Thomas James

When I feel the old hunger coming on, I think of my two great-aunts, A farmer’s daughters, Speaking into the dusk in North Dakota. I imagine the dark baron Riding out of their mouths, Thick-skinned and girded Against disaster, swathed In cuirass and chainmail and a curse. My hunger was theirs Too long ago. It swims in my blood, Groping for a foothold. It is the dark I thrust my tongue against, The wine and the delicate symphony That makes my head tick so exquisitely Tonight. My ladies, My dusky girls, I see you With your bustles puffed up like life preservers, Your needlepoint rose garden, Your George Eliot coiffures, Your flounces gathered like an 1890s valentine. You both took heroin. Your father never noticed. You sprinkled it in your oatmeal, Embroidered doilies with it, Ate it like a last supper At midnight. I know what you meant. There was always the hunger, The death of small things Somewhere in your body, The children that would never Take place in either of you. You were a garden of lost letters. A lust inhabited your veins. My addicts, The village spoke of you. Under your parasols, two rose windows, The world swam with color. Riding the monotonous hills at daybreak, You escaped the indecisions Your blood has handed down To me. You rode your father’s spotted horses As if they might have ferried you Over an edge, a dark mouth in the distance. I see you ride the black hills of my mind, Sidesaddle, gowned in lemon silk, Galloping In your laced-up flesh, completely unaware Of something I inherited, The doubt, The fear, The needle point of speech, The hunger you passed down that I Possess.

To have gold in your back yard and not know it. . . I woke this morning before your dream had shredded And found a curious thing: flowers made of gold, Six-sided—more than that—broken on flagstones, Petals the color of a wedding band. You are sleeping. The morning comes up gold. Perhaps I made those flowers in my head, For I have counted snowflakes in July Blowing across my eyes like bits of calcium, And I have stepped into your dream at night, A stranger there, my body steeped in moonlight. I watched you tremble, washed in all that silver. Love, the stars have fallen into the garden And turned to frost. They have opened like a hand. It is the color that breaks out of the bedsheets. This morning the garden is littered with dry petals As yellow as the page of an old book. I step among them. They are brittle as bone china.

For our own private reasons We live in each other for an hour. Stranger, I take your body and its seasons, Aware the moon has gone a little sour For us. The moon hangs up there like a stone Shaken out of its proper setting. We lie down in each other. We lie down alone and watch the moon’s flawed marble getting Out of hand. What are the dead doing tonight? The padlocks of their tongues embrace the black, Each syllable locked in place, tucked out of sight. Even this moon could never pull them back, Even if it held them in its arms And weighed them down with stones, Took them entirely on their own terms And piled the orchard’s blossom on their bones. I am aware of your body and its dangers. I spread my cloak for you in leafy weather Where other fugitives and other strangers Will put their mouths together.

XXI Dynasty My body holds its shape. The genius is intact. Will I return to Thebes? In that lost country The eucalyptus trees have turned to stone. Once, branches nudged me, dropping swollen blossoms, And passionflowers lit my father’s garden. Is it still there, that place of mottled shadow, The scarlet flowers breathing in the darkness? I remember how I died. It was so simple! One morning the garden faded. My face blacked out. On my left side they made the first incision. They washed my heart and liver in palm wine— My lungs were two dark fruit they stuffed with spices. They smeared my innards with a sticky unguent And sealed them in a crock of alabaster. My brain was next. A pointed instrument Hooked it through my nostrils, strand by strand. A voice swayed over me. I paid no notice. For weeks my body swam in sweet perfume. I came out scoured. I was skin and bone. They lifted me into the sun again And packed my empty skull with cinnamon. They slit my toes; a razor gashed my fingertips. Stitched shut at last, my limbs were chaste and valuable, Stuffed with paste of cloves and wild honey. My eyes were empty, so they filled them up, Inserting little nuggets of obsidian. A basalt scarab wedged between my breasts Replaced the tinny music of my heart. Hands touched my sutures. I was so important! They oiled my pores, rubbing a fragrance in. An amber gum oozed down to soothe my temples. I wanted to sit up. My skin was luminous, Frail as the shadow of an emerald. Before I learned to love myself too much, My body wound itself in spools of linen. Shut in my painted box, I am a precious object. I wear a wooden mask. These are my eyelids, Two flakes of bronze, and here is my new mouth, Chiseled with care, guarding its ruby facets. I will last forever. I am not impatient— My skin will wait to greet its old complexions. I’ll lie here till the world swims back again. When I come home the garden will be budding, White petals breaking open, clusters of night flowers, The far-off music of a tambourine. A boy will pace among the passionflowers, His eyes no longer two bruised surfaces. I’ll know the mouth of my young groom, I’ll touch His hands. Why do people lie to one another?

