How heartening and unsettling to see
history wearing the face of family.
Not only heroes, poets, Indian queens,
but tyrants, swindlers, conquistadors
could be close kin, along with their victims.
The master whipping the black servant girl
could be my cousin cursing his chauffeur
or Tía losing patience with her maid—
the same arched brows, the fury in the eyes.
These ghostly resemblances remind me
that our Dominican familia’s not exempt
from all the highs and lows of history.
In museums, I always felt left out
of history with its pale northern face.
The pink-skinned Washington at Valley Forge
or white-wigged Jefferson were not my kin.
Even their blue-eyed wives, their blond children,
their little dogs seemed alien to me.
But now my people hang upon these walls
and history is pressing in on me,
as if to say, ¡Tu tiempo ya llegó!
Become the one you have been waiting for.
ARS POLITICA
I was the daughter who changed overnight
from clingy, thumb in her mouth, a problem child,
always afraid and needing to be soothed
to feisty, elbows-out, watch-out-for-her!
What happened—so the family story goes—
was that I picked up reading and began
to make things up, to take the hurricane
out of the wind, bring back the disappeared,
replace the shanty shacks with palaces,
and turn the beggars loose on my vegetables.
I yearned to write the story of my life
into a book a girl might want to read,
a girl like me, no longer frightened by
the whisperings of terrified adults,
the cries of uncles being rounded up,
the sirens of the death squads racing by
toward a destination I could change
with an eraser or a trick ending.
There had to be a way to make the world
safer, so I could bear to live in it!
This might not be the destiny of art,
to save the uncles, free the prisoners
with a twist of plot, but it’s a start
if Wordsworth had it right, and the child is
father of the man—but just a start.
The inhumanity of our humanity
will not be fixed by metaphor alone.
The plot will fail, the tortured will divulge
our names, our human story end, unless
our art can right what happens in the world.
NAMING THE ANIMALS
Let’s name the animals no longer with us,
except in language: start with the dodo,
the Haitian long-tongued bat, the dwarf emu,
the laughing owl, the eastern buffalo.
And then animals like the nukupuu,
the lorikeet, the broad-faced potoroo,
whose absences don’t sadden me as much
as I can’t put a picture to their names:
two potoroos, say, lounging in their den
with baby potoroos clambering over them.
I think of Adam watching the parade
of just-created animals, their form
still taking shape, so had he touched too hard,
the camel might have had some extra humps,
the colors might have smudged on the peacock,
which wasn’t yet a peacock, but a thing,
a brightly colored, gorgeous, feathered thing
in need of a name—as was the camel,
the marmoset, the deer, the parakeet,
waiting to enter language and be claimed.
But now, we, Adam’s babies, find ourselves
uttering names no one comes up to claim:
no iridescent, billed, web-footed thing
quacks back when we say Leguat’s Gelinote—
in fact, unless we say the name out loud
or write it down, the gelinote is gone.
And so, our language, which singles us out
from dwarf emus, nukupuus, potoroos,
becomes an elegy, as with each loss
our humanness begins to vanish, too.
THE ANIMALS REVIEW PICTURES OF A VANISHED RACE
“Look at this most curious specimen!”
the cricket chirps, holding a photograph
of a line of chorus girls in bathing suits
kicking their legs. “I think it’s more than one,”
the centipede points out. “But yes, they’re odd.”
“Wait till you see the markings on this one!”
the bulldog growls, tossing a black-and-white
of a chain gang digging in their prison stripes.
“No kin to us!” the outraged zebra shouts.
“Observe the evil flatness of their snouts.”
Foxes, flies, penguins, ladybugs, lions—
in short, the whole animal kingdom has come
to celebrate the lucky extinction
of Earth’s worst enemy and take a vote
on whether to elect a new top dog.
“Cease from using species-specific terms!”
the snakes protest. Of course, they’re sensitive,
maligned for generations as the cause
of mankind’s fall. Meanwhile, as next of kin,
the chimps keep bringing up the missing link.
After a No! vote, the animals pile up
the memorabilia of the vanished race—
pictures of kings, ice-skaters, terrorists—
then light the pyre. Not a trace remains
of those who poisoned, ravaged, exploited,
and robbed their common home—or almost none.
A love-struck chimp has sneaked a picture out,
torn from the frontispiece of a book of poems,
and hidden inside a banana peel,
of (possibly?) Emily Dickinson.
