Cynthia Cruz

Then, the police arrive — they don’t find me. I’m disguised as a boy in a champagne wig And hid inside the gold rattle of a warm Appalachia wind. Beneath the trash of willow, I am. The sorrow Of  trailer parks and carnie uncles. The poor Girl’s underworld, a weedy thing. The night, With its kingdom of  lanterns and awful blue lark. How we waited, how we hid Like wolves, in the revolving question of a field.

In the middle of the night, father Brought me a falcon. By morning, it ripped the wire and flew the hill Into the highway. When they found me in that car My sleeve stemmed in blood, I didn’t know what it was I was trying to kill. I saw a craft of orphans steaming down the river. They were dressed in white and silent as a séance. It was then I spoke to the bird. Already God is shaking his black seed Back into me.

I did not want my body Spackled in the world’s Black beads and broke Diamonds. What the world Wanted, I did not. Of the things It wanted. The body of Sunday Morning, the warm wine and The blood. The dripping fox Furs dragged through the black New York snow—the parked car, the pearls, To the first pew—the funders, The trustees, the bloat, the red weight of The world. Their faces. I wanted not That. I wanted Saint Francis, the love of His animals. The wolf, broken and bleeding— That was me.

The child is not dead. She is sleeping. Gone from this world Which is broken. The angel of Michael Outside the garden His circle of fire Maddening around the tree. He put the word Back into her: A heavy kind of music. Then she was free. As we all are. All night I stood in the icy wind, Praying for the storm to destroy me. But the wind blew through me Like I was a hologram. If you say I am a mystic, Then fine: I’m a mystic. The trees are not trees, anyway.

Soon the ambassadors from the Netherworld Will begin Their jet-like descent. Death, Disguised inside me, already, As sleaze. Grime and her magnificent seed. Brother Rainer Clutching his Bible, hallucinating helicopters. Brother Rainer, child-like and wrecked. Infamy, and the cosmology of chronic Raveling and unraveling. Or, Displaced insanity. Dirty Cindy, little Glitter of her father’s Spit: invisible, androgynous, a fragment of His, found at the bottom of his dream chest. Draped in my black cape of smut glue and Subterranean, they mistake me for A man in drag in my nasty Boots. Why just look: a manifestation Of stars. Or, appoint me hustler of Brutal Rainer and his kinky noir Scheme: me, at thirteen, on the beach In a candy-striped bikini. In time or out of time, Glamorine. Groom of the Underworld, please Come with me To the discotheque at the end Of the world. Piss- Elegant at the halfway House for the trashed and gone galore. Meet me in the love- Burned orchard Where the beautiful doomed Meet at last.

My brother is still alive and living In Fresno. All day he stares at the dead bodies Of automobiles In his garage. It isn’t a prison He’d wish himself free of. I visit him, Dragging my boxes Of books and awards Behind me. We are walking out of the city Into the white flame of the desert. Not unlike the Desert Fathers walking out into Sinai. My brother carries his briefcase Loaded in icons and dollar bills. He is wearing Larry Levis’s shining Suit and black leather boots. I am wearing a pale gown Of sun-bleached flowers. We are talking About the Resurrection. We are walking dead Into it Leaving the world and its sweet chorus Of horrors behind. There is no city But the city within. No door, but the door To simple wisdom. We walk, dumb As newborns Into the tremendous and endless Blessing.

Food in the underworld, the Death King In his seedy, green nightgown Holding up flowers. The warden of the underworld In her plastic, pink Wheelchair Serving silver trays of Shit and death and black Gelatinous. Birth, the music Reminds me and Will not stop When I turn it off, A warped music box Trapped inside. I repeat what I cannot bear: Chronic repetition. This poem is its own Language. It marks the mind Like a missing memory Marks the body. Then it Changes, makes it invisible. Back form the edge of what Becomes.