by Lily Pond
each curve inside her, each vessel and inturning fold
brushed lightly, so lightly—
It’s morning, get up, hey, let’s go—
check the window for weather, set white beans to soak
with one bay leaf for later.
There, now the day is completely around her.
No, his leg over her leg, the two pressing one line together,
his thigh-bone
a dip in her thigh, or the dip ready there; and his smooth
part, the softest,
off-time from his breathing
still rises and falls—
Some other morning, a world under snow, sun like spun
wool,
when she has become another person
not too different, just the person she
would be
that morning, the light
far away through the snow,
what but to hold that smooth skin to her eyes, run it over
her eyelids,
the tube of it,
rich heavy weight of it
(globule she thinks, red jewel)
warm at her cheek, her eyes closed.
What do strangers do where they can’t speak, wanting
soup and directions, out on the bare roads?
They move their vague hands.
They open their mouths.
If she had a blind part to answer.
She slides herself down in the blankets, along him, she
slides herself down—
VII. From the Outside
“This is our bed—we will never leave.”
The Orgasms of Organisms
Dorianne Laux (from a line by Adam Zagajewski)
Above the lawn the wild beetles mate
and mate, skew their tough wings
and join. They light in our hair,
on our arms, fall twirling and twinning
into our flat laps. And below us, in the grass,
the bugs are seeking each other out,
antennae lifted and trembling, tiny legs
scuttling, then the infinitesimal
ahs of their meeting, the awkward joy
of their turnings around. O end to end
they meet again and swoon
as only bugs can. This is why,
sometimes, the grass feels electric
under our feet, each blade quivering,
and why the air comes undone over our heads
and washes down around our ears like rain.
But it has to be spring, and you have to be
in love—acutely, painfully, achingly in love—
to hear the black-robed choir of their sighs.
—for Judith and Ruth Flight, 1998
Marietta
W. S. Merwin
WHEN YOU GO, GO up the road slowly until you first see the lake on your right. Be careful not to miss the first lane that turns off toward the water, almost as soon as the water comes into sight through the trees. You might go right past because the lane is small and has grass growing in the middle. And no mailboxes, and bushes on both sides of it.
It leads off at a slight angle and the bushes don’t last for long. You look back and see that the road isn’t in sight any more, and then you look ahead and see that you are coming out into open country. A pasture slopes down from the left, smoothed, and continuing beyond where you can see, catching the light. Sometimes cows, sometimes sheep, sometimes horses, sometimes nothing. You breathe the breath of pastures. You remember that the lake is very high. There are no fences, and the grazed slope, without a bush or a tree on it, continues its descent on the other side of the lane, all the way to the water where it ends here and there in ferns or reeds, or runs straight into the lake without anything. It’s hard to tell how far away the shore is. The lane leads ahead—a narrow level groove on the green slope, in the gray light. At some distance, where the lane draws near to the edge of the lake, you see a building set facing the water. One end of it, the end nearer to you, appears to be a house. A little porch in front, a little porch in back, white boards, green trim. The other end, which is bigger but not so high, you can see is the store. The windows are broader and things are piled there with darkness waiting behind them. Sheets of tin with people’s heads on them smiling, and names of tobaccos in the old colors, and signatures of forgotten soft drinks, are nailed to the unpainted facade. In front of the store a long boat dock runs out over the lake, very uneven, low to the water, with fishing poles stuck on it at the end, fishing.
You feel your stomach contract at the nearness of the lake.
Marietta will be coming down the lane. Almost certainly. You’ll see why when you meet her. You can’t imagine Marietta ever having been late for anything. When you catch sight of her she’ll probably be at least two-thirds of the way from the store to where you are standing as you turn back to look ahead after your first pause to take in the whole slope running down to the lake. You will see the heavy but graceful figure, in the long dark skirt, swinging toward you, and it is only a moment before you will be standing face to face. Marietta never wears a hat. Most people who never wear hats look natural without them. Marietta usually looks as though she had just taken hers off and her head was enjoying an unaccustomed nakedness about which nothing will be said. Something of the same quality emanates from Marietta herself and immediately includes you. Her loose stride brings her up to you quickly and she stops as though she could not pause. When she talks the voice seems to come from the whole of her body. Anyone can always hear what she has to say.
And you stand there together above the lake while she tells you about how you look, which isn’t bad. You can see that she’s been through it. You can tell that from her face, young though it still looks, and lighting up as she talks, like a girl’s. But when she laughs her calm laugh you can see that it’s not in ignorance. Of anything.
Then if it’s an even day she leads you back on your tracks a little way to a path worn through the pasture, running down toward the lake, but away from the store, into the woods. She talks about winters as though they were immense white visitors whom you have never met but who know about you. She talks about the spring, the fish, the coming of the summer. All the time you are in the woods full of pipestems and ferns and marshy patches that you cross on hummocks of grass, and she swings along in her torn jacket and finally falls silent, and a minute later leads you out into the little clearing by the backwater.