WHY DON’T WE EVER SEE JESUS LAUGHING?
Why don’t we ever see Jesus laughing
or cracking a joke or telling a tall tale
that makes his glum disciples hold their sides?
Seldom are they shown smiling. If at all,
it’s Judas with the twisted mouth, that’s how
in famous paintings you can pick him out.
But Jesus—do we ever see him break
into delighted chuckles the first time
he works a miracle and wine pours out
from water pots, saving the wedding day?
Nobody ever laughs in the Bible
except for the pregnant Sarah’s belly laugh
or Yahweh’s Ha! of the know-it-all in Job.
Probably God smiled on the seventh day,
looking down at creation, calling it good.
Let’s hope. But it’s His son I want to see
in stitches, infused with the holy spirit
of the ridiculous, a god made flesh
and full of nonsense, guffawing at the thought
that he is briefly dust and knows he’s dust,
but also immortal! Maybe he smiled
at virgins toweling his feet with their hair
or fumbling Pharisees, but I want much more!
If I were doubting Thomas I would ask
to hear him laugh. Who cares about his wounds!
Loaves and fishes multiplying like rabbits!
Lepers with creamy skin! The lame leaping!
The blind seeing! Lazarus rising up
as if death were a nap! Good news galore!
I might believe him if he smiled more.
ADDISON’S VISION
Addison tells of spending his summer
clearing the farm his family has owned
since the revolutionary war,
acres and acres of overgrown fields—
pastures and hayfields, hedgerows, timberlands—
a big enterprise for an ex–farm boy
turned pastor in a flowing cassock
not handy for plowing. I’ve seen him lift
the bread and wine in pale hands above
the bowing heads of his parishioners.
Now as he celebrates the Eucharist,
I see the chalice turn into an ax,
the handle darkened with his father’s sweat,
and before that, his grandfather’s, on down
the generations until the sad phrase
delivered in the garden comes to mind:
sweat of your brow, which now is Addison’s,
clearing the land so that we see the light
as it first shone on Adam, pruning turned
into a kind of hands-on ministry.
What did he see once the hedgerows were cleared?
The skies opening, divine light beaming down
on distant vistas of a promised land?
Salvation for God’s sweating minister?
No, he saw only what was there to see—
rolling green hills such as a child might draw,
cars moving on a distant road like beads
on an abacus, a neighbor hanging wash:
the earth released and grown so luminous
that he was saved simply by seeing it.
WINTER STORM
It’s snowing hard in the Green Mountains,
I haven’t seen Mount Abe all morning,
just the white blur of an expanding storm
in the distance, while closer by, the town
is a pincushion of flickering lights
prickling through the haze. Hard to believe
the blowing snow is not the fallout from
this deepening depression that descends
and deadens everything. It’s snowing hard
in the pasture below, the sheep are lost
in the commotion of the fleecy air,
so that it takes a leap of more than faith
to trust that they’re still pasturing there.
My husband left in a whirlwind of snow,
as if his car were being whisked away
into some other world, leaving me here
to shovel out the silence on my own.
It’s snowing hard in slanted lines across
the drifting driveway, muted fields,
in no time I’ll be snowbound, no way out
to the small town where friends might take me in
and reassure me I’ve had a bad dream
I’m free to wake up from. It’s snowing hard
for days now in the thicket of my heart
in which no ram appears to stop my hand
from plunging doubt’s knives into what I love
as the snows come down and all my Isaacs die,
every last one of them from lack of faith,
and it keeps snowing until nothing’s left
except the emptiness of the blank page.
THE THERAPIST
He seems tired. (I’m his last appointment.)
Being wise all day probably takes its toll,
having to know but not appear to know
so patients search out answers on their own.
“Right?” I ask him. He shrugs, “If you say so.”
“On the other hand,” he’s fond of saying;
“You tell me what it means,” he grins slyly—
transparent strategies, hoops I’ll leap through
into happiness, if that’s what it takes.
“Ah, happiness,” he sighs, again the grin.
Weekly, we meet. The clinic waiting room
is strewn with cheap toys and old magazines
I never heard of: Working Mother, Self,
and one for kids with guessing games and jokes
none of them reads. One little girl tells me
her older brother’s sick, “and mean,” she adds.
