Hawk

You jolt awake, your hand coming up and back and your eyes opening, wide and intense like a hawk’s eyes, glazed in sleep.  I smile, whisper, “you’re dreaming,” but your eyes remain that way, as if they are meant for the top of a hooked beak instead of a human face.  “It’s me,” I say.  The changing is imperceptible, but the change itself is not; your eyes have softened and the hand that rose has settled, wing-brush on my shoulder.  And, in that moment, eyes fixed and unblinking, your strong, piano-playing talons clench into the muscle at the top of my back.  And you blink, once, long, semi-conscious if that, diurnal bird in the clutches of sleep, and then the eyes return.  You draw me to your lips.  My breath stops. Your hand releases.  Your head falls.  You sleep.  

I watch you, for a moment, but then it is my turn to settle my hands on your back, to pull myself towards you, to nestle under your chin.  I do not sleep, yet.  I lie awake, forcing my eyes to stay open, clinging to you, knowing that if I sleep, you will be gone.  Let me be an owl.  Let me be an owl...

Instead, I sleep.  One wish per person per night.

(I jolt awake, my hand coming up and back and my eyes opening, wide and intense like hawk’s eyes, glazed in sleep.  And I search for you, semi-conscious, and, every morning, or evening, or afternoon, whenever I wake, you are gone.)

130

You hold
my face
against yours
I say, "Is this love?"
You say, "no."
Thank God.
I imagined love would be more
magnetic
than dying.
Not really dying,
just
losing a life.
Held against you,
You do not say
Do not cry
because
there is not a chance
that I would
and not
because you
comfort me.

Lisa, 2009

“Listen,” he said, putting a finger to her lips.

“What?”

“Just listen.”  And there was a sound, through the window, a cooing sound that trailed through the night.

Autumn

To me it is September, and the air is crisp in the mornings, and I am standing in high heels on a yellow leaf.  There is a breeze, and I am only a few weeks into adjusting to this place, wrapped in a thin cardigan with energy buzzing along my neck, heavy books in hand, and as I walk along the stone steps, as the sun rises too-hot in the too-cold air, my heart is gasping.  I feel its beating and its gasping as it tries to span distance, to reconcile the too-many miles from where it is to where it is and I say, quietly and ever diligently, that if I stay pretty and study hard and am oh-so-kind to all of my classmates, he will come, and I take it in like a lullaby and find the best seat in the classroom and open a heavy textbook and a notebook that I have dutifully highlighted and annotated, and I dip my mind into Latin phrases and case law and legal procedure until I am so full that I cannot feel the distance.

Stomping Days

After the rain

Falls after snapping

Turtles who hibernate in the

Ether, after our

Regurgitated rhythms

Walk through the skulls of every school-

Aged girl who looks for a good time in high heels

Run through the Fields and the Woods and

Damn the Ground

Saying:

“Agriculture is not God, nor are

Forests turned to

TImber nor

Evergreen trees crossed through with

Rusting 

Wire nor

Aquamarine crayons melted down and

Run across our Hair and Fingernails, Bodies

Dragged through 

Sand is not God

And you with 

Five-dollar bills between 

Toenails and permutations of 

Elicit images are mutations of

Red

Wood

And I am the 

Real thing I do not burn so

Dare me to

See if I won’t”

After the world goes down,

Feeling fingertips

Tangled with 

Electric lines and

Radio Signals,

Wombat and Rabbit make 

A new

Rambit which makes

Drugs for the 

Sellers

After the world goes down,

Fire upon the

Tangles of hair, burning,

Everyone is

Run to the cellars,

Wistfully recalling their stomping days.

Alligator boots with

Reticent smiles and

Dogged glances will

See us down

I mean it.

I would leave before the end of the night, leave you standing in the doorway, eyes searching the darkness for me.