Cadralor Issue 3

1. as if she skims on a swan her lithe arms
wave towards the passing cars —camping headlight
nausea yellow on her head—shopping cart empty
lavender blouse tracing each sweep

2. a woman tends a shrine of too-red roses
and metallic heart balloons on the side of talbot road
the traffic does not break her deliberate breathlessness
as her tender hands place hollow membranes into earth

3. cinder and histamine bulge in her lip
my daughter swallows the blood-colored benadryl
to keep the flood from churning down her trachea
her eyes well with clear dark milk

4. the spines of the rocking chair separate
like teeth on threads oak sternum nearly slips off ribs
but we trust and settle into this daily breaking—
lulling with down-eyed songs to this kicking bird

5. this night i hear a persimmon flush of laughter
outside lifting magenta and thyme into the dark—wait—
are they weeping? a pause like a grey egg cracks
in a shriek—another cry another laugh skips
like silk down the jeweled street

1. A glass eye. We begin with vision,
the lack thereof. Eye of the beholder
frozen mid-air, weak winter sun a dim
consolation. Your mother will recognize
you. Not intact, but mostly undetected.

2. A feather. Although plucked, the bird
at hand is better than the promise of
the butcher’s son – now dead. Therefore,
we marry our cousin, the shape of him
in a wheeled chair. When the war is over –

3. A postcard. When the war is over,
men will pursue the making of a family.
Repopulate, filling our cannons in advance.
Words of longing, words of ache, words
of where have my friends gone – burn them.

4. A rosary. This one was useful – winter
lasted us four years. Many a dead, many
a dead, but my cousin. He will no longer
farm, but receive a pension. His one eye
drowns, his mouth a slow supplication.

5. What is missing? There is a space
in between things, and it: where God
resides. Not in the black of words, around.
Not in the dust of things, the kept, the
remembered. If we were birds, perhaps.

1. Lost Hill, Chimney Rock

The pinnacles of Niangua & the lonely hill, sacred land
slimed algal, from the green, the gray water-shampoo of condo,
greasy slick from the strip slalomed in a wake, piranha & pacu
drift their displaced sadness, chattering teeth. A tug on the foot, dragged from the beach,
held until still. Backflips that never come up, caught in snag-line.
Seek the level, address predictable history, the repeating meanness & duplicity.
Original peoples ousted beyond the borders statehood ratified,
natural landmarks backflooded to the bowsprit to deprive memorial memory,
erase place. J’accuse. A hazard for pilots sloshed in the Corps flood,
oblivious to beacons shooting fire in the night, the unveering course into hazard.

2. Sour Cream

Tommy had a personal interest. Grandpa was a dairy chemist, loved buttermilk,
& most of all, sour cream. It was to be canceled– too much bacteria for that line,
the use in other products would be to greater margin– industry’s golden rule.
For days he worked, sure he could find a way, adjusting ratio & temperature.
Called in by his boss, told tomorrow morning’s the stop order.
Grandpa worked through the night, the secretary found him asleep at his desk,
a formula in front of him. The boss took the credit, the industry award, the bonus.
Company changed hands right before Tommy was to retire, clear the office
by the end of the day, with a severance pittance, & retirement reduced to nil
after forty years of service, his career after the war, when he was a Seabee, on Leyte.

3. Tracks

Land of the dead-man walking. The transverse trail of blue gem powder
at Babyhead Road, a point of hauling peaches to Georgia, reason for the neck-bone
turned to stone in Antelope Creek, under the uplifted Pennsylvanian crest of stars.
Inside the barbed wires of railroad easement native plants, from the sure obliteration
of hooves, seem to cower. Their protector a ribbon of hope so narrow, among cinders
they bloom against the ties until the spray of poison burns them under.
Few eyes among the brightening nights on the lane of the bully.
Clue, misdirection, waymark of emblem, when a moment of accountability
should present a mark, none can be found. Time traces now. Mighty rivers
a turkey’s foot formed, a continental stamp, the trident print to the proto-sea.