Her frazzled mother scolds her, “Shut your mouth!”
lifting a threatening hand. “Sick!” she repeats
and bursts into giggles, and so do I.
I sober instantly when he appears.
We walk the endless hall. Along the way
the whirring noise machines outside each door
obscure confessions going on inside:
mothers who scold and swat, fathers who drink,
uncles who fondle, lovers who betray—
the whole sad gamut of inhumanity
we practice on each other, which is why
we’ve come here, sick and mean, to heal ourselves.
“Right?” I ask him. He’s not supposed to say
what he knows, if he knows, what we’re doing.
DISAPPEARING
I have slenderized. I have gotten thin,
thin as a wafer, as a piece of string,
a filling, a poor man’s wedding ring.
Undressed of any excess, I blend in,
a blind stitch hidden in the tapestry
of the generations, a reluctant egg
shunning the lavish spray of eager sperm.
Why be a nine-months bother in the womb,
pumped with a bellyful of pretty hopes,
only to be born needy, colicky?
If I make myself small perhaps I’ll fit
in the stingiest fist, the heart that never has
enough to give, the bully who wants it all,
the glutton who piles his plate to avoid the sight
of needy eyes that await what crumbs might fall.
After the feast there’s bound to be a crust
on the master’s plate, a meal I much prefer
to one that requires a toll of gratitude.
Better not compromise the seed of self
And so I hug my body to myself,
pull in my nets, fold and refold my flesh.
What will be left for death if I succeed?
Only a trail of print on a page as clean
as the dinner plate of a goody-goody child.
After the feast of summer comes the fall
with its empty cup. Why mourn the shriveled leaves?
Less and less to belabor or become.
A nibble, a sip, a swallow—and I’m done.
I am disappearing. I am almost gone.
GAINING MY SELF BACK
Muscle on muscle, fat layered on fat:
arms, belly, buttocks, hips, thighs, legs bulge out—
I’m packing the body for return to life!
This is no resurrection from the dead,
but an escape from the anorexic hold
of losses that can’t be helped, but pile up
like roadblocks at the borders of the self.
Each bite scanned, each calorie turned back
as if vigilance over each spoonful could ward off
the bitter taste of an old unhappiness.
I’m getting free! I’m going home! I dream
of piling my plate with seconds, drinking deep
from the cup of whatever’s put in front of me;
filling my life to the brim and above the brim
with all that I ever wanted but never got:
a downpour, not a drizzle; a bonfire,
not a flickering flame. Bring on the feast,
the miracle of multiplying loaves
to feed a multitude of orphan needs
starved by the iron will of discipline.
Wherever I walk, footprints mark the ground.
Branches I brush by rustle. Birdsong stops
at my approach. I’m a human presence now.
Gone are my waif days, waiting in the wings,
my butterfly touch, my pretty satin things,
the beauty of the body vanishing . . .
No more withholding. I am almost hom
e.
Deep in my self, a light has been left on—
as if somebody, knowing I’d return,
has set the table, kept my supper warm.
THAT MOMENT
when astronauts disappear behind the moon
and all contact with them is lost
until they reappear again; or when
firemen enter the burning building
and flames leap out of the hole they entered;
or during wartime as the train pulls out
of the station, a desperate hand waves
from the window, a voice calls out a name,
a voice the named one never hears again,
or when your child merges with a crowd—
those everlasting separations from
the people you love, the places you love,
to which you were intending to return.
But the moment passes; the train arrives;
you enter a new country, fall in love,
marry, and build a house with postcard views
of snow-capped mountains, babbling brooks—
clichés you never knew would feel so good.
But as you look out savoring the scene,
a chain of other mountains rises up,
a ghostly face composes in the clouds,
a loss you never thought you would survive,
but here you are far stronger, more at home
and happier than you ever were before.
Those hard moments that take your breath away,
and literally will do so at the end,
pile up like casualties and treasures, both.
Hold on tight! could be the first commandment
for this life, and the second, Let it go!
Only the empty hand is free to hold.
SIGNS
My friend said what was hardest were the signs
her mother left behind: a favorite dress
misbuttoned on a hanger; library books
covered in paper bags, way overdue;
a flowered cup she’d broken and glued back
crookedly, so the petals didn’t match.
Her mother came to visit every year
and mined the house with madeleines that broke
my friend’s heart every time she pulled open
a cabinet her mother had straightened.