are you as awake as I am, will you pat my head or
something. Stealing horses means never having to ask
to be asked what you’re thinking. Like now, for example,
when all I can think of is this neighborhood boy named
Morris, the one I can see from my window at night;
he asked me today what the horse’s name was
and I said I’m afraid to name him in case he dies
and the boy said, It’s like in those books with dogs
where you know something bad will happen and
I said, Exactly. He asked if we could go for a ride.
This is a stolen horse, I said, possibly from upstate.
I said I didn’t know if it would be safe, but I
invited him up to my fire escape and we let our legs
hang off the edge and watched the ferryboats
in the harbor until dusk and the water darkened.
Have you always lived on this island?, I said,
pretending I didn’t see he had a bruise on his arm,
and Morris said, I have a bruise on my arm, and I
said, Can I do anything?, and he said, When you’re
at the museum are you ever afraid of falling
through the railings they have around the balconies?
I nodded. There is a cautionary tale about a woman
and a boy who comes to her birthday party to tell her
he is her husband who died in the park and by the time
she believes him he says nevermind. Morris, I said,
I think terrible thoughts about those that I love.
EURYDICE
i
In Philadelphia, a dying woman wants to know
a seven letter word for “don’t look back.”
Does it have to be in English?, her daughter
asks. Why, she says, what are you thinking?
I think it is seventy degrees in Alaska today.
Last night I went to a party to find a lawyer
to support me for the next thirty-seven years or so
or, if not a lawyer, at least someone to spend all these
relentless hours with me while I measure the rising
temperature of the sea. Do you want to know
what I do with these measurements?, I asked
one of my prospects. He didn’t say he didn’t, so
I told him I tear them into tiny pieces and make
papier-mâché masks of all my friends which end
up looking more like ducks or bears than people faces,
but at least I am doing my part in all this.
He said, I’m not actually a lawyer. I run a hotline
for people who live alone. You can call in the morning
and tell your dream to a machine. I can?, I said. Sure,
he said, and that’s when I knew who to follow.
ii
This book I’m reading says I should set one small goal each day.
Yesterday I got out of bed like there was no tomorrow.
Today I may call you just to hear how you answer.
This book says I shouldn’t have unrealistic expectations,
like the woman in the parable of the woman who was killed
by the serpent on her wedding day did. One day
she was running happily through a meadow and she thought
her whole life would be just like that, a handful of violets,
but as we know now anything that is too good to be true
is probably about to be bit by a serpent. Her husband
followed her to the underworld but couldn’t bring her back,
didn’t trust she’d follow. It was like she wanted to stay.
But I plan on leaving. I have been completing the last
of the crossword puzzles and taking a lot of hot baths.
I would love to come back as a faucet. Or a radiator or an ice
cube tray shaped like a dozen little fish. Everybody loves those.
But meanwhile I will follow you back from wherever
you find me. In the deepest valley. At the dreadful shore.
At the end of the world I want to be in Reykjavik together,
watching the long dark night break down our door.
II
Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur.
Horace
CHOOSE YOUR OWN CANADIAN WILDERNESS
My favorite book is the one with the woman
who wears a balaclava every time she goes
under the viaduct because it’s Canada, and
because she’s married to a man who loves
under the viaduct, she would lose everything;
more than that, she would lose the end of the story
he began. Il était une fois, he said, there are rugs
made by children who go blind and turn
to crime, and/or rescuing sacrificial virgins
from the palace the night before the sacrifice.
Turn one page if you want to be the woman,
listening to the story, but you’ll have to
keep the hat on. Turn three if you’d rather
be a girl alone in a bed, waiting. I was
always that girl: you’re alone and
they’ve already cut out your tongue
and in the morning they’ll take you
to the top of a high hill, so what can you
do but follow the blind boy, watch
as he puts the body of the strangled guard
in your bed, in your place, follow as he leads
you through the air ventilation system and over
the palace walls? I never chose any other way
because what could the woman do but love him
and listen to a story that wasn’t about her.
