week of July 23 - 29, 2007

She Paints Herself into a Corner She takes a crayon to the backs of envelopes, to the cardboard from laundered shirts. She steals India ink and black velvet for angry clowns and the many faces of Elvis. Worked over images soon overflow the closets, tumbling into the hall. Stacked to the ceiling, there is no room for light to enter, and she moves over the dark, stained floor like a shadow. Back and forth and back again---she falls out of her own frame of reference still believing in what the day can do. He Doesn't Believe in Aspirin Like a zipper tired of meshing, the surface pulls apart, the skin swollen and warm. The rip is tinged with red. Draw hard on whorls and pads˜ whatever hurts tastes like salt or iron. The cut is not that deep but there's a trick to mending-- some small technique with a light thin touch. When you're ready, thread the needle with cotton the color of a bruise and pull from one side to the other the way you dragged your tongue across the metal railing, the snow irresistible, your brother tugging you out of your skin with devotion exquisite as pain. Kolam The boy breaks through the horizon with a yoke of buckets, chappals flapping in red, kicked dust. The girl is kneeling over her porch prayer, laying out dots and curves a pinch at a time, a lace of rice and powder. As the girl meets the boy's gaze, aunties rise up along the street. A dowry that crushes the girl's father, the line of aborted daughters˜ the future is set in motion with the first scuff of the boy's foot. He runs away, laughing. Slapping their hands of rice and powdered brick, the women reach out and pull him back into shadows black as a murder of crows.

the canyon so peaceful-- until cicadas my hand slips into the garden-- her print skirt evening cigarette-- the mosquitoes enjoy my bad habit an old pond wind and shadow ripple-- weeping willow