Chana Bloch

On the crown of his head where the fontanelle pulsed between spongy bones, a bald spot is forming, globed and sleek as a monk’s tonsure. I was the earliest pinch of civilization, the one who laced him into shoe leather when he stumbled into walking upright. “Shoes are unfair to children,” he’d grouse. Through a pane of glass that shivers when the wind kicks up I watch my son walk away. He’s out the door, up the street, around a couple of corners by now. I’m in for life. He trips; my hand flies out; I yank it back.

“Make flour into dough,” she answers, “and fire will turn it into food. Ash is the final abstraction of matter. You can just brush it away.” She tacks a sheet of paper to the wall, dips her hand in a palette of flour and ash, applies the fine soft powders with a fingertip, highlighting in chalk and graphite, blending, blurring with her thumb. Today she is working in seven shades of gray. Outside the door, day lilies in the high flush of summer- about-to-be-fall. Her garden burns red and yellow in the dry August air and is not consumed. Inside, on the studio wall, a heavy particulate smoke thickens and rises. Footsteps grime the snow. The about-to-be-dead line up on the ramp with their boxy suitcases, ashen shoes. When I get too close she yanks me back. She hovers over her creation though she too has a mind to brush against that world and wipe it out.

1 fat is the soul of this flesh. Eat with your hands, slow, you will understand breasts, why everyone adores them—Rubens' great custard nudes—why we can't help sleeping with pillows. The old woman in the park pointed, Is it yours? Her gold eye-teeth gleamed. I bend down, taste the fluted nipples, the elbows, the pads of the feet. Nibble earlobes, dip my tongue in the salt fold of shoulder and throat. Even now he is changing, as if I were licking him thin. 2 he squeezes his eyes tight to hide and blink! he's still here. It's always a surprise. Safety-fat, angel-fat, steal it in mouthfuls, store it away where you save the face that you touched for the last time over and over, your eyes closed so it wouldn't go away. 3 watch him sleeping. Touch the pulse where the bones haven't locked in his damp hair: the navel of dreams. His eyes open for a moment, underwater. His arms drift in the dark as your breath washes over him. Bite one cheek. Again. It's your own life you lean over, greedy, going back for more.

1 FAT is the soul of this flesh. Eat with your hands, slow, you will understand breasts, why everyone adores them—Rubens’ great custard nudes—why we can’t help sleeping with pillows. The old woman in the park pointed, Is it yours? Her gold eye-teeth gleamed. I bend down, taste the fluted nipples, the elbows, the pads of the feet. Nibble earlobes, dip my tongue in the salt fold of shoulder and throat. Even now he is changing, as if I were licking him thin. 2 HE SQUEEZES his eyes tight to hide and blink! he’s still here. It’s always a surprise. Safety-fat, angel-fat, steal it in mouthfuls, store it away where you save the face that you touched for the last time over and over, your eyes closed so it wouldn’t go away. 3 WATCH HIM sleeping. Touch the pulse where the bones haven’t locked in his damp hair: the navel of dreams. His eyes open for a moment, underwater. His arms drift in the dark as your breath washes over him. Bite one cheek. Again. It’s your own life you lean over, greedy, going back for more.

We remember the rabbit when we see the duck, but we cannot experience both at the same time. —E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion What do you remember? When I looked at his streaky glasses, I wanted to leave him.And before that? He stole those cherries for me at midnight. We were walking in the rain and I loved him. And before that? I saw him coming toward me that time at the picnic, edgy, foreign. But you loved him? He sat in his room with the shades drawn, brooding.But you loved him? He gave me a photo of himself at sixteen, diving from the pier. It was summer. His arms outstretched.And before that? His mother was combing his soft curls with her fingers and crying. Crying. Is that what he said? He put on the straw hat and raced me to the barn.What did he tell you?

We remember the rabbit when we see the duck, but we cannot experience both at the same time —E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion WHAT do you remember? When I looked at his streaky glasses, I wanted to leave him.And before that? He stole those cherries for me at midnight. We were walking in the rain and I loved him. And before that? I saw him coming toward me that time at the picnic, edgy, foreign. But you loved him? He sat in his room with the shades drawn, brooding.But you loved him? He gave me a photo of himself at sixteen, diving from the pier. It was summer. His arms outstretched.And before that? His mother was combing his soft curls with her fingers and crying. Crying. Is that what he said? He put on the straw hat and raced me to the barn.What did he tell you? Here’s the dried rose, brown as tobacco. Here’s the letter that I tore and pasted. The book of blank pages with the velvet cover.But do you still love him? When I rub the nap backwards, the colors lift, bristle.What do you mean? Sometimes, when I’m all alone, I find myself stroking it.

Two floors up, at the corner of Hearst and Shattuck, he’s clamped for good in an iron lung. When it’s time to eat he nudges his head a sweaty mile to the edge of the pillow. It takes a while. His brilliant bloodshot light-blue eyes steer me from cupboard to fridge: he would like his chicken burrito cut into bite-size pieces, a bent straw for his glass of water, please. How does the body live its only life in a cage? I watch him compute the distance from bar to bar, and squeeze between them with a violent compression, a fury of bursting free that doesn’t last. His will is a crowbar, angled to pry up the rooted intractable weight of matter. I watch him slyly, I check out the way he does it. He does it. But pain in its absolute privacy weighs what it weighs. I come here to study the soul, posing one question a dozen ways, most of them silent. “If I’m only a body,” he laughs, “I’m up shit creek.” His laugh a gritty eruption of rock, salt and breath. Like me he writes poems but he does it letter by letter on a propped keyboard, the mouth-stick wobbling between his teeth. That kind of speed keeps a poet accountable. He won’t ever say, “The grass is very green” when it’s only green.

Apprehended and held without trial, our friend was sentenced: brain tumor, malignant. Condemned each day to wake and remember. Overnight, a wall sprang up around him, leaving the rest of us outside. Death passed over us this time. We’re still at large. We’re free to get out of bed, start the coffee, open the blinds. The first of the human freedoms. If he’s guilty we must be guilty; we’re all made of the same cup of dust— It’s a blessing, isn’t it? To be able, days at a time, to forget what we are. * These numbered days have a concentrated sweetness that’s pressed from us, the dying man most of all. Today we eat brunch at Chester’s, poached egg on toast, orange juice foaming in frosted glasses. He remembers the summer he packed blood oranges, stripped to the waist, drinking the fresh-squeezed juice in the factory straight from the tap. He cups his left hand under his chin as if to a faucet, laughing. He is scooping sweetness from the belly of death —honey from the lion’s carcass. We sit with our friend and brood on the riddle he sets before us: What is it, this blood honey? *