Miriam Sagan
Do Not TouchIs what the sign says
In the Montreal Art Museum Next to the gilded statue Of a cross-legged long haired anorexic girl Called "Along the Path to Enlightenment" Like an ancient emaciated Buddha before the tree and morning star Her ribs show breastless As a vine winds up her torso A passing woman pauses, then fervently touches Our Lady of Starvation And an elderly Japanese lady Actually caresses the statue's hands with her own Then sits down, and imitates the mudra. I catch the eyes of two friends Pleasant looking, speaking French. We're shocked by these caresses. Don't know What to think. Fortuna's GardenI take your hand along the mossy way
Camellia blossoms fall, the red Japonica That brings to mind a viewing with a parasol; Inside a winding glade a statue stands-- A saint, a goddess, or a grave. Once I was young, and dreamed I held a globe of water in my hands-- It shattered, and a cardinal, red bird, Flew out and lighted in the grove’s pale trees. Red petals punctuate my thoughts And make me want to kiss Your lips again, worn soft By time, and mine. Within the boxwood maze An unseen peacock’s cry Whose Argos eyes fan out yet still can’t see. White camellia, scentless, Settles down like snow And jonquils springing from cool ground Evoke what might have been-- What I know now That once I did not know. Shadow PuppetsWest of the sun and east of the moon
beyond the causeway I strolled this morning without dunes just boardwalk and green park through the slatted window blind across the palm treed alley a red lantern hung at dawn by day was just an exit sign illuminated boxes show silhouette of a hill lone pine, classical ruin minarets, Japan the sky breaks infrared as rain each image there is turned again the mirror shows a passing scene once more this world spins upside-down what was I thinking statue of Shiva was not no, was, the sea turning so enter me black doves among skyscrapersa sooty rain
better to live here where nothing ever happens except for two girls, back neighbors playing their guitars whose songs come note by note over the coyote fence and whose last names translate, if you choose to as "black doves" CherriesWe followed the acequia,
the running ditch, and walked at dusk behind the industrial bit of neighborhood past the transformer, behind the School of the Deaf. The city had spruced things up with a paved trail along the old grade but a homeless man still made camp between the backs of houses and public space. We crossed back-- not enough water to need to walk on the plank-- back into the cul-de-sacs of where our own street dead ends and you in a bright red cap started picking handfuls of cherries off an unknown neighbor’s tree and filled your hands with stolen fruit. I walked a few feet up to distance myself from your edenic theft and leaned my aching back against an adobe wall still throwing the heat of day. And you, no longer young in any way looked so handsome in that cap with the red fruit, in clusters, and I, despite what I know was perfectly happy. ghostly sycamoreswhite trunks
in the Chiricahuas a nameless bird flits scrub jays saw-toothed yucca leaves it’s winter, remote and we’re far-away yet close to something always |
After Dinner at the Legal TenderSummer is over. Leaving Lamy You drive south into basin and range At sunset. I sit in the passenger seat Buckled up, not quite Knowing where you are taking me Quiet as a farm wife or any Girl just along For the ride. Darkness, autumn, you turn around Finished with expanse Head home. I know my story And I know yours And why we both Have a taste for this. Madame Butterfly at Glimmerglassblue flax lines the highway
on the way to see blessed Kateri in her shrine portrayed with a sheaf of corn three sisters garden is scarred by the contact smallpox who like a European saint resists a forced marriage must pledge a troth to god meanwhile at the opera as if in woodblock of “Old Japan” Madame Butterfly, shown half hidden by a screen, a fan, japonica, a sword things that can be wrapped (a corpse) in the city of Nagasaki with warships in the harbor I can’t help but see a mushroom cloud blossom over the final applause and in a little local park, mostly neglected by baseball loving tourists Indian mound with an explanatory plaque where the reverend poet wrote speaking as if in the voice of the deceased mistakenly thinking those buried there were Iroquois beneath old trees that loom “the wide land which now is yours was ours-- friendly hands have given back to us enough for a tomb.” (Quotation from Rev. W. W. Lord, 1874) Orange Umbrellas Open In All Directionsjellyfish blown into the glass paperweight
fake ivy made the mirrored gate more beautiful a legless man in a motorized chair a tiny crab in a plate of oysters—its home, our dinner I bought a pair of jeweled sandals the wind had anorexia and ate only the swoop of seagulls purdah’s chiffon veil rustled by the sea untitled, the tracks of the sandpiper might have been in Urdu I tried to unwrap the moment of my feeling as leaves fell without season the tideline deconstructed the Hebrew alphabet what you meant to say, a white lie, a promise kissed on the lips, mouth open, by dawn although I was afraid I was not unhappy blue anodyne, trembling frond, FOR RENT Full Circleyou fell from the sky
like a star in day time stone ingot, meteor were caught in a net pinioned wings and who was spotting you? God, a pool of water, the abyss or everyone on stage the Georgian acrobats, the Russian tumblers hurtling in their great swing across empty space Icarus, your dream was neither of lift off nor disaster you did not expect the midwife, then the undertaker just uninterrupted flight as for me, I woke up in the middle of the night to the words: oh terrible ghats of the river release me from rebirth. The Blue Moon Dinerhas a closed sign
in the window but if it were open-- and life sized-- I might be inside half spinning on the cracked red vinyl of a counter stool or alone in a booth head bent over an incongruous book of French aesthetic philosophy picking at a BLT nursing a cup of coffee--regular-- and an often broken heart I was at the MacDowell colony when I was young thanks not to my fame but a good letter of recommendation and every day lunch was delivered in a basket but I was restless unused to writing for more than fifteen minutes and so started driving to every diner I could locate or walking to the one in town I loved someone who didn't love me, or several someones set my heart to strife, how could I know that from then on a diner would make me happy? where I'd drink slightly bitter tap water leave a tip in hard currency and go on to what I'd later call the rest of my life. |
