SANTO DOMINGO
In the crypt with Columbus
in the crypt with Giovanni
of Genoa, the diaspora driven Jew;
watching flecks of the cathedral floor
jade-eyed and mica afraid
yawning down brown the abyss, his skeletal coffin
thin accae wood,
phlegm coloured
flamed ointment
of the saints
in holy water
bridging the little centuries.
2
Serpentine heavens
in coiled stars
heaving like passion fruit
hung down piano wire.
3
Meteors douse the light
of black stems,
eye holes cut of old Spanish
sailors; thin ghosts
plundering night.
4
Melange tableaux
peut-étre les étoiles
sont oiseaux.
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WHITE CHINA PLATES I
The moon hummed like a refrigerator,
light thru shadows
--the solitude of dusk closing in;
black scars visible across
the moon's face shaped like
mountainous hands, all
silent, the occasional leaf rustling.
2
My fork at plate's edge listening,
listening to the haunting one eye
on the staircase wall white
as the numb light outside palest night.
Caught off-guard, the musty settee
and armchair acting as hallucinogen
to the nostril, the calendar of events
playing ghostly tag with sheer curtains
hovering, shroud-like, on the family Bible
big and brown as the Lord's foot stool.
3
The unravelling tale slowly much as
thick yarn with a kitten
batting it, one event at a time
in sepulchre movement down a
linoleum floor. Two twins burning,
fever scalded in frigid water only
shock setting in, dying to join
the black creek water from which
her unwilling buckets borrowed
this liquid crucifixion and bitter vinegar.
4
Or the drive-house door, silent in precision,
unseen hands before marauding
hoofs in unison dark from windows' edge
to better hear little poke of
sleigh bells or harness rattling grim
with a sick man's cough.
5
This admission of spectral animals
somehow more unsettling than
the young woman next combing her
hair at the foot of the bed scaring
the daylights out of me picturing
the whereabouts of stockinged feet,
these tricksters from another world;
drum and kettle corps gypsy fife
with harbinger doom to rasp of
falling broom--
old and yellow silky straw witch's hair--
and a cat dark
as the Devil's very bread.
[12]
WHITE CHINA PLATES II
You could have driven
a pick-up truck
thru spokes of that moon, so big and radiant
this upended water chestnut--
ground mist weeping
in the shadows
flutter of an old woman's shawl,
the clammy smell like
a child's fingers to the face,
a little unsettling
crickets and dew in brigades
running tears on the old
shoe leather.
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