Door in the Mountain. Jean Valentine
the fire and the window
hot on the left side sharp on the right
something wrong Born wrong
cleaves to itself deflects you
Still, someone wrote something here in the dirt
and I sip at the word—
The Night Sea
The longing for touch
was what they lived out of
not mainly their bodies
For that friend
we walked inside of the night sea
shedding our skins—
The Shirt
The shirt was going to be red:
he had to have this shirt—no other—
to stay alive, in prison.
We were setting about to cut, and sew,
but the cotton, they said, was sacred
—we had to fold it and give it back to them.
Then, even though you're so much lighter, and it was white,
you gave him yours…
One Foot in the Dark
People forget
Don't forget me
You
the only white head
in the crowd of young men
live oaks
waiting to be let out of the Visiting Area.
A weed green
A weed green
with a black shadow village under it
and then browngray dirt then a browngray stick
stuck on a stone
which has its own black shoah moat to the north
how hungrily life like an o goes after life
Fears: Night Cabin
Snake tick
black widow
brown recluse
—The truck last night on 79
dragging a chain
—A cloud
rounding slowly
at the window
—The wick unlit
curled cold in the kerosene lamp.
so wild
so wild
I didn't notice for a long time
under your ten skins
your skull
—When life
for the fourth time touched my eyes
with mud and spit
and groaned
—Then
I saw your and my fingerbones
outstretching in the thin blue planet water.
I have lived in your face
I have lived in your face.
Have I been you? Your mother? giving you birth
—this pain
whenever I say goodbye to thee
—up to now I always wanted it
but not this
A goldfinch in the rain
A goldfinch in the rain
a broken bird-feeder on the branch above her
its roof an inverted V without any floor
uncradle rocking
In the Visiting Area:
rocking:
not touching
The grain of the wood
The grain of the wood
tidemarks on the beach
galaxies
fingerprints
The spark inside my ribcage
leaping at your voice
under my skin and away in the knuckley powder…
The push or fly
The push or fly of the snow
here in the free woods
Your letter last night
—lost eight weeks in the prison anthrax rules—
and who knows what push/fly
at Avenal—
“…mostly freezing weather
and they don't give you anything warm to wear…”
at Avenal,
if I could,
I would nurse you…as I have,
as you have me, spring weather.
I would be
I would be thick soft fleece
around your shoulders
your ill heart at Avenal
a circle around your head
quiet against the noise, shade from the lights
Avalon
Avalon,
isle of the dead, in the west, where heroes go
after they die—
Avenal
where do your young men go?
hot coal in no one's mouth, dying day by day
to Avenal—
Do you remember?
Do you remember? my mouth black and blue
from your starved mouth—
I didn't know anything. I didn't know I was from
the way life was before…your fire skin
soft as a horse's black muzzle,
soft, soft black hair
of love, white hair on your head
—Now they have muzzled you.
That life, we couldn't stop, the sun went down,
spring snow was coming was coming
Advent Calendar
In the tiny window for December 21st,
the shortest day,
a little soldier, puppet on a stick,
or is the stick his sword? He looks quite gay.
Out my window, the woods: terrarium:
I