LITMIR.BIZ

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      When the doctor runs out of words and still

      I won’t leave, he latches my shoulder and

      steers me out doors. Where I see his blurred hand,

      through the milk glass, flapping goodbye like a sail

      (& me not griefstruck yet but still amazed: how

      words and names — medicine’s blunt instruments—

      undid me. And the seconds, the half seconds

      it took for him to say those words). For now,

      I’ll just stand in the courtyard, watching bodies

      struggle in then out of one lean shadow

      a tall fir lays across the wet flagstones.

      Before the sun clears the valance of gray trees

      and finds the surgical-supply shop’s window

      and makes the dusty bedpans glint like coins.

Kilned

      I was trying to somehow keep [my early pieces] true to their nature,

      to allow the crudeness to be their beauty. Now I want the lava to

      teach me what it does best.

      STEPHEN LANG

      These days when my legs twitch like hounds under the sheets

      and the eyes are troubled by a drifting fleck —

      I think of him: the artist

      who climbs into the lava runs at Kalapana,

      the only person who has not fled from town

      fearing the advance of basalt tongues.

      He wears no special boots, no special clothes,

      no special breather mask to save him

      from poison fumes. And it is hot, so hot

      the sweat drenches him and shreds his clothes

      as he bends to plunge his shovel

      where the earth’s bile has found its way to surface.

      When he catches fire, he’ll roll in a patch of moss

      then simply rise and carry on. He will scoop

      this pahoehoe, he will think of Pompeii

      and the bodies torqued in final grotesque poses.

      Locals cannot haul away their wooden churches fast enough,

      they call this the wrath of Madame Pele,

      the curse of a life that was so good

      they should have known to meet it with suspicion.

      But this man steps into the dawn and its yellow flames,

      spins each iridescent blue clod in the air

      before spreading it on a smooth rock ledge to study.

      First he tries to see what this catastrophe is saying.

      Then, with a trowel in his broiling hand,

      he works to sculpt it into something human.

Women Who Sleep on Stones

      Women who sleep on stones are like

      brick houses that squat alone in cornfields.

      They look weatherworn, solid, dusty,

      torn screens sloughing from the window frames.

      But at dusk a second-story light is always burning.

      Used to be I loved nothing more

      than spreading my blanket on high granite ledges

      that collect good water in their hollows.

      Stars came close without the trees

      staring and rustling like damp underthings.

      But doesn’t the body foil what it loves best?

      Now my hips creak and their blades are tender.

      I can’t rest on my back for fear of exposing

      my gut to night creatures who might come along

      and rip it open with a beak or hoof.

      And if I sleep on my belly, pinning it down,

      my breasts start puling like baby pigs

      trapped under their slab of torpid mother.

      Dark passes as I shift from side to side

      to side, the blood pooling just above the bone.

      Women who sleep on stones don’t sleep.

      They see the stars moving, the sunrise, the gnats

      rising like a hairnet lifted from a waitress’s head.

      The next day they’re sore all over and glad

      for the ache: that’s how stubborn they are.

Compulsory Travel

      Not yet did we have personalities to interfere

      with what we were: two sisters, two brothers.

      Maybe our parents really were people who walked in the world,

      were mean or kind, but you’d have to prove it to us.

      They were the keepers of money, the signers of report cards,

      the drivers of cars. We had a station wagon.

      Back home we even had a dog, who was fed

      by a neighbor kid while we toured the Jersey shore.

      We waded in the motel pool and clung

      to the edge of the deep end, because we couldn’t swim.

      Maybe that’s why we never went in the ocean, despite

      hours of driving. We could’ve just gone down the block!

      Yet each year we made a ritual of this week

      spent yelling and cursing and swatting each other,

      with none of the analyses we now employ, the past

      used as ammunition, the glosses from our latest therapist.

      Back then a sock in the jaw could set anyone straight.

      On Sunday afternoon, the homeward traffic would grind still

      where the turnpike bottlenecked. My father

      would slam his forehead against the steering wheel,

      start changing lanes and leaning on the horn.

      Without breeze through the window, the car would hold

      our body heat like an iron skillet, skin peeling

      from our burned shoulders as we hurled pretzels

      and gave the finger to kids stopped in cars beside us.

      My mother wouldn’t mention the turn we’d missed

      a few miles back; instead she’d fold the map

      and jam it resolutely in the glove box while we crept on.

      Perhaps this was our finest hour, as the people

      we were becoming took shape and began to emerge:

      the honkers of horns and the givers of fingers.

      After the sun turned red and disappeared, we rolled

      through darkness, wondering if the world knew all its

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