4. Reprieve

when he wrecks his yacht drunkenly into one of the big docks & blows
before the robe he interrupts bold as gold        where do you play golf your honor
attorneys pause in their cells
at recess        my chambers        we’ll further discuss
       don’t have time you see        running companies        know how it is
       what’s it gonna cost to make it all go away        I’ll hire a captain
       we’ll pick you up        go to one of my restaurants
& the headache went away for him & the day was beautiful on the lake
with a taut line in one of his many slips disappearing into green in surround-sound
chained & secure against the public in a close-shaved haven of amaranth bourbon

5. Drive-In

a silver screen is away in the desert an anodyne hour
on the rim of Arizona riders asleep not you at the wheel
too long not to have drawn near as within your suggestion
it looms presto over the highway fills the sky in a glowing softness
with a red spark wavering lower right
streaming red rises to the upper left
bursts a shower of rainbow light within the space
& the whole frame whisks upward away in tremendous speed
without sound into the seeming panicle of stars
or what is the word of an honest carver fine father

1.

March hutch at PUBLIX—sparrow nests, the L and I packed with life,
chicks hatched-out behind the warm neon P, lime-green as new leaves
longer days will soon shift in hue, blur sodium vapor lamps,
crimp twigs stuffing U and B, shoo shadows cast by scattered carts.
Feeling like an X, I collar up, pocket change, move along.

2.

Spring Break—along the Interstate, Santas headed north for miles,
seasonal migration in red plush shirtsleeves, soiled tails untucked,
their cotton beards no longer Yuletide kempt, pushing stolen carts
from supermarket lots, their personal loads in plastic sacks,
no toys. I honk. An Old Nick walking backwards flips me the bird.

3.

Puzzled by sex, I first heard the din in 1956,
17-year cicadas, the Northern Illinois brood.
How loud these teen-age insects. Unbelievable their long lives
underground. So ugly their brittle exoskeletons shed
on porch screens. Gorgeous their prismatic wings and huge doleful eyes.

4.

More than she really seems due to settled contents box top says.
Big mistake. Should read Because of but sneaky snackers don’t like
cause and content on same the cracker. Keep It Up, gal, meaning
keep it down, way down within—It, another goof, refusal
to gender hunger child due to arrive, cheesy parts bit off.

5.

Spoils from the dumpster park left behind, I, my own gift, age out
to that lovely place beneath the boughs sweet with occasioned joys—
twinkle, bird chirp, insect noise—and lids, lotto tickets, needles.
Ah, flattery—dreams of sugarplums and reindeer tapping hooves
on housetops without roofs or Fat Man chimneys or tap-tap hope.

1. A little cloud looming from nowhere
   Hanging above the whole morning
   Like a bold bloated butterfly
   Trying to take a proper posture
   As if to kiss all the wild flowers
   In a suspended field

2. In the depth of my heart rain has
   Formed a pool, whose water becomes
   Crystal clear when the wind holds itself
   In meditation, but muddy whenever
   A storm rises above the horizon
   Of a lost passionland, once again

3. Add just a couple rays of starlight
   To the cocktail, & the drink will be
   Tasteful all the more to the soul
   As you sip from your dimmest but
   Fondest memories of first love
   Stored in a forgotten closet of heart

4. Throw your youthful inspirations
   Far up into the resin of a tall pine tree
   On the hilltop, & it will be preserved
   There & become an amber until the rock
   Under the tree is hit hard by another one
   To produce a spark burning the forest

5. Once one of its wings pruned like
   A bonsai branch, the swan can never again
   Migrate to the land of freedom, while
   Kite can always fly high up against a wind
   Even if without wings, yet always
   Held tightly in a human hand

1. Laocoön

You were told about your mouth         The horse has holy will
Proscribed light unbidden prophet     Tell your sons– do tell them the price
for your proud spear                             of poorly-handled knowledge
Short-lived        in the weave of grasses        rich color        spent leaves
to blend & warn at once        shy        fragile as a pinky        the eye of the pit
does not embark        I used to wonder        what would it be like
to work in a garden        of danger        There was no nub        of shoulder
in my path        his was the illumined face        of a cloud        anguished
in a pareidolian desert        godless of meaning        please
make your own story        good ophidian        tasting the air       unbound

