Incarnadine Read online

  A lot of people. He leans on a branch,

  his ear bluish in shadow.

  If I say everybody, I don’t know if everybody prayed.

  I can tell you, a lot prayed.

  How still she is.

  (Her small lips pursed, her finger still in the pages,

  her eyes almost slits as they narrow—)

  Nothing matters in this meadow.

  There is a girl under pear trees with her book,

  and it doesn’t matter what she does or does not promise.

  There’s no next scene to hurt her.

  Not even the pears fall down.

  I want the words to happen here.

  God loves you, and I love you, he says.

  Not far beyond his touch,

  a wind shakes a dusting of sunlight

  onto the edges of pears.

  I’d rather think some things are like this.

  The water’s green edge dissolves

  into cerulean, cerulean pearls

  into clouds; the girl’s unsandaled feet

  into uncut fringes of grass—

  I don’t need to explain, he says

  (his sleeves swelling in a nudge of air)

  —but the highest call of history,

  it changes your heart.

  She looks down: her finger in her book.

  On a Spring Day in Baltimore, the Art Teacher Asks the Class to Draw Flowers

  I.

  I can begin the picture: his neck is bent,

  his mouth too close to her ear as he leans in

  above her shoulder—to point

  to poppies shaded in apricot, stippled

  just as he taught her. Class is over.

  They are alone in the steady air—

  Through the window, a jump rope’s tick.

  An occasional bird. High voices.

  Perhaps, so caught up in composing her flower,

  she doesn’t feel his fingers

  there and there, her neck exposed

  to the spring air—

  II.

  There are only a few lines in the newspaper: her grade, his age, when the police arrived. J. calls to say he doesn’t believe the girl. Girls that age, he says—you know how that goes. Hey, if there’s a trial, you could be a witness.

  What kind of witness?

  Character witness.

  III.

  Yes I knew him. One summer we lounged in the backyard sun and listened to songs about what would be nice. On the swing, on the lawn, I posed for him, leaned my head against the picnic table. That was when I did not have enough, could not have enough looking at.

  That summer he carried his sketchpad everywhere, and on those slow, humid afternoons, I felt him elongate, shade, and blur. Above us the sky was like a white rush of streetlights, and I wanted to be nothing but what he shaped in each moment—

  I closed my eyes, felt the sunlight on my thighs. To be beheld like that—it felt like glittering.

  IV.

  What should be remembered, what

  imagined?

  She shifts in her chair. Her uncertain fingers

  trace, against the sky—how many times?—

  the red edges of the petals, caress

  the darkening lines, trying to still them—

  though she cannot make the air stop

  breathing, cannot make cannot

  make the shuddering lines stay put.

  Touch Gallery: Joan of Arc

  The sculptures in this gallery have been carefully treated with a protective wax so that visitors may touch them.

  —EXHIBITIONS, THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

  Stone soldier, it’s okay now.

  I’ve removed my rings, my watch, my bracelets.

  I’m allowed, brave girl,

  to touch you here, where the mail covers your throat,

  your full neck, down your shoulders

  to here, where raised unlatchable buckles

  mock-fasten your plated armor.

  Nothing peels from you.

  Your skin gleams like the silver earrings

  you do not wear.

  Above you, museum windows gleam October.

  Above you, high gold leaves flinch in the garden,

  but the flat immovable leaves entwined in your hair to crown you

  go through what my fingers can’t.

  I want you to have a mind I can turn in my hands.

  You have a smooth and upturned chin,

  cold cheeks, unbruisable eyes,

  and hair as grooved as fig skin.

  It’s October, but it’s not October

  behind your ears, which don’t hint

  of dark birds moving overhead,

  or of the blush and canary leaves

  emptying themselves

  in slow spasms

  into shallow hedgerows.

  Still bride of your own armor,

  bride of your own blind eyes,

  this isn’t an appeal.

  If I could I would let your hair down

  and make your ears disappear.

  Your head at my shoulder, my fingers on your lips—

  as if the cool of your stone curls were the cool

  of an evening—

  as if you were about to eat salt from my hand.

