Marge and Balthazar are at their cloud watching spot staring up at the sky. Marge has her legs in the air moving them like she is riding an imaginary bike. What are you doing? asks Balthazar — Riding an imaginary bike —Why? You have a real bike right over there. — I don’t know, maybe I am imagining riding a cloud, wouldn’t that be so cool Balthazar, if we could ride a cloud like a bike? — Balthazar starts to imagine all kinds of possibilities. Not me Marge, I would rather have a pet cloud — a pet cloud? — yes and I would name her Cloudette and we could all hang out together and she could sleep above us when its really hot in the summer and give us shade, and she could throw lightning bolts at the skater kids at the bus stop, and if you had a pet cloud you could tell it all your secrets and she might even cry with you and maybe she could hitch a ride with the wind and see if she could find my mother. They both lie there under the fat clouds that are floating over so slow it’s like a cloud circus pitching up tents for the big show. After lying there for a while, Marge turns her head and looks at Balthazar — You know, I think I’d rather just have a cloud bicycle.
I Know
for Linnea
The five fingers of you right hand are an anxious bird trembling against your breast, while the five fingers of your left imitate the unconscious pattering of rain outside the window, as if sending Morse code from a ship at sea, while the palm of your right pressed against my cheek is the fullness of a now remembered dream or is it the open palm of the left holding the startled mourning of my heart that makes me blush & you
coy & my two hands are the hands of a supplicant holding your breast as if in prayer, answered by your ten toes come in from summer, a choir of sun – dust and dirt, while your two eyes; sister mountain lakes, tell each other childhood’s secrets in-between trees and shadows, and just now the music of your one heart is a bell hung from the North star, that sings, that sings me home.
Balthazar 21
xxi.
The moon is like a silverblueballoon that slowly rises into the sky carrying Balthazar with it like one of those string tied letters sent to the wind. Balthazar sits on his bed looking out the window, the same window he has been looking out ever since his father came home from work. The moonlight sneaks through the window startling the cat and then into his room. Mom? (he thinks) is that you? He knows it’s not but…somewhere inside his body, maybe in his young heart already made more of memory than muscle, she’s still here washing dishes, the steam from the sink fogging the window where she draws hearts with the yellow plastic gloved hand and in every heart she ever drew, in the middle of it, she always wrote the letter B.
B pushes his bed closer to the window, spreads the curtains wide and opens it. The moon is bright and fuller than full. The moon is now at every window of every house, and the moon has become so big it fills the whole sky, silvering all the open fields of the world— Balthazar, throws all the bedding to the floor and takes off his shirt. He lies there with the moon so big that the man on the moon gives him a bright kiss— while Balthazar outlines the letter B on the bare skin above his small glowing breast; over and over and over again.
[Say that I am welcomed, that I have gone mad]
After Maria Elena Cruz Varela, for Linnea
Say that I am welcomed, that I have gone mad
that sadness is a country finally conquered
by the fragrance of flowers, that the dawn runs
in circles in my heart like a tiger & will leap
from my hands to grasp her waist one more time. Say
that the history I ransom, with salt & time, is mine
& mine alone. That it is good to be spent, and to blaze
like a match & say to her in my bed, that my name is
the only name that matters, that the sea will find her
wandering in desert, that the falling stars she gathers
will be a gift for her daughter’s hair & tell her that
my heart was born in her gaze, that it is good to set
the caged birds’ free. Say that we have bound our wounds
with light, that we are good, that we are free, that we have paid
our debts & that our entwined bodies have become luminous.
Rewrite of A Foreclosed Moon
for Linnea
I lie in bed & stare at her
robe that hangs blue
on the door. Its flower
print reminding how angry
I was at her – my passion for
us, disquieting my patience.
& now it just feels like something
broke & I don’t know how to fix it.
Sitting in the new silence
of my apartment I can see her
ghost spin round & around
the room & ask it,
“how did we get here?”
How did we get to this dark night?
with its broken streetlamps &
the foreclosed moon? & us separated
by the thin lonely clank of a rusted
tin can blown by an angry wind?
So strange, how one can take
a million steps without thinking
& never fall— something
as simple as one foot in front
of the other, just doing
what we always do
& then that one step
that one step too far,
& now we’re falling
falling in that space
between before
& after
trying to
catch our
balance
reaching
reaching
out for something,
for anything
to hold on too,
—& all it happens
& it all happens so quickly
A Foreclosed Moon
for Linnea
It feels like something
broke and I don’t know
how to fix it or if there’s
anything to fix. Laying
in bed I stare at your
robe that hangs blue
on the door, the flower
print burning into my
eyes. I was so— angry
angry at you; hateful.
When I say hate understand this;
that it is only my passion for you
for us — unhinging my reason -
I didn’t even know
I could
feel that way
toward you.
But all things
in equal measure.
Sitting in my apartment
alone, already seeing your ghost spinning
spinning, spinning — how did we
get here? This dark night with the broken
streetlamp and the foreclosed moon
separated by the lonely sound of an empty
tin can blown by the wind?
so strange, how one can take
a million steps without thinking
and never fall— something
as simple as one foot in front
of the other, just doing
what we always do
and then that one step
that one step too far,
and we’re falling
falling in that space
between before and after
trying to catch our balance
reaching out for something
for something to hold
—and it happens
it
ha
pp
en
s
all
so
fa
st
all so fast.
Come Lie With Me
Come lie with me
in a hammock stretched
between two stars
where we will rock back
and forth to the tides
of an unknown world
far away from the broken
clapboards of this creaking
apartment and its threadbare
dreams.
