infection, cover my mouth
and nose with your mouth.
Failed inventions, tilt my head back.
Angels of prostitution and rain,
you of sheerness and sorrow,
you who take nothing,
breathe into me.
You who have cleansed your lips
with fire, I do not need to know
your faces, I do not need you
to have faces.
Angels of water insects, let me sleep
to the sound of your breathing.
You without lungs, make my chest rise—
Without you my air tastes
like nothing. For you
I hold my breath.
Entrances and Exits
In the late afternoon, my friend’s daughter walks into my office looking for snacks. She opens the bottom file drawer to take out a bag of rice cakes and a blue carton of rice milk that comes with its own straw. I have been looking at a book of paintings by Duccio. Olivia eats. Bits of puffed rice fall to the carpet.
A few hours ago, the 76-year-old woman, missing for two weeks in the wilderness, was found alive at the bottom of a canyon. The men who found her credit ravens. They noticed ravens circling—
Duccio’s Annunciation sits open on my desk. The slender angel (dark, green-tipped wings folded behind him) reaches his right hand towards the girl; a vase of lilies sits behind them. But the white dots above the vase don’t look like lilies. They look like the bits of puffed rice scattered under my desk. They look like the white fleck at the top of the painting that means both spirit and bird.
Olivia, who is six, picks up the wooden kaleidoscope from my desk and, holding it to her eye, turns it to watch the patterns honeycomb, the colors tumble and change—
Today is the 6 th of September. In six days, Russia will hold a day of conception: couples will be given time off from work to procreate, and those who give birth on Russia’s national day will receive money, cars, refrigerators, and other prizes.
A six-hour drive from where I sit, deep in the Wallowa Mountains, the woman spent at least six days drifting in and out of consciousness, listening to the swellings of wind, the howls of coyotes, the shaggy-throated ravens—
I turn on the radio. Because he died this morning, Pavarotti’s immoderate, unnatural Cs ring out. He said that, singing these notes, he was seized by an animal sensation so intense he would almost lose consciousness.
Duccio’s subject is God’s entrance into time: time meaning history, meaning a
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