| Ruth Daigon USA
AFTER THE FAILED REVOLUTION, 1905 After the hunger march to the tsar's palace begging for bread, after the slaughter, father sleeps in dialectical paradise and mother packs the samovar, the china, the ruby glass, the children. Her face carries its tribe just below the skin and somewhere they are spinning the
thread measuring its length and breadth, poised with the terrible shears. She restores the hair on her head, gold teeth in broad smiles and dreams of a land locked in
amber. Desire curled in her fist, she sails for America silent with all the others. No wheel of miracles just the hand which is, the eye which is and the long nerve of history. Breathless and sunblind, mother tunnels through bitter earth into salt of heaven. She builds a fire to warm her children and the flame is bright, the shadows dim. Learning English from the book of exiles, she mouths words, tonguing, polishing until they grow liquid. Then she nibbles on chicken wings, gnawing bones clean. Her thoughts tug at their moorings: the half-light of childhood, daybreaks bursting like seeds, a forest of old tongues telling stories, winds rattling obituaries, and the past spreading its stain. She whispers names out of time until the new world arrives fresh with heat and light. Flesh tones of memory fade as she stores the children under her heart. Alone and growing
wiser, mother undresses the dark and sleeps with moonlight resting in her palms.
DOPPELGANGER In the province no one visits, she's still waiting to be born. I can almost feel her breath brushing by me like a dark wish hear the lullabies burrowed deep in time when I lay under stars small fires, waiting under sun's spiral, waiting under vacant wash of sky beyond barriers of sight, waiting. If I empty my head of names If I empty my pocket of coins If I empty my shoes will I feel the imprint of a palm or hear a voice that fuses silence? In thought's last extravagance we reach toward each other intent and unaware, and I imagine fears that shape her nights until the world leaps back to
brightness. Yet, she never quite appears even in the downdrop of sleep and the moment is never the moment where grace begins. 2 In the dream, she's above me leaning into the pond. From the still, clear water I stare up mouthing her words. As I drift on the current and beyond, she follows sinks a stone through me then extends her hand. We exchange places. Water covers her eyes, her mouth. I inhale her and I am cold. Peering into the blue facade I shield my eyes One reflection kisses, the other
kills. She sinks through amber depths into green awareness and then floats to the surface singing of a more transparent time. Night rises like dark wine. Under the moon's bald eye we drift together, the shadow of one lying darkly on the other.
A HAIRLINE FRACTURE Stunned by morning, she slips out of bed. Stands barefoot on the tile. Looks into the mirror suddenly aware of her skull, jaw and pulse just below the surface. She's a skeleton clothed in flesh and thought waiting for wonder vivid with longing under the breast of sky. Last night, she watched sunset until the lost colors of evening. Then in the narrowing hours she imagined stars with fins, stars with feet, the bone white eye of the moon and in a trance of blue-veined dreams, she's lost with feather, wing, shell, reaching for light in the black center of time and the salt wash of the sea. As the owl's wings shadow the earth, she sits hollow-boned with the midnight people away from the stone music of the street away from the emptied eyes of ancestors and the great noise of it all.
EVE'S LEGACY She picks the perfect one, almost out of reach, more tempting than the rest. Wedging her thumb into the soft stem end, she twists and cracks the fruit in half, it's white skin umber at the core. Stripped of other appetites, she smells, nuzzles, tongues, sinks her teeth into the flesh, rotating as she bites until reaching the womb-shaped heart, convinced that only a solid piece of fruit understands teeth that go on biting and biting a whole lifetime.
NEVERTHELESS SHe is thankful for small miracles, the sky flaunting its dazzle, and days tall as promise. She's lost track of the alphabet, but someone will read aloud to her or chant a litany of sounds, bluer than air, cleaner than numbers A tongue she's never learned, a voice she's never heard but something she has known all our
lives. The hours lie stored in linen, and she's pearled for one last migration. Along the way, people die for the smallest
reasons. Nevertheless, her world begins inside the green century. She savors the earth and travels the furrowed planet. Like nocturnal animals, she is always vanishing, always there. Shadows beckon ahead, she grows large and drinks the wind. Nevertheless, she waits for laughter, a sky drunk with sunlight, and after the sudden dark when earth turns to air, she greets the final stun of silence.
APPRENTICESHIP Enter with an armful of knuckles. Locate the cupboard where clean fingernails are stored and listen for scent locked in an orange, yellow stillness of egg yolks, soft churning of custard. Count the hours spent here, rolled and wrapped, pounded paper-thin, smeared between oiled layers of indigestible dough, skewered, stuffed, deep-fried, poached, baked, broiled. Since you're the guardian, keep a slow fire lit and a constant simmering. This is no teacup world. Wine goes to vinegar. Corn confronts you like a mouthful of rotting teeth. Everything yields to its soft spot, the zero border where minus begins.
THE CLEANSING In Siberia, during the wedding, the bride was required to wash the feet of the groom and drink the water. Only then was she considered worthy to be taken as a wife. She lifts his right foot then his left soaping between the toes scooping dirt from under nails doing what must be done scrubbing in unleavened silence. Pale glue of tears clinging to lashes she licks her lips tasting the instant when she was none other than herself sitting in the kitchen curtains drawn floor swept dipping into the curve and coil of wife practicing until she got it right. The night before, she dreamt of spring shoots pushing purple tongues through earth's skin, of babies swimming toward her slippery as tadpoles her unskilled hands can't capture. And in the morning, she awakes to pinpricks of sun, birds blading against the horizon. This is her wedding day air thick with accordian notes swirling skirts, embroidered shirts the smell of lamb and kumiss. He sits like a boulder in the sun. His voice makes him taller. When he bends a listening face toward her she unknots a smile takes one last look over her shoulder at childhood so remote it belongs to someone else. Nothing's left Not a ribbon Not a thimble And lifts the basin to her lips.
IN MY BODY OF SKIN When I was a nightingale I sang When I was a serpent I swallowed my voice spume blown from a wave a sound too thin for earthworms With memories older than Prometheus I remember the time when time was birthed the sky appeared sudden light wind and water where blind valves closed on a single grain of sand In my body of skin of moss of clover I touch fingers with fingers lips with lips
the exposed tip of the heart Seed work sun work earth work If pansies are for thoughts I pick them early in the morning so they last Lake-summer days I climb the hill drink the sky and pose like Millet's peasant listening to an invisible lark With a pocketful of seeds I sit peeling an orange under a static sun attentive to the sound of pine
cones clicking open The child sleeps in my shadow and walks beside me following from birth moving as I move We cling together like small
animals The well is dry the cup empty and gravity's a long way down © All Copyright, Ruth Daigon. |
