77 Spirituality poems

I don't know how it happened, but I fell— and I was immense, one dislocated arm wedged between two buildings. I felt some ribs had broken, perhaps a broken neck, too; I couldn't speak. My dress caught bunched about my thighs, and where my glasses shattered there'd spread something like a seacoast, or maybe it was a port. Where my hair tangled with power lines I felt a hot puddle of blood. I must have passed out, but when I woke, a crew of about fifty was building a winding stairway beside my breast and buttressing a platform on my sternum. I heard, as through cotton, the noise of hammers, circular saws, laughter, and some radio droning songs about love. Out the corner of one eye (I could open one eye a bit) I saw my pocketbook, its contents scattered, my lipstick's toppled silo glinting out of reach. And then, waving a tiny flashlight, a man entered my ear. I felt his boots sloshing the blood trickling there. He never came out. So some went looking, with flares, dogs, dynamite even: they burst my middle ear and found my skull, its cavern crammed with dark matter like a cross between a fungus and a cloud. They never found his body, though. And they never found or tried to find an explanation, I think, for me; they didn't seem to need one. Even now my legs subdue that dangerous sea, the water bright enough to cut the skin, where a lighthouse, perched on the tip of my great toe, each eight seconds rolls another flawless pearl across the waves. It keeps most ships from wrecking against my feet. On clear days, people stand beside the light; they watch the waves' blue heads slip up and down and scan for landmarks on the facing shore.

"Come and hire me," I cried, while in the morning I was walking on the stone-paved road. Sword in hand, the King came in his chariot. He held my hand and said, "I will hire you with my power." But his power counted for nought, and he went away in his chariot. In the heat of the midday the houses stood with shut doors. I wandered along the crooked lane. An old man came out with his bag of gold. He pondered and said, "I will hire you with my money." He weighed his coins one by one, but I turned away. It was evening. The garden hedge was all aflower. The fair maid came out and said, "I will hire you with a smile." Her smile paled and melted into tears, and she went back alone into the dark. The sun glistened on the sand, and the sea waves broke waywardly. A child sat playing with shells. He raised his head and seemed to know me, and said, "I hire you with nothing." From thenceforward that bargain struck in child's play made me a free man.

Let us gather in a flourishing way with sunluz grains abriendo los cantos que cargamos cada día en el young pasto nuestro cuerpo para regalar y dar feliz perlas pearls of corn flowing árboles de vida en las cuatro esquinas let us gather in a flourishing way contentos llenos de fuerza to vida giving nacimientos to fragrant ríos dulces frescos verdes turquoise strong carne de nuestros hijos rainbows let us gather in a flourishing way en la luz y en la carne of our heart to toil tranquilos in fields of blossoms juntos to stretch los brazos tranquilos with the rain en la mañana temprana estrella on our forehead cielo de calor and wisdom to meet us where we toil siempre in the garden of our struggle and joy let us offer our hearts a saludar our águila rising freedom a celebrar woven brazos branches ramas piedras nopales plumas piercing bursting figs and aguacates ripe mariposa fields and mares claros of our face to breathe todos en el camino blessing seeds to give to grow maiztlán en las manos de nuestro amor

The bear stopped dancing & unscrewed his head. He held it upside-down in the dusk. She reached into her pouch for a copper piece, but instead pulled out the silvery piece she’d been saving for some special occasion. A limited issue, stamped on one side with a profile of the prince; on the other side a water wheel did not spin. It glowed in her hand. Her hand grew heavy with it, & the salts, & the bittersome oils of her hand. Was this the occasion? The others were there with their fists in their pouches & the weary bear held out his head as if it were an offering or an object lesson. It was neither. It was ripped, with russet handfuls of animals’ hair pasted on & a secret eye slit recessed in its open maw. The wild old man in the bear suit parted his lips & out came a snatch of extinct birdsong. The musicians clapped. He’d learned it as a boy growing up in the mist-proud interior where he would call & call until the violet males in a frenzy swooped into his breathtaking nets.