  To the Dove within the Stone

  Sleeper, still untouched by

  gravity, invisible

  for the stone, I cannot

  hear you shift in its dark

  center. How many centuries

  since the first girl—pressing hand

  against stone—hardly meaning to

  make an inside—

  roused you? The stone had no

  emptiness, and her body no

  emptiness until she felt you

  move under her palm, her steady

  pulse. Already flesh was something to

  stir you, something to make you

  true. Stone-dove, untouched

  by thistles, moths,

  listen now

  my hand is open.

  Holy

  Spirit who knows me, I do not feel you

  fall so far in me,

  do not feel you turn in my dark center.

  My mother is sick, and you

  cannot help her.

  My beautiful, moon-faced mother is sick

  and you sleep in the dark edges of her shadow.

  Spirit made to

  know me, is this your weight

  in my throat, my

  chest, the breath heavy so I hardly

  breathe it?

  I do not believe in the beauty of falling.

  Over and over in the dark I tell myself

  I do not have to believe

  in the beauty of falling

  though she edges toward you,

  saying your name with such steadiness.

  I sit winding blue tape around my wrists

  to keep my hands from falling.

  Holy Ghost, I come for you today

  in this overlit afternoon as she

  picks at the bread with her small hands,

  her small rough hands,

  the wide blue veins that have always been her veins

  winding through them.

  Ghost, what am I

  if I lose the one

  who’s always known me?

  Spirit, know me.

  Shadow, are you here

  splintering into the bread’s thick crust as it

  crumbles into my palms, is that

  you, the dry cough in her lungs, the blue tape on my wrists.

  The dark hair that used to fall over her shoulders.

  Fragile mother, impossible spirit, will you fall so far

  from me, will you leave me

  to me?

  To think it

  is the last hard kiss, that seasick

  silence, your bits of breath

  diffusing in my mouth—

  How (Not) to Speak of God

&nb
sp; Yet Not Consumed

  But give me the frost of your name

  in my mouth, give me

  spiny fruits and scaly husks—

  give me breath

  to say aloud to the breathless clouds

  your name, to say

  I am, let me need

  to say it and still need you

  to give me need, to make me

  into what is needed, what you need, no

  more than that I am, no more

  than the stray wind on my neck, the salt

  of your palm on my tongue, no more

  than need, a neck that will bend

  lower to what I am, so

  give me creeping, give me clouds that hang

  low and sweep the blue of the sky

  to its edges, let me taste the edges, the bread-colored clouds,

  here I am, give me

  thumb and fingers, give me only

  what I need, a turn here

  to turn what I am

  into I am, what your name writ in clouds

  writ on me

  On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes

  —how her loose curls float

  above the silver fish as she leans in

  to pluck its eyes.

  You died just hours ago.

  Not suddenly, no. You’d been dying so long

  nothing looked like itself: from your window,

  fishermen swirled sequins;

  fishnets entangled the moon.

  Now the dark rain

  looks like dark rain. Only the wine

  shimmers with candlelight. I refill the glasses

  as we raise a toast to you

  as so-and-so’s daughter—elfin, jittery as a sparrow—

  slides into another lap

  to eat another pair of slippery eyes

  with her soft fingers, fingers rosier each time,

  for being chewed a little.

  If only I could go to you, revive you.

  You must be a little alive still.

  I’d like to put the girl in your lap.

  She’s almost feverishly warm, and she weighs

  hardly anything. I want to show you how

  she relishes each eye, to show you

  her greed for them.

  She is placing one on her tongue,

  bright as a polished coin—

  What do they taste like? I ask.

  Twisting in my lap, she leans back sleepily.

  They taste like eyes, she says.

  Annunciation in Play

  —into the 3rd second, the girl

  holds on, determined not to meet his gaze—

  she swerves her blue sleeve,

  closes down the space,

  while his eyes are intent, unwilling

  to relent and

  late into the 5th second they are still

  fighting on, their feet sinking into

  the slippery grass—

  Approaching the 6th second

  he can’t repeat the sweeping in

  and each time he tries to clear

  the way to her thorn-brown eyes by the gesture of a hand

  it is easily blocked by the turn

  of her cheek.

