LITMIR.BIZ

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cloak; the headgear of wimple and guimpe;

      veil, cape, tunic; sensible grandmother shoes.

      She wonders: How could she or anyone dance and not

      enter with history? How does gravity, the law of the present,

      perfect the dancer? The stretch at the barre, the leap and lift

      reflexive as religious exercise, condition this moment.

      On pointe, we are all sore-footed pilgrims performing as

      our bloody footprints dry already from dressing room to stage.

      RISK MANAGEMENT

      History’s sculptors released their gritty gods

      and animals, grimace of prayer and chisel,

      avoiding faults. On pedestals

      eroded figures hunch in stone,

      the subjects subdued in museums.

      Hammered and priceless, immortal and harmless,

      none may be rained on, or touched

      by exhaust or imprecation, nor lived among.

      A LONG ENGAGEMENT

      Tickbird sits in Rhino’s ear: trik-quiss, her hiss

      and crackling sets his very horns on edge. She plucks

      and crushes ticks, then sips the opened wound,

      beak pressed to blood, blood the better food.

      But what symbiosis is utterly benign? Who

      wants myth’s arrangement falsified by fact?

      BIOPOIESIS

      for creative writing students

      You wish the ancients’ tricks were so easy still:

      Bury a young bull (which first you’ll have to kill).

      Be sure his horns poke through, above the ground.

      Let pass one month; check back as bees surround

      the stinking mush from which they seem to rise. Alive

      with fresh direction now, they build a hive,

      select their queen, make royal jelly—muse;

      they dance in air a map, or perhaps a ruse.

      The nectar quest will turn their sips to food

      that makes more food to sweeten and do good

      your midnight heart as it weighs a slaughtered bull

      against a swarm against gold drizzled toast. Call

      this sequence “causal fallacy,” post

      hoc, yet between us, isn’t most

      of what we trust a mystery? Our faith

      in one wildly written life revitalizes death.

      HOW IT BEGINS

      At two, you learn to mulch short rows beside the stone fenced orchard.

      Your parents fork then rake through compost, easy in their chores until

      startled by a shadow twitch, your mother ekes out

      the name of your father who, now unfocused, lifts his head, as her keen edge

      guides his gloved hand courageous toward the sunny stripe that parts

      rye grass from granite. One foot long, the dangled snake reveals

      its copper back, its belly private crimson. Toddle a fresh furrow,

      earnest in your boots. You lean in to kiss what you hadn’t known was there.

      Close by, the apple trees hum, your mother’s bees fuss in the petals.

      NEAR THE END

      of the Periodic Table, #79

      The Golden Years do

      bare ghastly elements

      vastly attractive to

      rejuvenating ads:

      face filled in

      by botulinum toxin

      or spackle. Truss,

      sling flab and that

      floppy wobbleneck.

      What droops firms

      by goop, whitening

      for yellow feet and teeth.

      Sallow cheeks sag on

      jaws now jowly,

      hold their own classed by weight

      as gold, we know, is. Atomic

      Number 79. Pronounce aloud

      its symbol, Au. Awww.

      On another table, fill with awe

      your bowl, the late fruit a little

      soft on the surface. A windfall.

      MAY CONTAIN A GEODE

      $5.99 per rock in this bin

      The odds are 80/20. Not every one’s a winner. Each the size

      of your father’s closed hand. History opens like a cave,

      a mind, more rock. Your geo-tool is close. You’ve chosen

      not to open the rock. You already know past the crust

      what you’ve seen in field guides, memoirs, museums. It’s there

      you believe, caught you believe in every closed hand, wave

      or particle, the light just for you undisclosed.

      INEXPRESSIBLY

      Of course that’s how silence reveals itself.

      I want to hear it but there’s the beep

      of a forklift in reverse; there’s the ringing

      in my ears. A bug crashes against my

      daughter’s high frequency curls.

      Refrigerated food breaks down despite the cold

      and there’s the deafening deconstruction

      of this make-do bookmark, this postcard written

      by my mother days before she died. In church

      the interpreter wears solid colors, a curtain

      behind her hands’ deft evocation of God

      whose beguiling privacy unsettles

      the heart, the “lub” addressing its twin,

      the other side of the river

      where women wash work clothes, the shift-change

      siren of sweat released into larger bodies

      of water, where a sister’s hand will slap

      the surface, introduce rhythm by skipping a beat.

      THRESHOLD

      Let a fast place, with one door, enclose thee.

      —Rule of St. Columba

      Atop a wave, a narrow door floats—blue

      against the lake’s

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