Little green involute fronds of fern at creekside. And the sinewy clear water rushing over creekstone of the palest amber, veined with a darker gold, thinnest lines of gold rivering through the amber like—ah, now we come to it.We were not put on earth, the old man said, he was hacking into the crust of a sourdough half loaf in his vehement, impatient way with an old horn-handled knife,to express ourselves. I knew he had seen whole cities leveled: also that there had been a time of shame for him, outskirts of a ruined town, half Baroque, half Greek Revival, pediments of Flora and Hygeia from a brief eighteenth-century health spa boom lying on the streets in broken chunks and dogs scavenging among them. His one act of courage then had been to drop pieces of bread or chocolate, as others did, where a fugitive family of Jews was rumored to be hiding.I never raised my voice, of course, none of us did.

My eyes are on yours Looking for my body in the dark pools of your pupils And my mind is in a dark suburban town Where the milkman delivers clanking bottles To the homes of disenchanted Gen Xers. You label me an old soul but I digress. I am the broken bones you find on a beach On your lonely vacation, too worn down to Provide an exact time frame. Ageless. I could have been lying dormant as An existential crisis since the late seventies When you made a suicide pact with the neighbor You would never see again Or preceding the birth of the universe. Buddhists say that there is a source of And path out of suffering. But they do not know, do not say How to save yourself from a cycle of Emotional disconnect, of perpetual floating On the sands of time, How to embrace introspection’s anchor Like a long-lost brother. Untitled, 2014 by Minna Gilligan

Little Tokyo bar— ladies night, smoky gauze balcony, whispering. Tommy Becker, makes up words to “La Bamba”—request by Hard Jackson, mechanic on the left side of Paulie, oldies dancer, glowing with everything inside of her, shattered remembrances, healed in lavender nail polish, the jagged fingernail tapping. So play it hard above this floor, this velvet desert. I want the Titian ochre yeast of winter, keyboard man, fix your eyes on my eyes and tell me, handsome, how long will I live? How many double-fisted desires, crushed letters, will I lift in this terrain? And this rumbling sleeve, this ironed flint of inquisitions and imaginary executors, where shall I strike, what proud stones? Will this fauna open for me, ever, this fuzz, anointed beak inside the bartender’s mirrors, etched doves, a cautious spiral Harley tank, hissing, this Indian bead choker on Rita’s neck? How long shall we remain as wavy reflections, imitators of our own jacket’s frown? Who shall awaken first? Margo Fitzer, the waitress? I will say, Queen Margo, sing to me stoic princess of slavering hearts, three faint lines creased on your satin belly, toss our planet onto your umber lacquer tray, too empty now; make the earth spin its dog rhapsody, erotic through this silvery off-ramp and flake, unfurl. We tumble across this raceway in honey-glazed traces, our arms ahead, the hands flying to Ricky’s Ice Cream Parlour, outside. I want to own one someday, maybe on Thirty-Second Street. You will see me in my gelled waved hair, my busy wrists—so fast, a clown’s resolute gloves, dipping faster than finger painting—except I’d be stirring milk and the chocolate foam of love, churning, burning this sweet spirit, more uncertain, than the celestial sheaths above the prairie frost. See the boy coming, they chide, leaning, how he crosses his legs, his eyes dreaming, sideburns just shaved clean. He weighs the sour slate on his father’s breath; perfume, fortune, cards left on the bleeding table. Milo Wilkens, drummer at the curve, strokes his nipples with his arms as he hits the high hat. Somewhere in the back rooms, I know, a shrine, orange sponge cushions, two toilets and a wire wound wicker box, to leave flowers, occasional offerings by the Johnson County dudes, detasselers in jersey ties. Talk no more, enjoy. Darling singer, let your starry blouse sway me, steal this fresh peach half from its amber juice; I want the moon in this nectar, too. The flashing cymbals, feverish. Who can strike a votive candle, love, or sleep in this electronic night? Just listen to the two-part harmony, laughter, peeling beyond the cemetery, beyond the Iowa river—where the spike hat rooster bristles his tiny ears, bows his head, and sips from the dark canister under the carved pearl-stone. And then, returns. Let us drink, salute the bright spokes of meal, the dying wands of river blossoms, grandmother’s sacred hair; listen, her soprano owl, her bluish melody, so thin. Another glass please, we shall dance once again, our eyebrows smearing against each other’s cheekbones, loud with a Midwest sweat, a cantata from the crosshatch amp, click it. Click it, for wild kind rain, forgiving seasons, for the blushed bread of our shoulders and thighs, this night, everyone is here. Even Jeff Yoder came all the way from Illinois, to fill a bucket with passion, ruffled, thick. O sax player with a jail needle tattoo, leap onto this wet pavement, call my lonesome tempest heart, its buried mother’s kiss, bless us in staccato, with quivers of oak branch greenness, and sparrow longings riff over this brutal sky, give us your bell filled, conjure your tropic, our lover’s breath. Blues bar dancers, jangling gold popcorn, chord makers, opal-eyed Suzie in a flannel shirt; we beckon the spark, the flaring this lost body to live.

