TIM VAN DYKE

The Wolving Ritual

Outside my door my dolls were dead.
And all I said was Mama sews up death with
buttons. And Mama burns her eyes for love, I said.
I said Poor Mama, she burnt her thread.

That night my tears ran down to the river. The news
they brought: they said the shiny buttons bring
the birds they said that birds still skate across the
river. They might have come to lay a war. It's hard
to tell. We came but coming closer got old.

As such-- that is what your tears had said-- and we
who carry news--we their sons-- we live in the tiny
explosion of things.

         1.
OCTOBER 3, 3:35

We two stood alone outside the door.

Mamun, the dark bird, too, all our
bodies. We touched like snow; we
melted into primadonnas, wanting
to touch, not touching long for the
cold. It was the girls. Our eyes

were filled with them. We stared
through the chilly gusts each
time a car passed, filled with girls,
girls at the window, seeing us. They knew

that at twenty my mother had given
me her extra engagement ring, in case
I met one. I just didn't know there
would be so many. (Standing here now,
we two, alone, you will not notice.

You will notice first the bird, then
the men, standing stubbornly apart,
pissing circles around each other,
daring and double daring for hours.)

He, too, knew: on my right palm
was outlined the bees,
marked in red pen, the buzzy
intercourse that flowed between them,

the girls, sometimes split
as if an axe had killed their young
and repaired each differently,
casting shadows that did not fit.

         2.
From shadows come snakes, she said.
She said that snakes were eaters. That
the snake is a stomach that leads to the mouth
through many animals. She said to be holy
I must become a bee the bee a wolf,
who is sent out, who kills other snakes.
This is birth.
When she told me I built my toothpick ships; I
walked on tubs and puddles and streams.

The river hisses and does not die.
I do not know this but I gesticulate wildly.

Dying in the light in the crack at my door
she planted her eyes and became grave
(for she said here is my garden that can laugh
no more my beautiful garden...)
like a fish laughing on the bank of a river
she kissed the ground and spat the stones.

Also she burnt me with her love with matches.
All day the salt on her table said Purify! Purify!
She brushed the circles of salt from my sheets
said supper was holy and Farewell! to the corn.

This was love and I ate it. The corn stuck
to my teeth. My teeth, my teeth
were always grown out. They gaped,
risen, horrendous on the supper table,
my teeth like wolves rose up,

and I rose, too punctually it seems,
set against myself, my fly unzipped.

Because my solitude is long
the wolf takes shape in the wilderness.
Many poses: as teeth, a snake just eaten,
blank birds and ghosts and Grampa...

I watched the white dogs of the dawn rise up
mama dead on the table. In the cold I lit
the last of my smokes. So holy, so armed
with a voice in my hand that stunk of God.

         3.
Before she died she said Fall down.
To stumble, nights. She thought
bruised, we can worship.

And the buttons, yesterday's
buttons, where do the buttons go?
They go to take part

in the silence between notes.
They head for the door
where Mamun corners

me and eats me and takes flight.
From here I see him as a ghost.
As one who sleeps in mirrors.

On his beak, too, is a little ghost,
a waif who has lost his mouth.

He has let it wander, singing dimly,
echoing voices heard in a cave.

Because Mamun has lost his voice. Whose songs I do not know.
Because Mamun is strung round my neck. Because I paused
at a door full of mirrors, all empty and my eyes, they were empty.

In these the nights wear holes, are eaten up with memory,
these the girls dance, meander endlessly as fish. Our days
lead through rivers, topographies; on parchment fond
memories bring the night to my face; the days of other faces

are painted wan with smiles. The light
the hollows make new caves;

by this I mean dolls have two identities:
1) Mamun worships

he shudders now lays prostrate sets his head alight he mouths
my head is smooth like a doll's ass my nooks and crannies part.

By this he means he sees the future, face sketched in tired mirrors,
face as flat as paper. And 2) Mamun: a statue in the corner

tethered to bees and teeth. Opened wide at the head
like a jar he crescendoes silently -- eyes are easy to draw-
-small vaginas -- sings and his future dims. Shake his head
PLONK! spittle spawned note prints on the top of the lid.

() ()

In order to see the future
I am standing on the street corner.

And making my way through mother's
embraces to arrive at the cave
of birds and dolls my hands
make the sign of a fish in the mirror.

I calls it holy and throws down my eyes;
below I stumble, see the cities worship.
Blllllt! the sound they make and when
their voices break apart
in the river they cannot escape
the small pictures of their mouths

captioned with questions:

My sunlight is colored like tongues.
The slippery fish plant corn.
Some men speak in clouds.
My name is Howard B.
I am God and so is my grampa.
He keeps bees; he dances.

Beneath his feet the landscapes rise
to greet an infallible morning.
The sun fills the folds of Spring
burnt by the frenzied winter.
Its desires and odd aches
wash out in the slow sound of the river.

In one a balloon escapes two bees.
Grampa is gloved against their sting.
Another, he's climbed in their bellies.
Blood is dripping from his thighs.
The wolf is dead and he holds an axe.
The careful lungs of my grandfather rise

and, dancing, he mouths these things he says

"Gobble, gobble. Gobble, boy.
My belly is full of birds but children shit fish.
Here with these bees I have birth. I am the child
dancing sweetly among them with love.
I have love for you. Love love love love.
Inside me they birth. They climb in my belly.
Like the bees I felt you. I felt you before you had birth.
I feel my belly because I birth it. I am not a belly.
I am grampa.

One night the children asked me to dance for them.
I would not dance and they did not love me
that night because my doors were open.

Knock, knock. Dear bees
I am. I am. I come into you.
Knock knock. Today I opened a cache of clocks.
I fished. I picked corn. I fed the women.
I feed the women. I feed 5000 with women. Tarts.
They should have shame for I am God.
I am grampa. I go into their rooms at night
and in the morning they do not have shame.
Their piss is dirty from love. I do not love like a man.
They hold each other like tattered sticks.

I am the gobble-gobble dog.
Shush! I told you this in secret.

I want to feel you the way a name feels.
The way of naming is my secret.
As is the way of birth.

The women think they have birth.
They have it but I have it.
They want me to give it to them. They sit
on the bed with their panties
down hoping to make me love. I am love.
I am the buzzer. I am love in them. I get hung
on the bathroom door. Here in my belly
they do not feel me. They pray in symbols.
I hang their heads
over the bed and strangle them.
Then they have birth.
I strangle them because they have birth."

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