Wings
— after Delmira Agustini, Uruguay, 1886-1914
Alas, Dolores,
my mouth once smelled
of burnt coffee and cigarettes.
Garlic juice oozed
from under my nails.
I had no teeth, no hair.
No one loved me.
But I had wings.
My cat,
Azure Vivian,
was also old:
her fur was matted,
her eyes were clouded,
her chest feathered
with dust.
She could barely walk
but she had wings as well.
Each wing was a world,
a universe not yet known.
At night we flew by starlight
over long grass waving,
over cathedrals hewn
from steep cliff faces.
In the mornings,
only we knew.
Then I fell in love
with lethargy —
alas, Dolores, I fell in love
with watching TV in the kitchen.
In the cool dark afternoons,
the TV became a saint
robed in local clothes.
I thought the kitchen was
deliverance, but it was just
a room stinking of burnt coffee
and cigarettes,
where roaches made their
quiet homes
behind dishes
and piles of clothes and mail.
I let forgetfulness
lull me, soothe me.
I dwelled all day
at the table, the TV
in front of me.
All day and into night
I watched.
There were so
many shows.
Asleep, I dreamed
of watching.
Soon my wings
grew small —
Azure Vivian’s too.
All day and into night
I tried to stay them
with my hands.
For months I tried to
stay them.
And then I couldn’t
fit my fingers into the spaces where
they had disappeared.
Then Azure Vivian
disappeared too — the old cat,
the only one who knew.
One day I awoke, alone.
Alas, Dolores,
I was angry because
no one could see my wings.
They were strong as ravens’ claws.
Azure Vivian knew,
and now she’s gone too.
I’m alone in the kitchen
watching television
but content just knowing
that Azure Vivian and I
could fly.
* * * * *
Caryatis
— after Alejandra Pizarnik, Argentina, 1936 -1972, with a phrase by Basho
Clouds are sailing slowly westward, as if in pilgrimage. Like the planets, they are travelers, familiars of an injurious sun.
Bird bones frame the door of the cottage where girls about to be crushed by stones await the sacrifice of their sour clothes. I wait, too, like someone many lifetimes ago, already dead at the beginning of everything.
The healer who cannot die and so heals all waves me in. I port ahead, through bluish vapors of eucalyptus. I knock and ask: Is it true that certain words may restore a forgotten spell? He answers: Here a church was raised up in the rain. And so I cross the threshold.
Inside, a girl is attempting to lift a stone that has already crushed her. Even a corpse is a site of continual epiphany, he says. I listen for the sake of listening, in light of the absence of light. How quiet it is. Minutes pass and become days.
Instruction is given in images: my mother and I bathing together in a tub we filled with our blood. There was sunlight on the other side of a frosted window and waving shadows of green reticulate vessels of leaves — ours, the life which lives by dying. By dint of divination I find coherence in scattered circumstance, in dying of work too heavy for a girl. A girl abandoned perhaps, but also chosen.
To survive is to defy, the healer says. Trade your strange light for a body?
My arms are strong from lifting, I say, but I am tired of being honed by spit.
After a stellium of nostalgia the stone is loosened. I walk out knowing I will no doubt drift away, or list into a river. Any small stirring of water must now shepherd my breath.
* * * * *
Sharon Mesmer on “Wings” and “Caryatis”