The place is utterly still. On the left, where you’ve come from, the woods are lush and green. The path goes on to the right through more woods, around the edge of the water, where it’s almost dark And in front of you there are more trees, looking as though they grew out of a black stretch of the water itself, which is connected with the lake and the light only by a narrow inlet. In the shadowy backwater a small white flat-bottomed boat will be floating. And in it a girl in a white dress, reading a book.
That’s Flora. You know, she’s older than you. You feel a ringing in your collar-bones and Marietta reaches down to a rope tied to a tree and pulls the boat ashore, and then smiles at you and leaves you with Flora.
You remember Flora but you’re shy and don’t want her to know that you are. But she doesn’t seem to notice. What a nice girl. You go out in the boat for a little while. You don’t need to row anywhere, but you do, a little bit. The woods turn. You can see the undersides of her thighs as she sits looking round. What a nice girl. And she likes you. You can tell quite soon that she likes you a lot. She talks to you about books, and she tells you that she likes talking to you about books, and you hear a beating in your throat and over your eyes like somebody running, and your mouth is dry and the corners are stiff you can hardly swallow and you can’t answer her without swallowing, and she keeps looking at you and smiling and doesn’t seem to notice. They say she’s very intelligent. And so quiet. And well-mannered. She leans forward with her elbows on her knees and you can look down inside the opening of the front of her dress into the dark clef
t between her breasts and almost to the end of one full perfect pointed breast. You never know what it will look like until you see it. She sees that you’re looking. She smiles, and she doesn’t move at all, except a little bit from side to side. She waits for you to look up. You do. She goes on smiling. She leans farther forward and pushes your hands on the oars and you both row back to the clearing in silence.
You fumble, tying up the boat, while she waits in the back. She’s a nice girl. You keep swallowing. You hear everything through glass. You step out and hold out your hand to her and she gets up and steps over the seats and onto the ground. You put your hand around her waist, just seeing if you can, but she lets you. Then she puts her arm around you and starts walking along the path into the woods. She’s quite a lot older.
You come to where she’s left her things, in a grassy place under the trees. A basket. More books. A blanket. You stare for a minute not knowing what you can do next and hoping that she hasn’t by now forgotten that minute in the boat, or decided to pretend to forget it or that it was just your imagination and you really should be ashamed. You hear how small your voice is as you say “Let’s sit down.”
She sits down and you see more of her legs. She doesn’t seem to be trying to hide them. You look down her dress again, partly to make sure you can, and she catches your eyes again and smiles. You sit down beside her and put your arm back around her waist and she leans against you. You’re shivering. You just sit there, wondering if you can kiss her, staring at nothing. Then you try. You have to turn her shoulders around, and it’s awkward and doesn’t work very well, but then she lies down full length on the blanket, with one knee a little in the air and the skirt far up her thigh, and you put both arms around each other and she starts teaching you what to do with your mouth. Very patient. And then she presses her body against you all the way down and that’s something you’ve thought about a lot and you try it too.
When she lies back from you she throws an arm up onto the grass above her head so that the dress is stretched tight over her breast, and then after a minute she pushes off her shoes and raises her head to look down at her feet and then looks at you. The top two buttons of her dress are already unbuttoned. It’s that kind of dress. Her hand drops to the next one and stays there but you still can’t be quite sure that she’s not pretending or that you’re not mistaken and so you still don’t dare put your hand on her breast, not even as though you weren’t aware of what you were doing so that she can pretend she doesn’t notice it. She undoes the button herself.
And then you undo a button at her waist and slide your hand in where it’s warm and feels as though it were shining. You know your hand is cold, and you’re shivering harder. You kiss again, and start to undo each others’ clothes while you’re kissing, and only stop when you have to, so that she can slip out of her dress and her bra while you watch, taking off your shirt and your shoes and pants. You look at her, and then, looking straight at you, she slowly pulls off her underpants and you pull off yours, with your throat almost closed up, and you let your eyes rest on the mound of brown hair and then lie down beside her and from there on start to act as though you knew what to do with everything. And she knows.
That’s if it’s an even day.
If it’s an odd day Marietta asks you everything about your trip and about the winter, making it sound like a dark unpleasant building that’s been bad for your health, and all the time she’s leading you along toward the house and the store.
