LITMIR.BIZ

      The Last Time I Saw My Daughter’s Eyes, They Were on the Back of a Moth’s Wings

      I’m almost ready to give her up for dead. I tried

      believing she’ll appear someday on a boat from

      downriver where she’s been making a living

      as a dancer who glues yellow feathers to her breasts

      and lets tourists eat maracujá from her navel.

      I tried the easier faith of a gift-bearing God who

      serves the whim of prayer, but all I got was this

      ambitious hope, this heart that hangs upside down

      in my ribs, blind and nocturnal and a glutton for fruit.

      In a past life, I drowned with a rattlesnake wrapped

      around my ankle. In another one, I danced for

      a father’s obedience. In this one, I throw a rope over

      a ceiling beam and let it dangle over my bed. Its abiding

      creak rocks me to sleep where John the Baptist comes

      for me with a basilisk on his shoulders, calls me

      by my maiden name, and says: You have been weighed

       and measured and found wanting stilettos and a lipstick

      named Prima Donna. It’s not true, I try to say,

      but each letter carves itself into a tree and holds

      its blackness like a mirror. I see myself in every word,

      only younger. I wake as libidinous and sincere

      as Caruso in the morning lamenting his lost horse

      on a Victrola. The rope above my bed is gone

      and John the Baptist’s head sits on my chest

      like a wish seeking entrance to a well. Where is she?

      I ask, turning his head over in my hands three times.

      He opens his mouth to let down the flood.

      The

Скачать книгу