sam taylor
[ dancing of our own erasure ]
And from the missing text of memory
what words float up to hue the surface
or are hauled by our wreck-divers back—splintered
mast-like arms, heart keel and anchor,
salvage wreck and savage savior—
is anybody’s guess? With eyes that once were pearls
glow brighter in the unremembered black
and bend the pitch of what our heart first sanguine saw
toward a tuning broadcast maritime and undercover
the keening of the kelp’s slow-motion dance
the ocean’s prowl and prowess rising
from our prow’s lilting tough collapse
sea roses and dawn-licked briny dew.
We’re left with what imagination has us do.
Shall I say I saw what happened and can certify
as sure as witness to a shooting, daylight’s breach,
who fell, who ran, and who stood idly by,
while all the centuries wheeled safely out of reach, I
who am just the most common weedy floating up
bobbing in danger’s bristling combed white blouse
a memory of one lost inside a memory
of salt riffing on the ocean’s schizophrenic tongue
reconfigured as a journey or a lesson won.
A memory of one strapped upon a memory,
bundled round the irritant to form a jewel.
Those our eyes that once were pearls.
Desiring disaster to forestall a clean dissolve,
a myth to dredge up or be dredged up by,
and yet, and yet, something happened, in spite of all
a wind, a wave, a tree, a beach, a palm,
and who came chancing by? A fool, a fool.
With mast-like arms, eyes that once were pearls;
head of a coconut; rattling ocean, secret sky.
Story, strange and powerful, and jittery and true,
and seeming somehow to be ours, or yours, or mine,
while feeling quicker stole—lightning from the blue—
[ revision ]
Those the last days I held
only personal pain
toeing the water’s edge
not quite hearing
the ratcheting cries
or thought they could be cast
as personal failure
rather than cast iron,
contents
on an open flame, snails
sizzling in garlic and butter
and the gathering storm
story in the four directions
casting and recasting its nets
a continent of plastic
the failsafe
measures
of disaster
not to be denied
I thought what I needed was to dance
and it was—but not alone, no
holding a skeleton
like a key
her skull resting on my ribcage
And if a door opened there
it might find us there
standing on a door
of sand, swaying
Buildings like flames rising behind us
Waves crashing around our metatarsals and arches
[ reTurn ]
On days I didn’t go
with her, across the border,
I sat in a whirlpool, overcast
and alone, in a square
of fenced-in concrete
between the motel parking lot
and the strip of fast food joints
that faced the highway
and mooned their backside vents
our way. I remember because
I held a little notebook
out of the water and was
writing things down
from the charred smellcloud
of fryers and the morning
dew burning off semi-
bumpers, trying to make
a poem. It would be interesting
now to know what then
I wrote in the hamburger steam
while my mother sat in a room
of waiting strangers under wall-
mounted 13-inch TVs
that played (on days I was there)
college basketball. The water
was hot and reeked
of chlorine that can bubble up
years later. I’m not sure what I am
more amazed at now
the blind faith in my mind
as a receptacle for lightning
even in the absence
of significant love
or that I viewed art as
a suitable alternative
to the relationships of life.
The jets pressed into my back. I
watched the housekeeper appear
out of one door, make a transaction
with her cart, and disappear
into another. All housekeepers in the world
speak the same language
with their bodies, the sense
there’s no hurry, and no sense
in slowing down either.
I watched her go in and out
the doors, almost better
than the clock she is tied to.
More beautiful certainly.
Closure is not exactly
the word for it. The truly wealthy
might own such a clock. Cuckoo,
the sky opens, and a house-
keeper changes the bedsheets.
Probably, her life is better
on this side of the border.
A painting like that would never
hang in a motel
like this, but it might
over a tree melting, or in a glass
gallery in New York. I don’t feel
any guilt about this now.
I’ve already gotten to the end
of this poem. I am walking back now
with my arms open, spilling the gold
desert from my sunglasses.
Having seen not only
California,
but the bright maraschino cherry
at the end of the world.
[ if you find some
shard of lost
knowledge write it down. if you
find it written
down, bury it ]
The oldest myth
was this:
the mother had a son
who grew to be a man
and became her lover.
Together, they had a son
who grew to be a man
and murdered his father,
her husband,
and became her lover.
Together, they had a son
who murdered his father,
her husband
and became
her lover.
You can see
the revisions, the seams,
the stitches
to make
in the Hollywood
re-release
our Jesus.
And the father and the son
are one.
In the original it is the mother
who never
dies.
[ the book of runes, part VI ]
All that is left now
is this sentence
of the doorway
like the arch of a Greek ruin
where my sister and I stood
our mouths sewed open and our eyes torn shut
I have told myself over and
(This is not about my mother’s naked
over but the sentence is a lie
(Wimbledon on the next day
(Wimbledon was not on
The mangos behind our house
the burgeoning red like an underglaze
flecked by pinks, or a paint job
flaking off.
(Before there was a world, there was a world
The days before my mom had been so happy
swimming, a touch of Daryl Hannah
calves and hips in the wavering underwaterlight
my father had softened like a rock with moss
(The garage door opener stuck on on
and here the little I know of trilobites
seems important
how they would swim
naked, out of their shells defenseless
to meet and mate and make love in an orgiastic rite,
their crusted armor tottering empty on the seafloor.
(The orange cat had a weeping left eye
and this was a sign
What’s the difference between this wall and that?
He bellowed down the hall, and we followed
(The man at Taco Bell was named
Mohammed, and this was a sign
as if joystick driven through corridors of a video game.
Then someone pressed mute inside his brain.
Arms outstretched like giant wings.
So what? Well, if it doesn’t matter
how the four hearts in that house
went up in flames, then it doesn’t matter
(Maybe it doesn’t
how anything anywhere broke anyone ever
(She put the butter knife in his pocket
so she could answer yes on the telephone
without lying
I must have had a poppy.
When I woke, they said the police had come.
(Mom was at the computer building
a wall
They?