Wolbe dich, Welt: Wenn die Totenmuschel heranschwimmt, will es hier läuten. Vault over, world: when the seashell of death washes up there will be a knelling. —Paul Celan, Stimmen (Voices) Death knocks all night at my door. The soul answers, and runs from the water in my throat. Water will sustain me when I climb the steep hill that leads to a now familiar place. I began, even as a child, to learn water's order, and, as I grew intact, the feel of its warmth in a new sponge, of its weight in a virgin towel. I have earned my wine in another's misery, when rum bathed a sealed throat and cast its seal on the ground. I will be bound, to the one who leads me away, by the ornaments on my wrists, the gold dust in my ears, below my eye and tied to my loincloth in a leather pouch. They dress me now in my best cloth, and fold my hands, adorned with silk, against my left cheek. Gold lies with me on my left side. Gold has become the color of distance, and of your sorrow. Sorrow lies, red clay on my brow. Red pepper caresses my temples. I am adorned in the russet-brown message the soul brings from its coming-to-be. There is a silken despair in my body that grief shakes from it, a cat's voice, controlled by palm wine and a widow's passion. It is time to feed the soul —a hen, eggs, mashed yams— and encourage the thirst resting near the right hand I see before me. Always I think of death. I cannot eat. I walk in sadness, and I die. Yet life is the invocation sealed in the coffin, and will walk through our wall, passing and passing and passing, until it is set down, to be lifted from this body's habitation. I now assume the widow's pot, the lamp that will lead me through solitude, to the edge of my husband's journey. I hold three stones upon my head, darkness I will release when I run from the dead, with my eyes turned away toward another light. This is the day of rising. A hut sits in the bush, sheltered by summe, standing on four forked ends. We have prepared for the soul's feast with pestle, mortar, a strainer, three hearthstones, a new pot and new spoon. Someone has stripped the hut's body and dressed it with the edowa. Now, when the wine speaks and the fire has lifted its voice, the dead will be clothed in hair, the signs of our grief. Sun closes down on an intensity of ghosts. It is time to close the path. It is time for the snail's pace of coming again into life, with the world swept clean, the crying done, and our ordinary garments decent in the dead one's eyes.

It wasn't holy so let us not praise gods. Let us not look to them for bread, nor the cup that changed water to wine. Let us look to the bend of the road that reaches. A silver blur across the skyline, woman standing on the farm. In her grasp, the shine that is seed, that is beginning. She will work the earth, bounty in the vault of cosmos above her, heat lightning that lassoes in its manic current. Man never existed but to invite danger. Loveless one. There was once an army of men, saluting from bayonet to bomb. They were expert at sabotage, hand combat. You stop the clock in your paltry chest. The one that says choose, choose. Wind that desired backward. Ring the alarm. When you wake, no more pain. A mirror like a window looking out. What can your past now say to you that has never been said before? What of that clock that forbade you to move forward. What of the clock that asked for nothing but passage, the minutes careening into you like a fitful arrow. What of the clock that summoned nothing, not even mercy. Once you tired of wanting, a face to break, you started the clock again.

The healer said to me:it worked because you thought it would. I let him palm my belly and chest; sometimes he shook and closed his eyes. Inches above my skin, he'd sweep his hands like smoothing sheets I couldn't see. I left our bed for years when I was sick. I understood our children then: bed meant missing out; bed felt like punishment. Now I sleep best at the edge—where the healer sat to rest. Your hand reches for my hip, holds on. Our children's mouths sigh open in the dark. They're not surprised: the healer touched me, and it worked. They've seen magicians — beneath the sheet that's pulled away, something's always gone.