Cracks in the Invisible: Poems

II. Sidewalk Chalk

II. Sidewalk Chalk In the days that followed children were always screaming. You could set their hair on fire and, sure enough, they’d start screaming. —James Tate 21 After Grief You’re certain you’ve been hit but keep on running. The pine trees’ shadows stretch like iron bars. You feel dizzy and know you’ll need your cunning To find fresh water and navigate by stars. Before night knits its blanket, you decide To check the wound. You crouch behind a rock. The opening is small; the blood has dried. You pry the bullet out. It starts to talk. 22 Twenty-First-Century Prothalamion Because my parents had successful genes And read the proper toddler magazines, I won cross-country races in my teens. Because police patrolled my neighborhood, Driving the potheads out, I understood And could respect the need for moral good. I read deep books in college, studied quarks And Caravaggio’s violent lights and darks, And kissed your neck one evening as the sparks Flew upward from a bonfire and starred the air. I leaned against you, smelled your wood-smoked hair And held your hand, and knew why I was there: Amino acids, habit, data. Fate. I also felt the need to procreate. That night I chose you, love, to be my mate. 23 Temptation You haven’t been detected. Nothing breaks The jungle’s muggy silence but the shrug Of branches where a silvery gibbon makes A flabbergasting leap. You kneel and tug The laces of your boots. You’re well prepared— So far, so good. No trip-wire deadfall traps Have dropped to crush your skull; you can’t be snared. With your next step, the ground beneath you snaps Open, exposing poison-tipped bamboo Pikes in a pit. Why would they need a guard? They knew you’d come to this. What perfect fakes. Their tra-la-la concealed a trou-de-loup, And you—bamboozled, duped—you take it hard, As only now you realize the stakes. 24 Organic Decomposition Black acts, you blossom from my heart like larkspur Rotting to pieces while more quickly spreading To healthy plots. Your rhizomes, firmly threading Themselves through vertebrae, appear a dark blur On x-rays: ominous, diffuse. In me They start the curled ascent to fertile brains, A garden where they make their ministry Eradicating all divine remains. I wish my sin were that autonomous, A parasite or infestation clearing My name. These shifty metaphors provide Nothing but distance, artistry veneering The single blame with doubleness to hide Intentions hardly so dichotomous. 25 An Anatomy of Autonomy If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me . . . —Othello, V.ii Blue crabs have the ability to sacrifice limbs (called autotomy) in order to avoid capture. Missing limbs are regrown by a process called regeneration. Bitter Crab Disease (BCD) is caused by a blood parasite, Hematodinium perezi, a type of dinoflagellate. —www.bluecrab.info Let us now praise This sidling emblem of The circummotive ways We walk in love: When peril prods It nearer to dismay, Its blurred pereiopods Carry away The crab, whose guard Commences with its gait, A side step not too hard To imitate. Observe it hide The tender commonplace Of its sweet flesh inside A carapace, 26 Or show its dread Of being firmly gripped By lifting a cheliped And brilliant-tipped Chela, or halt Intrepid predators With an abrupt assault; The crab prefers Its privacy, And will not be constrained. Sometimes we like to be Likewise unchained. They’re not all execrable links: sooks mate Just once, suggesting sex Is worth the wait (The same cannot Be said for jimmies, who Without a seemly thought Do whom they do), And in most cases Their mating cycles boast Precopulatory embraces (As well as post-); One might concede During their lusty struggle 27 Even crustaceans need A decent snuggle, Which would imply The worth of a caress Did crabs not also die Of bitterness. The crab’s inimitable in one skill: If seized by any limb, A caught crab will— Rather than lose Its prized autonomy— Inevitably choose Autotomy, And make a break For...