The Body Wars, and Field

The Body Wars

I walked into the woods bleeding, Ileft the town and mourned.Midnight in Alaska, still light and Iwas alone, walking into the Sitka woods,it had been 1 year since I'd bled, andlonger since I'd fucked anyone, Iwas propelled forward, into the thickness,into the needles and dirt of Sitka spruceand stupidly not even afraid of bear.My father, the person I clung to, neededto stay alive, had died six months before.He was the only one who made sense in my body,and his leaving was the impossible thing.I didn't yet know my own wars and how to name them.So during my father's sickness,when I stopped bleeding, the gynecologist said,well, it's stress, and did Iknow that in World War II, the womenparatroopers stopped having periods?I was stunned by his directness, intensity, earnestness.You are in a war, he said.I didn't know what to do with that.And so I got on a boat to Alaska, theAlaska Marine Highway, slept on the deckuntil I froze, then the shipmen gave mea hanging bunk and slipped mefood from the cafeteria. They said, You cansleep here, but watch out for the bow-thrusters.I had no idea what they meant, until the soundburst open and my berth swayed—andit was time to get off. It was a time of greatchanges, and days later I'm wanderingthe woods at midnight, feeling lost and foundin this Northern place, and it was thereI felt the blood start to move, felt a rising andfalling and the stream down my leg—and I cried in the forest alone, for my beautiful father, gonetoo soon, for myself and all my ignorance:not even knowing my own wars—the ones already fought,or the many to still come.

Field

                after a line by Jack WhiteThe graffitied walls north of Anaheim,then a stop, army-barrack-looking houses,huge compost piles,Fullerton.Amtrak 763 Northbound,trucks, trucks, plugged into walls to unload,and old friends are changing shape.I'm making models of people I used to know—out of coffee and cayenne.What is the opposite of open arms?Earthmovers are fenced in at the trainyard,with trees along the perimeter.Chainlink chainlink, and we're slowingto San Pedro Junction, where compacted trashis truck-size and seagulls sweep the rails.That process of interchange with new peopleis exhilarating, shocking the body awakeinto why am I here now?And old friends are like train graveyards,stopped for washing and repair underhuge coverings, in open hangars.The cold storage of so many sins?Too many days from the old city?Still, and always, the foothills are magnificent,and the sunsets that make a life areinexplicably beautiful.Send out the sad songs:Field, where is your new heart?Are you building the house inside the body now?Or are there too many drowned trees?