2. Outlaw

Horace is James, I am Younger, through our mothers. Kicks me in the face
with his boot when I’m five & he is three. We make mud pies. Hellions.
Hunt morels each spring & he brings up the loot, his inkling, as to where
in the hills it could be hid. I take Horace out of one city, to Texas, Tennessee,
wherever, long as I lead & do the driving. We are young men in D.C.,
on the flying walks of the Holocaust Museum, through rooms of shoes, spectacles,
gold, among boxcars. We don’t survive, children. He enjoys most the night walks
past the house in Tacoma Park, the conga-bongo rhythm with all the windows dark.
Trucked end of country home-trails, the hooded shape of Horace stays behind smudged glass
in the cab, lonely as the sport of my adventure, the elusive tammer of our treasure.

3. Fox

The flock roamed content with yard forays
on the edge. Nine years it took with no cattle
for the understory to pull close, the ant lion, tiger beetle,
the woolly bear. Then came a string of feathers, & another.
Strung a pen, looks like a hairnet, for the hens & their rooster,
& they don’t much like it. The second morning on an early round
a silver vixen stepped in my path, dark pawed, & hunger-chinned.
How I want to build a small table, array with cheese, grape, charcuterie,
unroll two rattan mats, I see the mythic vale. Said not to be wise, to appease
the wild. The vinous surfeit I’d give, for a quip from Vulpes vulpes.

4. Terra Preta

Thought he made it up, floating the Amazon of 1542, the journal of Orellana,
his elaborate account in drawings & descriptions of an El Dorado, vast towns
of untold wealth, a populous empire. Vanished, a decade later
& on for centuries a mystery, the fiction to lead investors nowhere,
a few widely-scattered tribes, the tapping fingers of rain on the leaves.
Farmers of the forest-fringe, however, knew of mounds of rich, dark earth,
the best soil to be found anywhere, for a hike behind the liana.
The eyes of the sky scan the lines of roads, now, as science delves the dirt.
Blacker than coffee grounds, a flourish under the eyepiece an objective miracle,
ten thousand years actively replenishing, cornucopia of the anthropogenic infinity machine.

5. Adagio

Unknown in diminution, going nameless the lot. Beatific plenitudes
we can’t always be. Dazzle in the dark marine, a seamount of the coelacanth,
devotee to vaulted volcanic niche, where in eonic upheavals
lobes do not dream of hands, the wash of gill bones are satisfied
to pulse, levitate the blurred ribbon of thermocline as islands dive,
orogenies of mountain burnish to sand. Hear the pluvial patter of centuries,
thunder of Krakatoas & Tunguskas, cleft of landmass, seismic atolls.
To rise for twilight, to descend with glow, yawn in the tropical shade,
a community of the solitary their lasting choice outlasts. What angel order
spins the star wheel of anonymous oceans, notes to bless the largesse of a clade?

1.
The blue of the truck the same blue
as hydrangeas growing by the road.
2.
All my life climbing in windows
instead of through doors.
3.
A woman sits on a bench in the rain
with her patient yellow dog.
4.
It’s a myth that owls can’t see the color
blue. I wanted it to be true but, no.
5.
Fingers of light hold the lawn in place else
we’d rise like strange insects into the hum.

1.
I know when to let people in and how far,
the way the oldest houses in town
built protocol into
all their different entry doors.

2.
The bird trapped in the attic smells outside air
blowing in through the chinks in the eaves.
Maybe she sips rainwater drips
through pinpoint holes in rotted roofing.

3.
When forest wind blows through
holes bored through fat mushroom
stalks by some beetle,
does it breathe a kind of song?

4.
Each spring starlings return to the outside
flapper of our dryer vent to pick lint
for nesting. I can’t warn them
what will happen when pouring rain comes.

5.
Like everything else around here,
instead of letting someone else break
my heart the wrong way,
I just do it my damn self.

1. Don’t praise the day before sunset.
––A Polish saying.

But what about the choir of crows warming up
at 5 a.m.? They deserve praise and so do parents
falling out of bed bone-sore, spilling lives
in factories and cubicles. And so do kids
trekking to school with homework almost done.
And so do teachers raising shades in a child’s eyes.

2. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—
waiting for a gift from the sea.
―Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Evening fog softens an angry reef of clouds.
Pretentious crows scavenge torn crab claws,
dead starfish, and mussel shells on the messy shore.
A single gull reflects on a wave-made pool.
You head home in your sand-scattered shoes
with one impressive oyster shell to paint words on.

3. Summer afternoon … to me those have always been
the two most beautiful words in the English language.
––Henry James

The dusty baseball field vanishes beneath
a circus tent, crews of clowns/jugglers/acrobats,
smells of generators’ exhaust and animal heat.
Trade-off: August games for kettle corn
and tickets to cheap seats to watch
the practiced surety of tightrope and trapeze.

4. The ear is the only true writer …
––Robert Frost

When eyes turn down, ears tune up:
sirens, horns, quibblings on the street;
hallway voices ignoring “Quiet Please”
when they pass the hospice door.
The last words he whispers: a request
you record the soundprint of his final sigh.

5. I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now.
One does, I think, as one gets older.
––Virginia Woolf

Too soon, the calendar says, for bleeding hearts
and daffodils, crocuses and squills. Yet here
they are risking late frost to illuminate
your eighth decade. You praise them for proving
death’s impermanence and tell the brisk blue sky:
Never too late old, never too soon wise.

1.   Indian Cove, Joshua Tree National Park, California
patterned in rust, darkness and light
mimicking the boulder field in refuge from raptor eyes
a chuckwalla lies in heavy-set leathery toughness
cobbled together from Creation’s leavings
permeated by sunlight
he cocks his broad head quizzically
in my direction but discerns no danger
from the two-legged anachronisms passing close by
thin-skinned aliens reeking of sunscreen
he will not relinquish his borrowed heat without cause

2.   In the Shadow of Kit Carson Peak, Crestone, Colorado
executing a jittery dance across tattered prayer flags
wind slowly shreds mountains into unforgiving heaps of sand
too soft to attain the swagger of their former height
imitating the thrust of the Sangre de Cristos
men have built spirals here to corkscrew into Heaven
and stupas to enshrine and embrace the dead
we lie like vagrants in a borrowed house
sudden summer snow accentuates the peak’s jagged beauty
camouflaged yet exposed amongst indifferent rock
a young hiker freezes to death alone on the slope

3.   Twenty-Nine Palms, California
in the desert spring afternoons hint at summer’s heat
accepting nature’s proposition we drowse beneath hanging leaves of eucalyptus
smooth, white trunks rising like sculpted legs into the sky
plump Gambel’s quail court on the neighbor’s rooftop
as the mountains rise in unseeing watch over fragile, dusty earth
electric pink bracts, paper-thin and exuberant erupt into glorious blaze
mesmerizing the eye with disbelief that these exotic dancers
are only colored leaves masquerading as flowers in attempt to protect
unassuming blossoms, small and white like the bird’s egg
lying hidden in a nest deep within this thorny bougainvillea

4.   Outside an Immigrant Detention Facility for Teenagers, Houston, Texas
inner-city summer smells of sweat and asphalt with a tinge of urine
possibility translates into amoebic movement surging and
retracting as those at the edges jostle to see or be seen, to take action
or merely breathe in this close-packed crowd
a dozen people spill into the street and the mounted police yell
from wide-eyed horses who cannot get too close
fatherless and motherless the outsiders become insiders and remain concealed
car horns, chanting and raised voices penetrate those unremarkable walls
we are so near to one another and yet so far apart that no one,
inside or outside, can be sure if these are shouts of support or battle cries

5.   Boyd’s Sanatorium, Dripping Springs Natural Area, Las Cruces, New Mexico
a gravel track turns away from town and crawls onto the mountain’s flank
where the spring teases with a hesitant wetness
a defunct dining hall juts out on piers, an outhouse squats along the trail
persistence is a shadow staring from fenced windows
panting, stopping on the mountainside to die the numberless dusty deaths
of those cast out to make room for the latest unhealables
high above an eagle glides on a thermal
his cry a knife blade drawn against the sky
exhilaration resonating against the mountain
dying away untranslated into memory

1.
Our house here is a cuckoo clock of wrens
all day, they swoop out from under the eaves
chirp-barking at us to stay away
they have buds in their beaks
shoestring & bits of hay
things scavenged to build a natty nest
just like our own cuckoo clock chalet.

