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Miriam Sagan


Do Not Touch

Is 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 Garden

I 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 Puppets

West 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 skyscrapers

a 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"

Cherries

We 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 sycamores

white 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


Picture

Miriam Sagan's Profile

After Dinner at the Legal Tender


Summer 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 Glimmerglass

blue 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 Directions

jellyfish 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 Circle

you 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 Diner

has 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.

Comments?

***

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