Oceanic Read online

Aubade with Cutlery and Crickets

  In the dinner I cook for myself tonight,

  you are an open drawer of cutlery.

  I’ve smelled the top notes of butter knives

  at your shoulder, the tang hidden in the blade

  of your walk. I need a serving spoon

  to scoop dal into a cool ceramic, a fork

  with tines long enough to pierce the skin

  of the butternut squash roasted

  in honeyjuice. Even your hands

  have become a kind of instrument—

  delicate enough to slide crabmeat

  out of the shell, sturdy enough to crack

  a breastbone if need be. Or maybe what

  I smelled that morning still full of starlight

  and crickets when we said goodbye—

  was the clean coolness of a knife’s ricasso,

  the flat rest for a thumb just before

  the blade disappears into its handle.

  When You Select the Daughter Card

  as part of a reimagined Tarot deck

  The Daughter imparts her bravery to those

  who are willing to collect urchin

  and pearl. She is sometimes mistaken

  for mermaid, but she can also walk quiet

  on the shore, symbolizing a harmony

  between earth and the dazzle of the sea.

  This card is often associated with blue,

  blood-true, but sometimes chilled

  from the watery mysteries of too many

  narwhal spins. This card carries a suggestion

  of permanent ink. The power flowing

  through the Daughter is oceanic, the rupture

  of pillow lava on the seafloor. The card’s lower half

  features a fountain pen, which symbolizes

  history and future-history. By seeking

  to understand and accept the more salty aspects

  of yourself, you might grow another arm or leg,

  pointing at your truest love. If you fear that you

  have not fully accepted all the many hard

  and wondrous ways you are loved, don’t siphon

  away your frustration. The Daughter symbolizes

  a knowledge of the mysteries of family found

  inside of a mollusk but does not restrict you

  to dozens of scallop-eyes spying on you.

  The Daughter reminds you to look

  for moon-glow on every leaf and sea grape.

  Such wonderment and safety in store for you.

  At the Pumpkin Festival My Lips Burn Bright

  CLARENCE, NEW YORK

  Boys in flannel line up to see who can throw

  them the farthest, spinning

  through the air like suns too drunk

  from summer’s end. Some the size

  of a giant tortoise mold into the most

  wicked faces. Some Chinese believe

  this fruit is the most lucky of all—so fertile

  and thumpy with a satisfying knock

  on its belly to plim pregnant women

  nicely round. Every year I beg

  my mother to plant a pumpkin

  so we can harvest it together.

  A giant birthday cake for the woman

  who was born the day before Halloween,

  who I once thought was a witch

  when she cut my curfew in half

  with a wave of her thin hands.

  Seed & gutrot ≈ Stem & root.

  The crunch of toasted seeds—the only

  salty protection my mouth has against witches.

  Self-Portrait as Niagara Falls in Winter

  I’ve only frozen over six times. First was in high school

  with cornfields on either side. The fever frothed before

  I even met you. Another time, birds snapped onto my body.

  I have no other explanation for all the snow-stiffened wings

  kids would find and tuck into their pockets to thaw

  in their mouthy-warm cars. I sometimes catch a whiff

  of cinnamon bread baking and the smell hovers before

  it falls. I did that, too. Hover, I mean. Too cold for a sari,

  sorry: I won’t wear one unless I’m at a wedding. And weddings

  here offer more brightness than a whole week’s worth of stars.

  Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate One Second before Waking Up

  after the painting with the same name by Salvador Dalí

  In one second, three hundred fifty slices of pizza

  are eaten somewhere on this earth. A heart beats just once.

  Once, I dreamed you were so near I could smell

  your honeyed hair and the damp folds in your blue sleeve.

  I woke up and watered my violets. And woke again.

  And woke again and again till I could not remember

  whether water bubbling out and over the small lips

  of the pots was dream water or water real as a pin.

  Or the plash of an elephant walking the sea on bony stilts

  like in this Dalí painting. Here is the mouth of a fish

  wide with wonder at the twin tigers leaping out

  from it—roaring with ocean salt till they’ve soared above

  a floating pomegranate, a heart full of seed. In twenty-four

  microseconds, a stick of dynamite will explode after

  its fuse burned down. Houseflies flick their wings once

  every three milliseconds. Even that fly is long gone

  to the other side of the yard in the time it took to write flick.

  Giant tortoises and compact discs last one hundred years.

  In one million years, Los Angeles will move forty kilometers

  north because of plate tectonics. A spaceship zooming along

  at the speed of light would not yet reach the halfway point

  to the Andromeda galaxy. One billion years: one ocean born.

