Infernal
Is it better to die by the hand of an intimate
or to die by the hand of a stranger?
The one with his pitchfork and the one with a wing of sorrow
and the one with a shaky plow.
The revenant sprawls by the pool
assessing opulent stucco and glossy indigo.
Planning new calamities for sad girls at the beach house,
their tan lines a testament to self-invention.
It is Miami in the world and in the mind,
the antique candy-striped umbrellas give no protection.
The tourists on Biscayne Boulevard
brandish cameras between pink and green hotels.
On the jetty, in spectral sunlight, in view of lovers, a pelican
swallows heart-shaped fishes one by one.
The time her lover hit her and she ran crying to the door
he said don't run out in the dark, he said I'll drive you.
In traffic, the shunt and pull
of engines, exhaust like cirrus scudding earth only lighter.
Where the freeway leaps impossibly skyward
like an inexpressible sentiment (I miss you).
— Packing to ship the grandkids back east
six varieties of citrus.
The revenant as though he kept secrets
behind sunglasses takes the amnesiac waters.
Sun, triumphant, muscled between clouds,
heat for a moment the nearness we weep for.
I stay close to the water,
you stay close to the shore.
Equations
The moon isn't looking for solutions.
She's grown accustomed
to partialities,
that accretion
of absence, her black scarves
plucked from the top hat
one by one.
Then a miraculous
cumulus, removeless
completion.
Stoic mathematician,
efficient wizard,
reveal your secrets.
A lover
is going, some lover is always
going. Such curious
quadratics that
will not leave me whole.
Chemistry
Having lived with the lightning,
the arson was easy. Aftermath
and a few chuckles for the seriousness
assumed by firemen and witnesses.
What were you expecting, a tango
for breakfast among the torched remnants,
sparks assessed by duration and length?
I go with it. I'm easy.
Dropped from the sky
by a glider bearing brimstone,
original oracle. Have a heart,
I said — take two, they're flexible.
Fold to a crumb in your pocket,
but love is like that. An expanding
molecule when you need it. Oxygen
odorless and tasteless but less
essential. Do we buy this
periodic table giving the lie
elements are orderly
when we take the blank spots
to our hearts — a pale implosion,
an amplitude given — as love
lies down among us, becoming
wonder and fire, levitating mass.
(c) 1996 by Karen Volkman . All rights reserved.
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