  By the 8th second she is still repelling

  every attempt, still deflecting (you can see

  the speed, the skillful knee action)

  his gaze. And she must know (she has to think

  every second, there’s no letting up)

  this is only

  delay, but the delay

  is what she has

  before his expert touch

  swings in, before

  she loses her light, clean edges, before she

  loses possession—

  before they look at each other.

  Too Many Pigeons to Count and One Dove

  Bellagio, Italy

  —3:21

  The startled ash tree

  alive with them, wings lacing

  through silver-green leaves—jumping

  —3:24

  from branch to branch

  they rattle the leaves, or make the green leaves

  sound dry—

  —3:26

  The surprise of a boat horn from below.

  Increasingly voluptuous

  fluttering.

  —3:28

  One just there on the low branch—

  gone before I can breathe or

  describe it.

  —3:29

  Nothing stays long enough to know.

  How long since we’ve been inside

  anything together the way

  —3:29

  these birds are inside

  this tree together, shifting, making it into

  a shivering thing?

  —3:30

  A churchbell rings once.

  One pigeon flies

  over the top of the tree without skimming

  —3:30

  the high leaves, another

  flies to the tree below. I cannot find

  a picture of you in my mind

  —3:30

  to land on. In the overlapping of soft dark

  leaves, wings look

  to be tangled, but

  —3:32

  I see when they pull apart, one bird far, one

  near, they did not touch. One bird seems caught,

  flapping violently, one

  —3:32

  becomes still and tilts down—

  I cannot find the dove,

  have not seen it for minutes. One pigeon nips

  —3:32

  at something on a high branch,

  moves lower (it has taken this long for me to understand

  that they are eating). Two flap

  —3:33

  their wings without leaving their branches and

  I am tired

  of paying attention. The birds are all the same

  —3:33

  to me. It’s too warm to stay still in the sun, leaning

  over this wood fence to try to get a better look

  into the branches. Why

  —3:33

  do the pigeons gather in this tree

  or that one, why leave one for another

  in this moment or that one, why do I miss you

  —3:33

  now, but not now,

  my old idea of you, the feeling for you I lost

  and remade so many times until it was

  —3:33

  something else, as strange as your touch

  was familiar. Why not look up

  at high white Alps or down at the

  —3:33

  untrumpeted shadows bronzing the water

  or wonder why an almost lavender smoke

  hovers over that particular orange villa

  —3:33

  on the far shoreline or if I am

  capable of loving you better

  or at all from this distance.

  The Cathars Etc.

  loved the spirit most

  so to remind them of the ways of the flesh,

  those of the old god

  took one hundred prisoners and cut off

  each nose

  each pair of lips

  and scooped out each eye

  until just one eye on one man was left

  to lead them home.

  People did that, I say to myself,

  a human hand lopping at a man’s nose

  over and over with a dull blade

  that could not then slice

  the lips clean

  but like an old can opener, pushed

  into skin, sawed

  the soft edges, working each lip

  slowly off as

  both men heavily, intimately

  breathed.

  My brave believer, in my private re-enactments,

  you are one of them.

  I pick up in the aftermath where you’re being led

  by rope

/>   by the one with the one good eye.

  I’m one of the women at the edge of the hill

  watching you stagger magnificently,

  unsteadily back.

  All your faces are tender with holes

  starting to darken and scab

  and I don’t understand how you could

  believe in anything that much

  that is not me.

  The man with the eye pulls you

  forward. You’re in the square now.

  The women are hysterical,

  the men are making terrible sounds

  from unclosable mouths.

  And I don’t know if I can do it, if I can touch

  a lipless face that might

  lean down, instinctively,

  to try to kiss me.

  White rays are falling through the clouds.

  You are holding that imbecile rope.

  You are waiting to be claimed.

  What do I love more than this

  image of myself?

  There I am in the square walking toward you

  calling you out by name.

  To You Again

  Again this morning my eyes woke up too close

  to your eyes,

  their almost green orbs

  too heavy-lidded to really look back.

  To wake up next to you

  is ordinary. I do not even need to look at you

  to see you.

  But I do look. So when you come to me

  in your opulent sadness, I see

  you do not want me

  to unbutton you

  so I cannot do the one thing

  I can do.

  Now it is almost one a.m. I am still at my desk

  and you are upstairs at your desk a staircase

  away from me. Already it is years