  The time it takes for the last waxy smudge of me to stop loving

  you. Only at the bottom do you find anything about a bee.

  The Falling: Four Who Have Intentionally Plunged Over Niagara Falls with the Hope of Surviving

  1. ANNIE EDSON TAYLOR (1901)

  Don’t hate me because I sent the cat first.

  Darling, desperate times require—

  well, they require.

  I told the little girl who owned the cat

  I’d buy her a new one.

  Days of waiting for a coin

  of mention in the newspaper.

  Days of waiting for wind—

  for a sign, a purple swallow

  circling the falls in a figure eight.

  Draw me a line of three corks

  and three holes so I can breathe in the barrel.

  I thought I’d have all the floppy feathered hats

  a gal could hope for.

  No one seems to realize I am a star,

  the original Queen of the Mist.

  Tell me: what does a soul

  look like after you dash

  a plump cat to smithereens?

  All I have are beat-down tap shoes

  (someone even stole my barrel!),

  a feather, a snip of string.

  But look at the elegant line

  of the arch of my foot, my boot,

  how each hoop in my skirt

  sings when I walk.

  Isn’t that a picture?

  Surely that’s worth a picture.

  2. CHARLES STEPHENS, THE DEMON BARBER OF BEDMINSTER (1920)

  The right arm:

  only thing

  happy

  to be found.

  It even waved

  a little.

  3. GEORGE STRATHAKIS (1930)

  I will read your fortune from a bowl of feta cheese. Do not ask me

  to read the shell of my pet turtle. I’ll slap you if you ask. There are

  white walls you can climb over and white walls y
ou cannot escape,

  even if you dig underneath. I pack a mattress, notebook, pencil, my turtle—

  all I need to survive. One day you will receive a call and the howl

  you make will break even tiny bird hearts. I wait for you to open

  my barrel. I listen for crystals of chalcopyrite. Underneath the falls,

  I may find buried vats of bog butter. I will listen to it sweeten

  into soap. I will listen for you. My turtle waits. I listen. I wait.

  4. STEVEN TROTTER (1985, 1995)

  At age twenty-two, the youngest person to go over the falls successfully, and twice

  In Tallahassee, you learn to make the drinks

  real sweet. Sweet drinks equals sweet skirts

  to wait for you long after the bar closes.

  There are boulders— smoothed by years of drum

  water. And somehow, missing every single one.

  You’ve got a charmed life, a deer-bone amulet,

  and star-spangled shorts to cheer you on both trips.

  But even you know your boundaries. There’s a limit to

  how much you are able to ridicule her. Venus flytraps

  snap shut when the trigger hairs are touched not once, but

  are tapped exactly twice. Look at your life: it can count.

  Two is good, just enough, for you.

  Forsythe Avenue Haibun

  Only a few people and three alley cats remember when the house was gray,

  not yellow. A pair of empty swing sets at the schoolyard rock themselves to

  sleep for a late-afternoon nap. A blue dog used to trot on top of little ginkgo

  fans confettied on the sidewalk like he showed up too late to a parade.

  Farther down the avenue is a baby who seems to lose her pacifier each day

  around seven o’clock. Tulip bulbs that a girl once planted and sprinkled with

  pepper flakes have all been scratched up by brave squirrels who now strut

  the street with tiny blistered mouths. When they chew chickadee wing in

  their wet, hot mouths, the alley cats become accomplices. This is her legacy.

  Her footprints are everywhere:

  every gate is her

  red mouth on fire—birds want

  to speak but cannot

  Meals of Grief & Happiness

  1

  I believe in the tears of an elephant.

  How they stamp the ground

  and forget they are in musth—

  panting—and cinnamon shrubs

  or piles of sugarcane can’t tempt

  them to stop their cycle of grief.

  I believe in the broken heart

  of an elephant. When a companion

  dies, I believe in the rocking back

  and forth, the dry pebbly tongue.

  I believe in wanting to wear only

  dust, hear only dust, taste only dust.

  I believe in wanting to touch nothing

  and wanting nothing to touch you.

  2

  I believe in the tail wag of a dog.

  The toothy grin of an apple-fed horse,

  the shine from the wet in the eyes

  wild with joy. I like the movements

  in a chimp’s fine fur as he swings

  from branch to rubber tire and thumps

  his companion on the head with a bright-red ball.

