What god was it that would open earth’s picture book and see the two of us on a road, snowfields glittering on every side and poplars bent like the fingers of an old man clutching what he loved about the sun?
Which one was it that would peer into our thatched, white-washed farmhouse, and see the fur, flies, and shit-stained walls? Which one laughed at the barbed wire fences, the wall topped with broken glass?
Which of the many who came then, gleaming and rimed in hard sunlight? Which of those who bobbed like ice along the winter shore? What did we have that any god would want? Quick, if you can find it, hide it.
Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing kept flickering in with the tide and looking around. Black as a fisherman’s boot, with a white belly.
If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin, which was rough as a thousand sharpened nails.
And you know what a smile means, don’t you?
*
I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was
alive for a little while.
*
It was evening, and no longer summer. Three small fish, I don’t know what they were, huddled in the highest ripples as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body one gesture, one black sleeve that could fit easily around the bodies of three small fish.
*
Also I wanted to be able to love. And we all know how that one goes, don’t we?
Slowly
*
the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.
*
You don’t want to hear the story of my life, and anyway I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
And anyway it’s the same old story – – – a few people just trying, one way or another, to survive.
Mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason.
And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the fires to stay in this world.
*
And look! look! look! I think those little fish better wake up and dash themselves away from the hopeless future that is bulging toward them.
*
And probably, if they don’t waste time looking for an easier world,
There is something terribly wrong with his face– empty, restless, one side older than the other. What is a thing? Sediment. A slow river clogged with silt. I sussed the gesso into foam and white roses, stalling. I troubled the shadows and silvered his edges. What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once. Add a second light and you get a second darkness, it’s only fair. He is looking at the wall and I am looking at his looking. Difficult thing, to be scrutinized so long. I find parts that overlap with mine and light them up in clays and creams, yellow music singing pink, the flicker of his mouth a purple rust. His face congeals as he settles in. His hair is bronze in here, not gold: walnut, bark, and cinnamon, chipped brick tipped in ink. My shadow falls across his face, blue milk and pistachio, his eyes shine like wedding rings. My shadow falls across him and it doesn’t go away. Some hours later the light has shifted, the floorboards creak. You can’t paint the inside of anything, so why would you try? Painting the inside of anything is dangerous. I imagined my wrists broken just enough to keep the feeling from crawling up my arm. Dangerous thing: an open arm, an open channel. All these things, rungs of the ladder. Lovers do the looking while strangers look away. It isn’t fair, the depths of my looking, the threat of my looking. It’s rude to shake a man visible and claim the results. This side of his face, now this side of his face. His profile up against the tulips. I put down the brush and walked around the room. Even when I look away I am still looking. He is inside his body and I am inside my body and it matters less and less. Shared face, shared looking. A collaboration. He didn’t expect to be handed over, to be delivered. To be tricked into his own face. Anyone can paint a mask. It’s boring. And everyone secretly wants to collaborate with the enemy, to construct a truer version of the self. How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder? Difficult, to be confronted with the fact of yourself. Opaque in the sense of finally solid, in the sense of see me, not through me. The selves, glaze on glaze, accumulating their moods and minutes. We tremble and I paint the trembling. I enlarged his mouth and everything went blurry, a forgery. It might as well be. And all my fingers turned to twigs. Inside himself he jumped a little. Why build a room you can live in? Why build a shed for your fears? The life of the body is a nightmare. This is my hand over his face, which isn’t his face anymore, revising. I made a shape of the shape he made, subtracted what he shared with anyone else. There wasn’t much left but it felt like him, wild and scared. It was too much to bear. I put down the brush and looked at my hands. I turned off the headlights of my looking and let the animal get away.
The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark. —Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping
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about the teeth of sharks; john ciardi
the old familiar faces; charles lamb
against epiphany; fred marchant
no subject
deathless, catherynne valente
no subject
lies, band of skulls
if you could see, she drew the gun
stories we build, stories we tell, josé gonzález
ribs, the crane wives
dodged a bullet, greg laswell
dream in red, murder by death
[you fit into me], margaret atwood
dogfish, mary oliver
fire: from "a journal of love", anaïs nin
portrait of fryderyk in shifting light, richard siken
no subject
ancestors, ada limón
iamundernodisguise, school of seven bells
no subject