I In April we will pierce his body. It is March. Snow is dust over the branches. A pony hunches in the orchard. I stand at the frozen mouth of the river, Thinking of you. In the house where you live Frost glitters on the windows Like uncounted pieces of silver. Already they are preparing the wine and the bread. II The field is banked with purple asters And a spill of mustard flowers. The earth has taken on terrible proportions. Out in an unused meadow The wildflowers have already covered The delicate bones of an Indian. Bees are flying across the meadow To a hive under the rafters of the barn. Someone is leading a horse with crippled bones Into the spikes of clover. III Alexander died this morning, Leaving his worldly possessions To the strongest. I watched an empire fade across his lips. They propped him in the sun a while, And then three women came to scour his body Like a continent. I am afraid of what the world will do. Only this afternoon I heard two worms conversing In the shadow of his breastbone. I slipped out of the palace And entered a vein of gillyflowers On the edge of potter’s field. I will not be missed. No one even noticed. IV I have been thinking of the son I would like to have. The leaves have all gone yellow Overnight, wrinkling like hands In the updraught. I drove my car by the creek Because I had nowhere else to go. The milkweed’s delicate closet had been fractured, Filling the air with rumors. Despite all I could do, the sumac Had taken on the color of a mouth. Tonight, I perceive the young girls In my mother’s blood Letting their seed pass by unnoticed, A red nativity. V Last night they dragged the canal For an old man’s body. Now he is singing for a hook Just below water level. A branch of ice is splitting open Across each window, And snow is dismantling the weeds Like the breakable furniture of a boudoir. I have been rereading your letters. It is too cold for a virgin birth to occur Even in the frosty suburbs Of a wildflower. VI I have learned to camouflage myself in church, Masking my body With the body of a saint. Last night frost glazed the face of Mary Magdalene, And snow rode up to the altar windows. Before morning, the sparrows came down To the body of Saint Francis. Now he is upholstered in oak leaves Like a living room chair. This morning we are preparing a crucifixion. I am thinking of you now. With the velvet at my knees And the silverware shining on the altar And the stained glass moving out of focus And the cross veiled in black, I am present for the news of an enormous death. I take the bread on my tongue Like one of Christ’s fingers, And the wine rides through my breast Like a dark hearse. All the while I am thinking of you. An avalanche of white carnations Is drifting across your voice As it drifts across the voices of confession. But the snow keeps whispering of you over and over.

They are skimming the lake with wooden hooks. Where the oak throws its handful of shadows Children are gathering fireflies. I wait in the deep olive flux As their cries ricochet out of the dark. Lights spear the water. I hear the oak speak. It foists its mouthful of sibilants On a sky involved with a stillborn moon, On the stock-still cottages. I lean Into the dark. On tiny splints, One trellised rose is folding back Its shawls. The beacon strikes the lake. Rowboats bob on the thick dark Over my head. My fingers wave Goodbye, remember me. I love This cold, these captive stars. I shake My blanket of shadows. I breathe in: Dark replenishes my two wineskins. My eyes are huge, two washed-out mollusks. Oars fall, a shower of violet spray. When will my hosts deliver me, Tearing me with their wooden hooks? Lights flicker where my live heart kicked. I taste pine gum, they have me hooked. They reel me in, a displaced anchor. The cygnets scatter. I rise, I nod, Wrapped in a jacket of dark weed. I dangle, I am growing pure, I fester on this wooden prong. An angry nail is in my tongue.