2.
Just read that a man in Nigeria has discovered
a diamond the size of my fist
the photo in the paper showed his dirty hands
       scarred from all that hunting
holding the diamond as if a poisonous snake
a rattler disguised as shiny object
a shiny object composed of carbon & so much venom.

3.
When Grandma lost her wedding ring on Christmas Eve
and then spotted it again on Christmas day
she called it “The Christmas Miracle!”
as if Jesus had something to do with the ring
slipping off her finger while sipping a martini
and then placing the ring on a thread
of shag carpet right beneath her feet.

4.
Walking the shore, scouting for berries
we stumbled upon an entire cow carcass
embedded in the riverbank. The bones
showed glossy white, while moss grew
out of its jaw; a macabre green tongue
sticking out at us, mocking us for staring.
That cow. It startled us so.

5.
I only found the “Alleluia egg” once
dyed by my father to be the color of Christ’s blood
with my basket teasing of jellybeans & marshmallow
chicks, I didn’t search that hard
I was convinced the egg would taste of the rusty
minerals that pool underneath a scab
the kind you lick at, when no one is looking.

1. Endless fields sown with salt:
   granules pitchfork-folded
   in a loam so rich
   it might have fed us all
   until the sun burned out
   and the moon, bored, left us behind.
2. What song remains on the open sky
   but a vibration, half echo,
   half memory?
   A sparrow falls
   eyes blinded
   its heart in its beak.
3. A bear with fur of glass
   pads an ice-road across a lake
   aware of the cracks that form
   under the weight of every step
   with no way to solid ground
   but forward.
4. A seemingly stable star has
   a quavering moment of no return
   where gravity collapses inward
   and with a shuddering, subsonic groan,
   a galaxy of energy is cast outward
   and comets turn to dust.
5. I reach out my thrice-bitten hand
   and try to claw my words
   from the air and back into my mouth
   but they’ve carried you away
   faster than clocks
   and further than tombstones.

     1. Diamonds

A half-moon hangs above the pines.
The pool is a lake in a forest
until twin underwater lights click on.
My shadow comes to meet me at the wall.
Near the steps, in the unlit shallows,
water spangles into diamonds.
It’s good to be old,
with no one to watch me
and no one for me to watch over.

     2. Breakage

One by one they shattered,
the etched crystal goblets,
the hand-blown aqua water glass
with swirls of green and purple,
the white ceramic colander
with its big dots like blueberries.
And the promises I made to each
of the two wounded men I lived with:
I will never desert you.
I will be the one who stays.

     3. Locust

On Locust Avenue there were no locusts,
neither trees nor winged voracious angels.
Fancy hotels lined Atlantic Avenue
facing the Pacific Ocean. One anniversary
my husband and I splurged on dinner
in a rooftop restaurant by the beach.
We gorged on lobster thermidor, tiramisu,
too much wine, then staggered past
the homeless in their doorways
to our small place on Locust
to burst out of our clothes.

     4. Foot

This gray plaster foot has moved with me
from home to home, anchoring doors when wind
whistles through. I blow dust from its toes.
Tall beautiful Mark left one in the brush
at the artists’ retreat and gave one to me.
My husband Roger was a short man but
he had long second toes like Mark’s.
Toes lost like the rest of his beautiful feet
in Alaska when, homeless and probably drunk,
he slept in a tent through a blizzard.

     5. Fish

For a few weeks a shiny metallic balloon
shaped like a fish bobbed above a tree
across the street. Mornings I watched it,
floating on my back in chlorinated blue.
Now it dangles limp on the line, all hope gone.
Mostly I keep moving, arms carving water.
Nothing is more gorgeous than this amphibious life.
No one else is here but many hover, friends and lovers
I won’t meet again. I see them when I sleep,
I feel them when I pulse across a pool, shadows gathering.

