THE RABBIT
after Chaim Soutine’s Rabbit
In Paris, beneath the lush rooms
of Waterlilies,
the rabbit hangs by its feet,
eye dilated and white,
dead-eye, but whose brown
fur feathers to be touched
and then the copper jug
suspended beside its back,
orange bulb blooming,
full of wine, perhaps,
or stale water.
Hunting trophy
still life, remnant of moments—
of paw in dirt, view of grass,
sound vibrating in ears,
punctured flesh and torpid light
before the aperture closed.
One of a series of dead rabbits
and hares, done after fish and forks
and light-taut glass. A series of darkened
walls hung with luminous fur,
with jugs and a wisp, perhaps, of a flower.
It is the suspension of fear—
the mouth forever frozen open,
the suggestion of ribs that enclose
the stilled heart, one ear
dotted with the orange-red of the jug
to balance the composition,
to appease the eye’s need for symmetry,
to provide some resolution to the rabbit
hung, forever now, beyond death.
​
published in The Ekphrastic Review, February, 2019
​
THE CALL
Reckless brother,
you inhabit
blank, damp
winter
a beardless airy
beauty who moves
along my spine
but through what space
does your thought
flicker, lost light
to my ear?
​
published in The Flexible Persona, Spring 2019
​
HUNT & RENEWAL
And Artemis shot her stark, silver bow
and struck the glowing thigh of heaven’s stag
and disease bloated cities – the men laid low –
and the moon a hungered disk, night’s bright rag
glowed against the linnets’ unquiet wings
glowed against cheeks, dampened chests, crusted eyes
glowed until the glow burned the sickly things
glowed to burn thin the fattened, drowsing flies
until children fluttered beneath broad elms
until smoke ribboned air with saffron scent
until flesh of violets filled the realm
until stars around worlds gently bent.
​
MILTON & GALILEO AT LUNCH
1.
One already blind,
their minds
meet. Milton
envisions Galileo’s
optic glass,
hung like a shield
on the devil’s back,
and tells him so
knowing they all
share the mark
of heresy.
At a table
in the villa
of Arcetri
they split
a bottle of wine,
a plate of melon.
Florence rests
at the perimeter
of the astronomer’s
mind, city
of marble,
inner fold
of earth
between seas.
Euppur si muove
he whispers again
as Milton reaches
to feel the cup
Galileo slowly spins
with his hand
Euppur si muove
in orbit upon
the wooden plane
around the sun, a brass
candlestick without
wax or wick,
their prison ordained
in darkness.
Jupiter’s moons,
the sun’s ragged spots,
the fruits of heaven
that blossomed
in Galileo’s eyes
to excite his fall.
Can it be sin to know?
Can it be death?
And do they only stand
by ignorance?
is what, Milton replies,
I had Satan ask
and what I still
need to know
even as I grow old
with memories
of secrets uncovered,
of knowledge once forbidden
broken open and lived through.
2.
The universe born
into a constant state
of motion, a perfectly
polished block,
friction-free,
would move
through space
forever, unlike Galileo’s
fork whose slide
stops before
reaching Milton’s
hand. Inertia,
Galileo refrains,
bodies at rest
or in motion
remaining
in their particular
state. Milton imagines
the astronomer’s face
mirrored in a lake
eyes seeing
their own light
for the first time,
the first point
through which he finds
his relation
to sun,
shore of light
upon which to kneel.
And Eve,
Milton recites,
asked ‘If this be our
condition thus to dwell
in narrow circuit
straitened by a foe,
how are we happy
still in fear of harm?’
to which Galileo,
five years confined
to a guarded house,
offers no reply.
3.
But he speaks
of Maria Celeste,
loyal and devout
daughter gone
to her grave.
Proof,
the only difference
between faith
and belief,
is what he sought
to bring them
even closer
to God, to trace
a path back
up the inclined
slope, law
of moving bodies
sent spinning
through space
by an omnipotent hand.
Note: “Euppur si muove” (And yet it moves) is what Galileo is rumored to have muttered after recanting his defense of the Copernican system during his trial by the Inquisition.
​
FINALE
Without the moon to bring the tide to shore
without a rope to help the sailor moor
without the light to view his lover’s hips
without a tongue to taste his salty lips
the sea a swirling pool of startled cries
the sea of bloated blooms that sink to die
the sea of tethers, of chains, of hair, of glass
the sea through which the living all must pass
the God to whom the sailor needs to pray
the God whose molten sun retains its rays
the God of death, of love, of cryptic signs
the God whose measures beat out jagged lines
the sailor casts his shirt into the gale
the sailor ties his wrist upon the rail
the sailor’s swollen feet streaked white with brine
the sailor’s naked frame though darkness shines.
THIS
1.
Where the terns stand stiffly
in the bright blue sand
and the strangeness of the sea
laps against hooves that pound
its softening shore, its castles of sand
what more can eyes withstand?
What more of the man
who scrapes salt from his skin,
scrapes down to bone,
scrapes to scrape away sin
sin that is gas, a song,
a loop of air, a stinging wish
that, rising, burns the throat
into a sooty channel. A crumbling bridge.
2.
Earth has opened—
pulled a body inside.
The sea sloshes.
Terns dive and slice
the foaming pit with wings.
A man’s head—a breath—
the head gone. Again.
​
3.
This span of water.
This wind.
These blown dunes.
The thousand limbs within.
This air. This whisper.
This beating. This puzzle.
This.
PERSISTENCE
He called her genius. She turned to snow
and drifted against his house. To tuck away,
suckle the babe, irrational, in her arms
was what she thought, what she ate,
what she heard heroines must do. Genius,
but her effort told her otherwise—
though she could feel the switch
on a bull’s back, and the last twitch
of a dying girl, she could draw no conclusions.
She wished for the slow descent of a seahorse,
or the timely arrival of a mad tale to her head—
Time, inordinate. Peaceful. His patio glittering with chairs.
​
​
published in Cutbank, Spring 1998