Ana Caballero - 2
Soft Landings and Quick Bites
Said and DoneI fear my capacity to guide
Mistake toward fulfillment At times, I blame: The flurry of misprint, of crisis to unscramble; The renewed promise of classic self-improvement; The flat-water buoyancy of fresh peace. Other times, I blame: This devotion to words and their construction – How they unsay as they say – How they commit to purpose as thought – How they slay aim through speech – How they make me prove and reprove this power – This lack. Who WithThe greatest thing about not loving you
Is not giving time Leaving the view alone Lingering never The thought almost well Crafted It was a moment of smallness It can be described Bikram Love TriangleFive minutes late to class and we got spots,
spots apart. But, a mirrored column in front, so we could check each other out. I watched you get hot in Ardha-Chandrasana, as you poured your head between short, upstretched arms. Then cut a sweat with the six hip Utkatasana dips, but by then, you were primed. Garurasana is your most improved: right toes wrapped around left calf, as you pulled both shoulders down and back. Because of a displaced disk, Dandayamana-Janushirasana cannot be, but your Dandayamana–Dhanurasana could be the figurine on the hood of the first Rolls Royce. Tuladandasana is Sanskrit for Balancing Stick. With this, your face confirmed last night we had too much to drink. When I took my Dandayamana-Bibhaktapada-Paschimotthanasana bow, I bowed deep for your face and the knowing of how it thinks. A lycra girl spread into my view in the Trikanasana triangular screw but you reemerged, bold, for our Dandayamana-Bibhaktapada-Janushirasana balancing fold. In frontal Tadasana I surveyed your chest with the remembering look reserved for carved stone and snowy boulder crests. Once more, in Savasana, I thought to tell you that Pavanamuktasana is called Wind-Removing Pose, so you can laugh and say I should do it every day. The belly-flat series of Bhujangasana, Salabhasana and Dhanurasana made me want to be your rubber mat and come between the fake rock floor and your beech wood back. Even in Supta-Vajrasana – be the royal blue under you, cup each knee and persuade your leather quads. I delayed my Ardha-Kurmasana to watch your nose grasp the ground. You trimmed your thinning hair but look younger, even as you hover. Finally, at Ustrasana, your eyes and my eyes and almost there. After Ustrasana, my eyes. Your eyes, I thought, not quite there. In Sasangasana, nothing in your face asking to be read, my chin between my knees, all that blood to the head. So I gave meditating face in the Janushirasana, Paschimotthanasana, Pada-Hasthasana flow, a mature woman devoted to her personal growth. But when I caught you will, but not reach, the Ardha-Matsyendrasana twist, again, I let you get big. In Kapalbhati, upturned palms upon my lap. Lips pursed, exhaled hard. A seated disciple with third eye bright and practiced breath that yields its fire. Morning FeedYou are a great round thing in my arms
Each morning I unwrap you to make you cold And warm you myself Eat child drink only the good While you still can Unknowing small pale and perfect We become As you take from me the only self I have to give Tragedy at Sushi Siam
Today I read about poetic time and poetic space,
about how allegories are imagined and metrics not. I read about real efforts to compose, allusions, footnotes, tool sheds as help. I read all this believing in it, not knowing that tonight you would be where I was, and I would need to come home to think about you in recent time, in recent space. LunchtimeWhen I don’t go out to talk lunch talk
I stay home and we eat lunch We don’t talk but we make delicious food noise I let you play with foods that stain Touch my whites with your berry chin You drop the silver and I pick it up To watch your face hear it crash A wet bill, a torn book, a cracked phone Proof in my hands that your new body leaves a mark Again I offer you the tiny shoe you love to chew Together we prepare For a time when things might not be good
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How Others Do ItTwo idiots like us
Who planned love like a new car Who bought the floorboards old So with each step our new home moaned Who mapped the lock And learned to speak fraternal talk Who toiled to resist slog A balloon on our wrist in permanent bob Who got drunk with the guests Painted like rage the right walls red Who saw the new oven installed Where designer heat is focused and trapped To roast the meat for today’s avid son PacoLast night, I heard Paco de Lucía play the guitar
in a theater cut out of a dry rock in the South of Spain. My father could not go because he fell and hit his head and has been in bed for fifteen days and it could be longer. My brothers are not here and do not know. So I went with my mother to see men with faces that look like the first face, the face of the Gypsy and the Jew, the Arab sage and the hanging Christ. Hair around the eyes, a focusing view of enemy foot through rising desert sand. El Farru, the great flamenco dancer, danced in the middle of the music men and lost a dancing heel in the middle of the song. The dead heel lay dumb like a bitten fig while El Farru beat his sounding heel down. Then he bowed and held up his mute heel to make our hands applaud. De Lucía. His nephew-apprentice to the left. The singers with no voice, dry rock slicing their throats. The bass that seized a place and played a role. The flamenco hair whipping Farru’s face like a despot rider his despot horse. I filmed it all to show my father. But the clip will deepen the slip of the heel and the dry rock against the head. So I keep it for my mother for when she’ll need her music men. The Clothes Maker
My clothes come from places that are not immediately obvious:
A forty-day South American Christmas, an attempt at youth in College, a place of blessing turned hard. Embroidering is slow, so I mix patience with excess and comfort. Embroidering can be silent or loud, and it is inside and out; but it remains the single piece of cloth I choose. At unexpected sounds, my thread sheers a right breast pocket to gently cinch the waist. A set of green grapes spilled from the cup of an already full Caravaggio. I once thought I could know anythingThe death knowledge of the Buddha
The clarifying call of Gabriel Former lives and abetting suns That enthrall worlds more able than mine I too never doubted my time supply To be the daughter of the dying father Who buries without the blow of love regret But my father is dying an excessive death With a wounded body that aligns Rare moments of life To the faint efforts of his mind And I do I offer my happy baby’s dance Ask about our mayor and the bad president So together We can wave our related heads with a laugh I bring home the foods he likes to eat Chocolate sugar-free A bag of sweet yellow tomatoes That falls when his good hand forgets to grab And when he insists on phoning my mother Makes a promise that he won’t speak drink I dial I do I dance Far from the Buddha knowledge of the giving death Deaf to the recurring chant of Gabriel Books by my bed and worlds of grace That I grasp But lack the good hand with which to grab Overdue Love Letter
Minus the saliva on paper
The hesitant comma Barely smeared Impatient still Signed and dated Sealed I offer every swerve Soft wrist and stiff neck Dear, This is my wet black ink Espiritu SantoBorn of the first stone, I am witch:
Spellbound by small elements, snails in the throat, birds on the lip. There is a hiding behind the trunk of a dead tree, a memory of morning, a reckoning. There are no men, no children. No women with soft worries. No confidences or shared will. But when I blow the lonesome wind, the wooded land breathes in. Together we become the ancient word, a god released. A Notion of MarriageBecause I am a poet,
I read about things like the center of skin. About warm bodies coming together in the dark, and how it’s the meaning of life when someone gets it right. And I know I should write about things like a moving chest and a naked back. About the coming together of life in the dark, about our common desire and the verbs that it took. And it should be universal, but personal. My moving chest, your naked back. The notion of marriage, of children, of daily love. Shrinking rooms beneath the surface of different meaning words. But I don’t see the dark jaw in the night, or the soft center of touch spring alive. There is effort and a plan. There is marriage, a shrinking room, daily love, and a baby that eats time. We do not say flesh when we mean sex. We say it’s about right. And, it would be nice. We confirm how long it’s been before we ask the other to get up and make the bedroom dark. |