The store smells of ponds, fishing tackle, dogs, mothballs, and wet leather. She gives you some coffee at a table in the back and hangs up your things, talking all the time like a very old friend. She puts on some dance music a little out of date She sits watching you eat a piece of cake, with coffee. She knows you don’t drink coffee. She leads you into the back. The big room for dances and weddings. There’s a pin-ball machine; they just got it. Nobody else is around. You’ve got a lot of nickels. She says she’s got some more. She leaves you to it, with the music. You can stay there all day. And there are magazines. And at the far end of the room there’s a door one step up that opens into some stairs, at the top of which is the bedroom of a girl named Flora who’s a lot older than you and reads all the time and said she’d teach you to play cards. She’s very pretty but she’s a very nice girl, everybody says. She’s probably up there reading all the time that you’re at the pin-ball machine. Probably nobody else is coming, all afternoon. You could probably go up and see if she really would teach you to play cards. If she remembers. The music goes on and on. Your chest thumps as you walk across to the door and look up the stairs. And besides if anybody came by and asked what you were doing inside on a day like this, Marietta can be counted on to tell them never mind.
The Bed
Catherine Hammond
Posts, thick trunks of ponderosa pine barely
stripped of their bark, hold a natural canopy,
branches fragrant and green. We have lain
here all day and into the dark eating
left-over turkey and drinking warm champagne.
This is our bed—we will never leave.
Nipple to nipple, side by side, we lie,
my hand holding your bullish cock,
small now, as we sleep.
Anonymous Songs
Edward Smallfield
naked under your dress
slap of water against the pier
tell me what country this is
all day the widow weaves
at night she separates the threads
one for each artery
slowly you erase
then with one stroke
ignite me again
Venus Coming
Heather M. Bellson
The salt isn’t dry yet,
she’s rushed up
like a new wave
out of a conch shell.
her index finger still shaking.
She runs it along the ridge,
brings it to her lips
tastes the ocean
like it’s her first time.
smiles, points at me.
On the Afternoon of Moon Taylor
Debra Violyn
THE SKY WAS HEARTBREAK BLUE the afternoon Moon Taylor came to town. Tina and her kid brother Barnaby were down at the empty racetrack parking lot again. Barnaby had his spot that he liked to sit, his exact spot, where you could see Mount Tam, and the Golden Gate Bridge, where gulls fly up, and the water pounds the rocky western lip of the entire world. When racing season’s over the lot’s always completely empty, unless they book a cat show up in the clubhouse or something, and that was usually just on the weekends. Tina would read to Barnaby, they’d watch the birds swoop and holler, or just do nothing, day after day, but watch the green sweep of Tam over the green water, or the clouds pass through the bridge which you could tell was red even from here.
Tina found it very relaxing, nothing to have to do, or say. Barnaby wanted to go to the same spot every day, but Tina didn’t mind. She even rather liked it; her little brother was one of the few things in her life she felt altogether comfortable with, everything else seeming just beyond her grasp. Her mother talked so much faster than she did that by the time Tina finished any conversation with her, Tina’d be left with most of what she’d wanted to say still left unsaid. People always began conversations with comments like, “Surely you know . …” and Tina’d want to answer, “Maybe I don’t know. … Maybe I don’t know at all.”
There was no spot on earth more beautiful than this, Tina thought. She counted again how long they’d been coming there. Every day since she graduated high school, but how long before that? Since Barnaby was eight? Three years? She liked that it was always the same but not the same. Every day the mountain, and its grey foothills, every day the points of the red bridge peaking up over the park, or the clouds, or something—that was the thing. Every day it was the same, but every day it was different too. Some days, like today, it would be so perfectly c
lear every fold of earth and grassy patch on the hills across the bay seemed so close you could almost touch them, and other days they were so deeply buried in the thick blue bank of clouds they might as well not be there at all.
A chorus of starlings started up singing in the trees, making their squeaky hapless noises, rising and falling in pitch, a gold and black set of sounds that made Tina feel slightly apprehensive, though she couldn’t tell if Barnaby could hear them at all. She was wondering what made them just start singing like that when a boy came walking in their direction from around the side of the fence. Was he a boy? Tina wasn’t completely sure. Maybe he was twenty, or twenty-one. Maybe he was a man already.
He had long blondish-brown hair, a few shades lighter than Tina’s own. Though he seemed jaunty and brash, he approached them as though they were strange cats, leading with his shoulder, body and face half-turned away. He was whistling a tune from an old Broadway show he had seen on TV recently. Tina and Barnaby had seen it too. It was a duet with Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons, a sweeping love ballad that confirmed romantic destiny and believed its own promises. But the birds gave him away.
When he got close enough, he caught Tina looking at him and he smiled, shyly. Tina smiled shyly too, and reached for her hair with her right hand.
When he got even closer he stopped and said softly, “I’m Moon Taylor.” Tina wondered how she could hear him over the sounds of the birds, but then they decided to quiet down, maybe since he stopped walking.
As if he were picking up in the middle of a conversation they were already having, Moon said, “Boy, he sure has red hair, that kid does. I don’t think I ever saw hair that red.”
Tina smiled without showing her teeth. “My mother dyes it,” she said.
“How come is that?” Moon asked.
“Oh, she said she always wanted to have a red-haired boy is why. It’s good luck.”