Published in the magazine “Ginosko, No 15” , by Sandra Kohler
The Name of Our Nature
The creek’s a blade of light that cuts
morning. I’m flat, blank. I’m afraid I’m
losing my subject: intense interactions
of the human heart. My head’s a chaos
of shreds and patches. I need a grandchild,
a roomer, an affair. I need to tie red
rags to my black suitcases so they signal
me from the carousels, wave brightly as
they fly by. I need bananas I need time,
an hour or two of a light that’s not broken,
breaking. Why do we love what scares us?
In my dream, it’s snakes: my son tries to
keep them away from me, but here they
slither, two long ones. He insists we kill
and eat the old dog that belongs to us.
Afterwards, I complain to my husband,
“who do you think actually had to do
the killing?” I will slay the old dog of
our sorrows and cook him to feed my son,
yet I won’t eat the flesh, consume what I
have prepared. I don’t believe a word I’m
saying but truth has nothing to do with
my assent or refusal. These tales will not
exist unless I invent them. It’s Heraclitus
I need here, for the right enigma. As I raise
the knife, the dream dog insists “you are
my sister.” I’m torn to pieces. Who shall
I play with, my son or the dog? How do
I choose, what do I turn to game that is
deadly earnest? What earnest can I give
of what my heart intends? The name
of our nature is longing.
Influx
Tuesday’s rain is so gray I need to turn on lights
in the morning kitchen. Tuesday after a holiday,
so Tuesday doubled with Monday meaning:
resumption of the routine, real. I come back up
to the bedroom where my husband’s sleeping, wrap
a blanket around me instead of a robe, stare out
at the wet green grayed world, remembering that
in my dream a tribe of children are visiting, I put
them all to bed in different places in the house,
makeshift arrangements, realize there’s an extra:
a baby abandoned not on my doorstep but in
my bedroom, bed. I take him in, wondering why
he turned up, whose he is, accepting his presence
as part of this influx of children, a new regime
in my life’s history. Outside, cars on wet roads,
the sound that’s woken me for a string of days,
continual, replicated: an iteration of Tuesdays.
The east’s layered mass, gray to muddy taupe,
heavy, fraught. A line of local geese goes over,
heading north. I am going to drink my coffee,
empty my bladder, put on different shoes
and an attitude in which I can walk and talk
like the ordinary gods. I am going to make do,
make love, make poems, make a life incisive
as the vee of geese that goes north as I write.
I am going to be ready for what day doesn’t
bring and unready for what it does.
