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H. And yet here we stand on the edge of the sand
and the sun peals out a hundred bronze bells spattered
blue by a bleeding sky. Around and around and around
and back to this shoal, this same inland sea, this
same wine-bright silhouette into which our bodies fit
like knives. Gaping circles of light into which we
cram our limbs, like cigarette burns on a filmstrip of
the world, demarcating our towered borders and
meridians. But it will always be you and I and this
little patch of earth at the end of all things, sweet
child. Clap your hands and I am still here. Make the
sign of the chi rho and I remain, hop widdershins
round the stones on your right foot and I will still
reach out for you, arms dripping with wild ferns. But
be sure to deny me three times before dawn, just to
observe custom. No beautiful, rosy-edged, Rosicrucian
pill is there for you to swallow which will vaporize
my pinwheeling eyes, no government program cure you,
to wrap you in a wool blanket and give you a glass of
3 a.m. orange juice. I will stay until you cry out my
cantos like the helpless groans of your first orgasm.
Bite your nails as though they could feed you. Bite
into your heart to divine the taste, the buttered
toast and lox of your left ventricle, the mint jelly
and Grand Marnier of your right. Bite into the flesh
of my forearm to read the portents in my torn biceps.
When, oh, when, little dove, will I become
beautiful in your eyes? When will my limbs elongate
into a shape you can worship? Can't you see the
theatre erected for
your pleasure? While my father sleeps I tend you like
a sacred lamb, black-faced and our mark on your
haunches. Under the palm trees like pagoda towers I
could warm a hundred ragged-eyed children on the
furnace of my belly and yet you will not lie down in
the sugared house, in the gingerbread hut, in the oven
grille. You will not try your tongue on the cinnamon
rafters, the blackcurrant stairs, the butterscotch
flatware and the chocolate floors. You will not give
in to the enchantment, to savor its length and
breadth, allow me to place a honeyed coat rack on your
tongue like a communion wafer. For it is communion
with me and my world you will not endure, under
whichyou will not lie down. Sit, my love, in the oven,
on the candy-coated mythology of the licorice grille.
It is not so terrible. You have been told such lies;
the oven is my own lightless womb, and you will not
burn within me.
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