“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly, Alice replied very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself, to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”
Size is not stable.
Pity is. Lungs contract
At cooler currents.
Fingers find more suitable
Temperatures
In which to grope.
Wedding rings
Hold fast in winter
Grow loose in spring;
Even doors
Are known to stick
Depending on the weather.
Size is mispronounced
By distance. Quail feathers
Become more
Than a tree; buttons
On a blouse, the moon;
A cup’s rim
Displaces the afternoon,
Becomes a shore
In the minutes’ tide
As fingers touch,
Flesh loosens or enlarges.
At love’s approach
Size is not sure,
Tears are, & where are
The childhoods we outgrew?
What size were they?
Once, in awe,
I would tour
The kitchen, that lumbered
Jungle in afternoons
As huge as sleep.
Turn the spoon
& we are
Upside down. I sit
On my shadow,
& as the day retires
I see my legs grow.
Come not near
I’m not what I seem;
I change with a lens,
Am 5’7”
In a temporary sense.
-9-
I am here
With no sun to prophesy
The way of my becoming;
At the sea of crocodile tears,
I lean with laundry
To the wind’s direction.
Down to the desperate
Mooning cove, I
Draw in the planetary
Fish, the mock turtle
& the mock sun.
Crab & lobster cast
Their shells, brittle
Spoons to hold the tide
The cove inside
Gives back my voice.
A gray shell
Over phosphorescent water
Is this cove.
Here is where the salt glitters.
I am mad as a hatter.
The dollar’s scalpel
Cuts away at my nerve.
I lie down
In the mooning cove
To be trimmed by the waves.
To insects, small sperm
Of my father. The egg
Is a planet & mating
A 9 month plague
To the pure
Design of women’s stomachs,
Until life is spent,
Round, round & rounder.
Sometimes an accident
Pares
A man’s length & cuts
Him short, long bones
Collated by surgery,
Amputated leg, feet gone,
The shears
Open & close; inches trimmed
By a simple haircut,
The child cries. Look away
& close your eyes. I am not
Here.
-10-
A woman uncovers, bathes
In the current & small
Fish glide through her legs.
We do not speak. She is
Beyond where undertow drags,
Where the moon is a shell.
-11-
I’ve yet to find
My breathing room
Except in sleep.
There my mind
Puts on death’s wing.
There delicate wish
Keeps her court. I fling
My self through
Flamingo borders,
Muted embroidery
Of a landscaped Kingdom. Do
I need a passport here?
Work permit? Security
Clearance? May I wear
My clothes the way
I please? I fall
In earnest through
The Freudian hole,
To where fair women lay
At my beck & call.
Here I feel my way.
Each in its singular moment;
Its grave ambushed
By a sudden lark.
None molested or pushed
Into a foreign mold.
Here, marriages hold,
& no mealy mouthed monster lurks
To chase the child back home;
The pepper bell rings
Its entire chromatic scale
As roses do. I fling
My ego down to embrace
Fluorescent shades, the whole
Hyacinth world. My face
Is reflected by a snail’s
House; my sleeping song
Is rubbed & polished,
Hummed by a cricket’s ankle;
Crane’s beak, toad’s head,
& minnow are enlarged
By my dream’s clean spill.