  I believe in the single sugar cube sparkling

  on a small ceramic dish as we sit at a café—

  me sipping a soda with a paper straw,

  you leaning in close to point to something

  that neither of us have ever tried—but we will today.

  The waiter will say Good, good choice, my favorite,

  as he gathers up the vinyl menus and leaves us.

  Invitation

  Come in, come in—the water’s fine! You can’t get lost here—even

  if you wanted to hide behind a clutch of spiny oysters. I’ll find you.

  If you ever leave me at night, by boat—you’ll see

  the arrangement of golden sun stars in a sea of milk

  and though it’s tempting to visit them—stay. I’ve been trained

  to look up and up all my life, no matter the rumble on earth

  but I’ve learned it’s okay to glance down once in a while

  into the sea. So many lessons bubble up if you just know

  where to look. Clouds of plankton hurricaning in open

  whale mouths will send you east and chewy urchins will slide

  you west. Squid know how to be rich with ten

  empty arms. There are humans who don’t know the feel

  of a good bite or embrace at least once a day. Underneath

  you, narwhals spin upside down while their singular tooth needles

  you like a compass pointed toward home. Deep where

  imperial volutes and hatchetfish live, colors humans have

  not yet named glow in caves made from black coral and clamshell.

  A giant squid finally let itself be captured in a photograph

  and the paper nautilus ripple-flashes scarlet and two kinds

  of violet when it silvers you near. Who knows what

  will happen next? If you still want to look up, I hope you see

  the dark sky as oceanic, boundless, limitless—like all

  the shades of blue revealed in a glacier. Let’s listen

  how this planet hums with so much wing, fur, and fin.

  Inside the Cloud Forest Dome

  SINGAPORE

  I Could Be a Whale Shark

  BOLINAO, PHILIPPINES

  I am worried about tentacles.

  How you can still get stung

  even if the jelly arm disconnects

  from the bell. My husband

  swims without me—farther

  out to sea than I would like,

  buoyed by salt and rind of kelp.

  I am worried if I step too far

  into the China Sea, my baby

  will slow the beautiful kicks

  he has just begun since we landed.

  The quickening, they call it,

  but all I am is slow, a moon jelly

  floating like a bag in the sea.

  Or a whale shark. Yes—I could be

  a whale shark, newly spotted

  with moles from the pregnancy—

  my wide mouth always open

  to eat and eat with a look that says

  Surprise! Did I eat that much?

  When I sleep, I am a flutefish,

  just lying there, swaying back

  and forth among the kelpy mess

  of sheets. You can see the wet

  of my dark eye awake, awake.

  My husband is a pale blur

  near the horizon, full of adobo

  and not waiting thirty minutes

  before swimming. He is free

  and waves at me as he backstrokes

  past. This is how he prepares

  for fatherhood. Such tenderness

  still lingers in the air: the Roman

  poet Virgil gave his pet fly

  the most lavish funeral, complete

  with meat feast and barrels

  of oaky wine. You can never know

  where or why you hear

  a humming on this soft earth.

  Love in the Time of Swine Flu

  Because we think I might have it,

  you take the couch. I can count on one hand

  the times we have ever slept apart

  under the same roof in our five years,

  and those usually involved something

  much worse than this sort of impenetrable

  cough, the general misery involved

  with dopey nausea, these vague chills.

  But this time, we can’t risk it—our small son

  still breathes clear-light in the next room

  and we can’t afford to be both laid


  up on our backs with a box of tissues

  at our sides. Especially now that I carry

  a small grapefruit, a second son, inside me.

  In bed, I fever for your strong calves,

  your nightsong breath on my neck

  and—depending where we end up—wrist

  or knee. I fever for the slip of straps down

  my shoulder, I fever for the prickled pain

  of lip-bite and bed burn. You get up and come

  back to bed. We decide it is worth it. I wish

  my name meant wing. The child still forming

  inside me fevers for quiet, the silence of the after,

  the silence of cell-bloom within our blood.

  Self-Portrait as C-Section Scar

  When I’m happy I can smile twice at the same time.

  So thin—a marker-tip line with a waxy shine—

  a vein of a maple leaf, a dog’s upper lip, arm of anemone.

  Of all the magical plants and animals in the sea,

  the hagfish is the most unpopular, the most horrifying—

  the one that makes children burst into tears. And if that

  isn’t enough, she is the only fish without vertebrae,

  so she can literally tie herself into a knot to bulge out

  and pop the small mouths of fish that dare try to eat her.

  Don’t you admire her clever slip and wriggle? Don’t