Dusk, 15 April
The woman lies down lately expired
on her stomach—but her stomach is empty—
and watches believingly the dust of her own bones
settle on her skin,
sweet-musted and inspired.
Somewhere in the touch is fire.
In the back of her head the rigor of
hot blood leaps retina-wise—
but rubs her eyes
with sheets of stars
and murmurs. She is tired.
She hears the cries through the soil:
galaxies of the hungry on the riverbank
calling, calling
in a mother tongue petrified between her teeth—
get up, phoenix, sings the choir,
ave, ave,
ave—hail—
hail. Like the rain missing her skin
and hitting her bones and gathering in.
She lets a sigh long and gothic
rustle her pools and indoor mires,
and whether now she sleeps toward birth
or corpsetry—that, she thinks,
was never up to me—and she splays her hands
in the blue of her natal ashes.
Dawn, April 21
There were women this morning
picking flowers in the field—
perspiring—for you,
soaking their candlewhite fingers in dew,
and you dreamt through it.
They arrived on aspiring knees
to shake you,
to extricate you from the evening trance
you tasted and savored,
sleeping in the middle of the street—
even as cars squawked
and trains rocked the underworld
and light polluted its way between
your sheets of skin
and fever tore you open—
you let it tear you open.
Roll back the stones, you said,
This year I’ll feel the light of the tomb
on my own bones the way it shone
on the crypt bleached down to the marrow.
On the river they sang in sorrow.
But I saw the way you shivered
gargoyle-grinning, joy-conspiring,
when Easter sank in your soul
and slipped to calm.
Wake up, they said,
He isn’t here. You are bleeding,
you are burning, Notre Dame.