After you get over the walls you run
through the darkness, the darkness that isn’t
darkness to the blind boy because of his blindness,
the silent darkness to you who can’t describe it,
you run until you turn the page, but then instead
of safety, a valley, the woman under the viaduct
puts her skirt on and goes back home and you think
you’ve ended up in the wrong story, but months later
she gets a phone call saying the man was killed
in the Spanish Civil War and that’s the end
because the only person who knows
what happened to you is dead.
THE FORBIDDEN CHAMBER
There are things you do when left
alone you wouldn’t otherwise do, like
leave the house without your phone or
marry someone you’ll wish would leave you
later or throw a party like in the ancient legend
of the call girl who falls in love with a Fabergé egg
instead of her young employer. In this tale, she
steals it from the mantel of his Glencoe mansion
and carries it in her smooth, white hands
while she looks for hidden rooms to enter.
It is apparent how anyone could love her
forever if she didn’t cost his parents so much
money. I’ll be late for school, the guy says, please
be gone when I get home. There are things
you can do if you look like Rebecca De Mornay,
including do whatever you want, which means
stumbling upon a room she shouldn’t ever see,
where the master of the house keeps an armoire
full of limbs of all the girls that came
before her and she drops the egg, which doesn’t
shatter, but then the blood won’t come off and
what is she supposed to do? He’ll kill her, too.
No matter what she does he’ll kill her, too,
and this is not only true of legends, but
als
o true of life: if you’re pretty, if you go
where you’re not supposed to, looking for things
not meant for your eyes, then you will have to explain
the blood on your hands somehow or else
have a few brothers to break down the door
when you are kneeling on an expensive rug
some day, and there is a famous movie star
standing above you with a great big knife.
EPISTOLAPHOBIA
Is one of the symptoms remembering the ghosts
one has seen? I am not going to sign my name
to this postcard because who knows whose eyes
will see it besides yours and you should know
who is in Mogadishu right now and who is not.
The passwords to my accounts are hidden
somewhere in the following true story.
When I was fourteen, my father promised
me to a man who lived in the forest.
I never went to his cabin; he always came
to mine. When he asked me why I never came
I said I did not know the way and so
he tied a rope to all the trees and asked my father
to see that I followed it. Sometimes we put ourselves
in danger just to live and tell about it.
And sometimes we put ourselves in danger
because our fathers betroth us to murderers.
When I finally found the house no one was home
so I hid and I waited. Blood as red as apples,
apples as red as blood, skin as white as snow,
snow as red as blood: no one has seen what I
have. My betrothed came home with some men
and a girl and I still have her finger to prove it.
(Is one of the symptoms a constant dull ache?
Don’t answer that; I don’t have an address.)
I ran out of his house when he fell asleep
and I kept her finger under my pillow and I did
not tell what I had seen. Sometimes we
are so close to running, but we do not;
we’d rather sleep on a piece of a body
than steal a boat in the middle of a moonless
night and sail to the northern country where
the people assume you’ve done no wrong,
but if you have done wrong, they forgive you,
always, and maybe one of them forgives you more
than the others, and he takes you on long walks
in shady arbors and you want to tell him how
much you like his sweater, but ever since
the forest you’ve been mute, so you write
how much you like his sweater with a stick
in the ground and he gives it to you
off his back. Then you start to write all
that’s ever happened to you, but
the best parts disappear into the grass
and he doesn’t give you anything else, but
he does say that maybe you should run away
and you think he means he will come with,
but when the stars are all out
and he’s still not at the pier to meet you, you sail
from that barren land without him
and send letters to show you forgive him
for staying. Is one of the symptoms a feeling
like you’ve been here before? I have not
been to a place yet that was not somehow familiar.
This is the end. The sun is just coming up
over the sea. In the desert they dream of water
and snow-capped volcanoes. I dream of amnesia.
IF YOU SEE THEM TELL THEM I’M STRANDED
In the play everyone thought he was a Croat
because he said his girlfriend bled to death
in his arms, but when they re-enacted her death
it was a convenience store robbery. Can you imagine
being so disheartened? I can imagine bleeding to death
in someone’s arms. You reminded me of my husband
just then, who has the same name as your friend.