1. Forge

A fasting show, forked, fluted, blunt, the councils emerge.
A silver light in summer rounds red as the Triassic.
Penitence in, abasement for, culpability toward, says the knot
tied stoic in the mat. Where the ground-provisioned glisten fresh fruit,
a new form, made again not the same, does see. Sliding shades
of Lepidodendron, lawn of Auricaria, the fan of maidenhair unrolling
pall to the sun, to blazon day amber & orange on the green,
woodwinds & trumpets in vapor, to redetermine loss
in the refining gorge. Actualize thread & ear, a stentorian chorus,
Cantharellas, Magicicada.

2. 103 Days

since the Civil War surrender. Dusky kerosene glints a tin-stamped ceiling
in the Queen City, over a gentleman’s agreement. For a worthy dis
justifies the law of a crack six-shooter, Dave on the cobblestone,
for Bill the batwing doors fly wide, thud-heel sparkle of his lethal legend
winding years. Tawdry, stale despair, costume diamonds
caught in headlights, a blaze of signs as the club thumps
the turnaround scree of diesel wheeze, as contemporary aces flinch
at a backfire across the same square. When dark swirlies nose an alley
the warrants fly & the red-brick night is in repose, hot heart of town
with a concert flyer lazily flapping its ragged message to a post.

3. James

Winoka’s spring boils under the cooling pool for the power plant,
paddlefish nose the dam beneath the hydraulic, shimmy the scour-hole
at Shelven Rock, ready in the tourmaline green beyond Hootentown.
Portages in kind. A stealthy trespass to the natural arch atop the sheer wall,
in line with the fish-eyed. Cattle pasture, windrows hazed & distant,
bales like shaggy beasts, the urchin of towers. A summer cloudburst
catches flaked jasper, the labyrinthine enamel of a horse molar
speeds the balance of time. Rugose in the defile, refuge of relics,
inky salamander whose constellation-skin seams the mould
on the way to my craft, stash-curtained in moonseed.

4. Alla Prima

for Bill Alexander & Bob Ross

The magic liquid goes on with a swipe, a squiggle of color feathers
an aerial perspective to vastness. Can you see it? Fire in the sun!
Twirl the odorless thinner. Hypnotize. It’s a vignette . . . vignette . . . vignette.
Have the nerve. Can you see? You are not fooling anyone.
Deep-breathing men of oil, establishing levels in air, the corruptible mirror
of water, mixing trough the color of poison, as light has it, through the eye
to the mind of experience. Give him a friend. Two hairs & some air.
Just beat the devil out of it. Masters of old, walnut, linseed, egg, the smell
of vision. Tricks in the refracted layers of trade, upon the first stroke.
Give it a happy spark, bang, bang, bang, bang. Now I will fire in the stone– here.

5. Tree

Half-fallen near the western plot, broken along immiscible boles,
lightning-scarred, consummation of mantra swirl, as the stricken mast lives
the phantom piece is on the ground, hideout of the cottontail,
sun-bather Plestiodon in breakaway sapphire. Fleabane & sleepingplant circle,
speak to the bearing of affliction as solaces shudder,
a coping as beetles hone in wireless timbre the cankered cambium,
breaching stock in dependable ruin. The pileated pair
has brought the one & are teaching the boring of a hollow.
Knelt among weeds, I talk to a toad I would follow through fire,
bathe in glory garish, if only to chirrup the dream of a coal-fired witness.

1. Your autumn hard cheeses
   on blue plates, arrayed by the window
   that looks out over the sloping field
   and down to the tree line
   and the brook beyond.
2. The honey mead
   you brewed in the basement
   and delivered like manna to doorsteps
   with tiny notes on tissue paper
   taped to a bottle.
3. Throughout the whole house
   and spreading to the patio
   when someone opens the slider,
   the invisible body
   of your bread.
4. The little clink
   when you place each dry glass
   exactly
   in it right spot in the cabinet,
   the thump of the cabinet’s close.
5. Your patience with young adults
   on the sidewalk, in the airport,
   holding hands, holding up
   the whole world behind them
   and not caring
   because they’re never coming back.