Cynthia
Arrieu-King
I HAVE MADE MYSELF A BUREAUCRAT, WHATEVER THAT MEANS
I told you
wildness is hands-off. Aim instead
to dismantle this pink
blanket of whims, breakable and nothing.
That darling space
saves her lunch dollar in a jar.
Over a week, and
falling asleep to another chance Eiffel Tower,
a girl can still love
and run to climb that height eight times.
She ignores everything
but something golden that lights up.
Diesel wipes
a face. WhatÕs always existing in a lens, rampant
in our cells, this
sleepy lung of smoke
drawn by hand, a hand
reaching into this dream
so real it looks
original or yours. Thin glass
breaks over an egg
shaded and shaded
in terminal thoughts.
I think: Who knows what aspects
of dreams and reality
run down orange halls in a parallel sense?
Slow gold licks all
the windows. I wake up.
*
The green glass of
your eyes teems with birds,
twin wings
inexplicable as paste. Watch. In this art,
each ordinary mosaic
separates to single shells, rouge or
cerulean, the
how-pretty inlaid panels and a broach
of distraction. Mom
and the Empire era secretary
stare each other down
in the museum foyer. That trembling gilt
split by wood still,
still holding. A man stands nearby and
coughs a something
narrower. His eyes and what I donÕt say:
Beauty. Not knowing.
Our happy prisms vague prisons,
the curtain odd. No
thought lies across a sweet pink
museum scratched and
lethal in actual streets. Rubbed white,
I hold your sleeve: A
dream comes out of your eyes and mouth.
*
The war wears rubber
shoes to hide its feet,
in need of
tourniquets, wrapping-paper crumpled, jets
arcing down to the
sea. Ice refrozen. And after the splash,
what is it about this
nightmare that makes me so speechless?
That makes
the mind reach for cover under something plastic
and unseen. That
blood, it isnÕt dreamed. The mind filters
fickle and preserving,
and always a bloodied sun bursting under damp quilts.
Sparkle is a
distant conflagration—then – finding the right distance
to stand from an image
to see what face is hidden in its
nickel shreds, a step
forward, two steps back:
You use restraint for
tying nightmareÕs hands behind.
*
I saw a place where
the museum hall breaks into the past.
Typing
captions for art, a woman punches her metal lettered branches,
to name swathed kings
and battlefield roses hung up. IÕm impressed
with a medieval room,
tapestries that calm Mom. Her bones
shrank from being in a
girl, in war, bone soaps shrinking in flesh foam.
She hates
unidentifiable wax and avant and foil flowers. Pressure:
I know the
meaning of dominant and when. Burying seedling
guilt, confused about
who was saying and knowing—what proved
failure. No concepts
strung together haphazard feel like
a solid rail in the
world. Even yesterday my mother stood
in front of a chic
gigantic mural: Paint peeling on a German building –
white wings revealing
hot bare brick. Texture
of do-nothing. Pretty
decay. She wasnÕt impressed by that nor
by an arrangement of
Lucite cubes glued to a wall in a cloud.
*
DonÕt go back to
sleep, I say, to a knock on the door.
DonÕt. After a long
period of being pale to get curious again,
vital and
happy—stillness being the only thing that makes
drawn, grey water tip
out clean. To rest, okay, but look. The flaw:
A doom touched to you
with a waxen hand while you sleep. Underneath this dream
lie cold tiles, real
tiles, and a too long debate. A man argues
his dogÕs tail needs
to be cut in the middle: He licks it. Cut it short.
A vet says
that wonÕt help since the problem was the itch in
the dogÕs rectum.
ThatÕs why he licks. She says, wouldnÕt it be better
to solve this with
medicine rather than cutting the tail in two?
No, he says, leaning
forward. No, no. You need to cut the tail in two.
I
HAVE MADE MYSELF A BUREAUCRAT, WHATEVER THAT MEANS
DonÕt whip eggs or
walk the dogs. DonÕt whip yourself.
We fight can fires
with motorcycles. Consider this chair.
It tasted first of
being clever for inventing a theme:
Disaster. I
cinched a rope, a noose around my waist, lowered
myself. Then, a spin
and my feet on earth. Or a swivel chair
that never noticed a
better way to complement
an iron horse. An iron
horse does not balk at fire.
The theme to the
artwork that hangs over me is "disaster."
Clear,
emotive, softly volatile, the crosshatchings make
a man fighting a bear
with only a knife. His jack-ass friend
dedicated to
gun-watches, no doubt loving every minute of it.
In another
print, I can taste my fear. A wet fur wears droplets
again. My thoughts: a
fire for touching me.
dost thou think, because
thou art virtuous,
there shall be no more
cakes and ale?
--Twelfth
Night
Marina knows Alluvial Fan.
Her God puts glass in the grass. I know Tumulus. My God picks up the bracken
and presses it to his cheek, and goes back to drinking bottles of ether after a
momentary nap in the dirt. We had never met. Marina born within a month of me.
Two moons-in-Scorpio in such proximity. Wow. I said hello expecting a ticking
Parisian crocodile. She smiled big. I smiled back.. I had written a poem about
slip-on basketball shoes: Marina appeared in slip-on basketball shoes. We
bought soap. We thought about being international Belgian Spies with white Jack
Russell Terriers. We read our
poems out loud in the cake room. We knew audience. We knew hantavirus and
kombu. The Plains Indian with the hatchet reared on us was Scrutiny. I
momentarily felt like barfing. She looked worried and asked for a hug.
Afterwards, we shopped
for clothes. Marina smiled on the silver and black dress with rhinestone
buttons. We agreed on the pleasant-ness of a necklace with pink balls carved
into roses. Soon, I washed my hands in a silver and black river of rhinestone
fish deep in Kentucky. Marina lathered pink soaps from the back of a toilet in
New York. Marina's Portugeuse mother says, Even the blind chicken gets the
corn.
My French mother says, Little by little the bird makes his nest. Above her, MarinaÕs
ceiling is yellow with creme trim and a chandelier. My ceiling is yellow with
creme trim and no chandelier. The chandelier showing up in one photo and not
the other is only framing. Of course, we were in the same room at the same
time.