Before we could marry, Raul traveled to Djibouti
and toiled in my father’s salt fields for seven years.
For seven years we are on the sea but we are thirsty.
For seven years we ride our camels at dusk
across the desolation. How do I know you love me?
How do I know that when I sleep you don’t write
letters to someone who can read them? Raul says
there is no wasteland he wouldn’t cross barefoot
if I was crying on the other side: for seven years
we have no idea what’s going on. How could we
have known, in the bliss of such tranquility,
the terrible awfulness which would befall us?
You tell me. At the end of seven years we marry
beneath a canopy of some breathtaking rocks; I
think of what a good story this will be for our children:
at the altar I said I love you and your father said,
How do I know? I said, the life expectancy here
is pretty low, Raul. My father told him not to
raise his voice at me and I removed my veil.
Let us dance, I said, until all the stars are out,
and we did, and that was the last night I saw him.
All I’ve ever wanted is to ask the same question.
To answer he sends me sealed, empty envelopes.
HOW TO READ THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF THE PHARAOHS
I am afraid that if they build a sarcophagus
exactly to your measurements and then
invite you to a party, the sarcophagus
will be there and you will climb inside
and fit and then they’ll shut the lid
and throw you into the river and you
will drown and what will I do then?
I couldn’t sleep alone after I saw the movie
about the chariots and bloody ostrich hunts,
in which one man kills his brother and the wife
of the dead one has to wander around the desert
until she has picked up every piece of his body
and put them back together with the magic
tricks she knows. He doesn’t live, but
he does get to go to the underworld, and the rest
of the movie is all about her life as a priestess
because when she asked if she could go with
him he said no, but I know that if I put you
back together I would follow you
to the underworld even if you said
you didn’t want me to, even if you said
there were not enough seats in your chariot
or riverboat or rickshaw because when two
people spend as much time together in a small,
enclosed space such as we have in this one,
they will follow each other to future small,
enclosed spaces. This is a pretty long book
inscription, but when you leave I want you
to keep this with you at all times, in case
you need a curse, a lament, a mirage
or incantation. To speak the name of the dead
is to make them live again. I will never forget
when I was just your sister in the acacia
tree of our childhood and at night the chariots
and thrones and arrows and birds and twins
in the stars foretold our future ruin. I’ve heard
it said that he who loves you swallows stones
for you while your enemy waits for you
to birth a son to avenge his father’s death
by causing a tempest to flood the earth.
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EVERYTHING, SAY IT WITH CONCRETE
I have been lost before, but not with this many broken bones,
and I had a brighter torch. If you were l
ying in wait in a cave
like I am, right now, in the darkness, and you didn’t know
when the next sandstorm would be, and you didn’t know
if the next morning the war would start, and you didn’t
know how long your torch would last, would you still
write letters with your only hand that wasn’t useless?
Yes. And let’s say that at this point you still believe
that the person who has promised to come back
for you is coming. Let’s say you haven’t started
to wonder about your flare gun yet and what
it’s good for inside the cave. Can anyone ever
foresee that they will end up like this, in love
with a faceless, amnesiac cartographer?
I have learned from the Sahara the necessity
of white dresses and small airplanes. They didn’t
think I belonged, but I waited my whole life to see
the ancient drawings of the ancient people swimming
in the ancient place. I was not in Italy, swinging
from a chapel ceiling. I was not in Cairo, bathing
in a clawfoot tub, because that hadn’t happened
yet. I was just in love with the one person I wasn’t allowed:
you, who I write letters to while I hemorrhage to death
in a place that no one knows exists. It is not on any map.
The map has not been made. I am starting to think that
the only way I’ll ever be found is if you, the cartographer,
trade your topographical secrets, your photographs, your
name, to the Nazis in exchange for a jeep. Please. The light
is fading. If you can’t tell, the picture I drew in the corner
is of a scorpion in an amulet on a chain I wear under my dress