L.L. Barkat
MusedLet's say a person took words
at a table. Let's say I was his priestess, Henkel in hand (the weighty one with the silver vein down its back). Would it need to be chanterelles every morning, and the expert chive scattered just so... would he require veal in the evening (though veal makes me weep)... would he settle for the common wineberry in June, or would I need to import the lingon (I don't even know their season)... would he prefer his wine dry, or sweet (I drink sweet alone). And after the last draught was taken, the last ridiculous little chive on a silver tine, would he linger for a song? Moleskine, 3-DIn my book
we can be red. I, a bus, with double layers. You, a booth, perpendicular to the sky. As I drive by, we will peer into each other’s small revealing windows. Mulberries1
While the mourning dove is still sleeping, before the sun can waken her, I kneel beneath the mulberry tree. You will know this without me speaking when you open my stained palm. 2 Will you. 3 Long now, I have missed the mulberries. MushroomsJust you and I,
let’s truffle let’s shiitake let’s button (and unbutton). The Watching ☊If memories were sparrows,
mine would gather behind a house half finished aluminum sided against the landscape, windows glazed from the inside out with smoke of cigarette and venison burning. They would crowd in lavender lilac, above the intersection where each year a robin laid impossible blue eggs, one of which it seems would always break, sully the perfect roundness of a mother's mud-patched efforts to prevent a deadly cracking. Sparrow memories would rock limbs, tremble leaves, blot out the threat of rain while brown haired girls peered over rim of tight worked straw to watch a miracle of twin eggs coming to birth. Return to Sloansville ☊
I close my eyes
blot out one hundred and fifty shale driveways pickup trucks, Ford pintos, trailers barely tied to this ground by wires, gas lines cable TV. I can still see dirt road, Queen Anne's Lace, goldenrod blue chicory field mice nesting under leaning timothy and the apple orchard rooted beyond tall firs where a woman in navy sweat pants, red Budweiser t-shirt is just now hanging laundry to drift upon the wind, sing with ghosts of spring white blossoms, honeybees.
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UntitledAt the end of the Sound,
where the pines have been pushed back by an unrelenting salt wind, you will find that jingle-shell beach-- where little cups of pearly lemon peach stretch out endlessly. Put your hands to them and you will not know where to stop. So much beauty, so much unrelenting jingle-chiming beauty. Laundry Loveis tangled shirts
the hem of a skirt caught in the brass button of your jeans. Lunch at Grand Central
She saw it happen,
she explained. The heart, all hooked up. He nodded as she gestured to her chest. The lungs are here, she said. And the heart is behind them. Yes, he seemed to know all about it. They do heart surgery through the back, he said. She did not deny it, just went on speaking of the heart’s troubles, never stopping to consider the actual point of entry. Meet Me in a Minimalist Poem Where We Can Wear
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Instructions
What to do when a best friend's husband dies
on the eve of your little girl's birthday... Hang up the phone, lean into the counter in a kind of conscious faint. Moan. Moan, a deep cry that comes from a place you didn't know existed, tremble and feel the ice cold sensation that begins rising and falling within you like Northern Lights shimmering up and down a midnight sky. Take out the black-handled Henckels and a yellow onion and chop the pearly flesh into perfect little squares. Mince the summer garlic. Scrape it all into a cast iron pan. Add dried oregano, because you can't think about harvesting right now... the fresh oregano just outside the kitchen door. Turn to the sink and begin. One glass, one dish at a time. Watch the suds play at the edges of cobalt blue, fall onto stainless steel, slide down the drain. Moan again. A labored moan rising to a muted wail (you dare not wake the children). Curse the maker of lawn mowers. Beg the man to come back and this time decide upon a nap instead of the simple exercise of back and forth on green, where he has fallen. Did fall. Ask God to turn back time, if only for this one whose heart has failed him. Let it not be so, that he has fallen. Turn off the pewter faucet, the blue flame. Put wilted onions and herbs in the bottom of a crock pot, where they will have to wait until tomorrow. Flick off the recessed lighting. Go up red oak stairs. Sleep, a dreamless sleep. In the morning, sing happy birthday to your eight-year-old. Kiss her on the cheek and forehead. Hold her to your heart. Give her the black-handled scissors so she may go out into the green. The birthday sauce will be needing basil, fresh. And she will go out skipping, snip it for you at the tender neck. Put it in your hand with soft, round fingers. Toss her head, and smile. The Entry
It is a slow arousal--
the rain, and how it moves across the earth still sleeping. How it reaches rivulets into myriad cracks, holes, gaps that winter forced. The rain slides in, everywhere, swelling, and the earth awakes, absorbs and rejoins itself to itself. |
