"The MAG"

ALETHEA EASON

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THRESHOLD

I murmur the I,
I cannot open the door to emptiness, I fill with expectations,
I do not know the way deer recess into dappled light,
I do not know the way deer become forest,
someday when I am not upon the earth
water will still recede from rice fields,
redwing blackbirds will rise from tules,
mustard will sprout yellow buds,
someday my ashes will rain over the stubborn chaparral
and the carbon of my bones blend with the basalt outcrops,
and fill with expectation,
the way deer recess into dappled light,
the way deer become forest,
the way fault lines lift the land and hills of red rock
are scraped away, how slopes slump and rivulets
erode mountains, leaving space for the sky to fill,
and the deer disappear into forest
and the light filters down the branches of trees
erasing the I, and light is murmuring,
and doors open to emptiness, and ashes rain
a million years, and then the earth splits open
creating lake, murmuring the blackbird
and the mustard seeds spreading across hillocks,
islands rimming with tules, with sedge weed
and berry vine, still the I, still the forest,
still the deer disappearing into light

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DARK ANGEL

the darkness
of me
is a shrine
in the gap
of an angel's
smile, giving
view to the belly
to where
my truth lies

in this
broken shrine
my dark angel rests

when it burns
wings flash toward
the deepening
night, toward
the animal
cry, to the
belly and deeper still

the beat of wings
is the pulse of blood
and an angel's tooth
is a thing that bites
hungering to be fed

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WATER AND WEIGHT

i
I am married to magic
Bending water over stone
Desires dance like raven bait
Shiny silver threads hang over my head
But I'm ponderous, too fixed
There's some nut of hate, some black star invading my heart,
Sewn there, it's mass Saturn heavy,
And its soup's like cement
Maybe I need some ball breaking dykes
To loosen me up, or red lipstick and a fashion magazine

ii
Deep down, I'm still the desert flower
But one you find at night
I am layered with mosaics, painted deep in history.
Pools of Mycenean blue, succor on hot days,
When I sat in my tower writing and watched the sea

Later, along a Roman road, I was stabbed,
Some betrayal of spirit and body
Right in the heart, spores of miasma
Spreading ever since

The world's heavy turning still has the sun
And flashes of light are not unknown to me

iii
"Careful for what you wish for,"
I write in my new black book
"The dogs are asleep on the back porch
Where it's cold."

Stars are dense, their mass lets me see them
The key for opening is heavy
But water bends easily and is stronger than stone,
The marriage of water and weight

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BODY ENGLISH

I realize I'm worried. I have a recurring dream.
I'm with a British guy, angry about something.
He's rough, and my special older attraction
His name's History, which is spelled wrong because it's language.
I say, "Too much sheepskin fascinates and repels."

Here comes his old girlfriend,
She's becoming dangerous because we're in her bedroom.

There are files, scents and cordial police.
When we¹re finish, I cry, "Help!" from the window.
The Brit pours opium on his hands. I tell him,
"That's okay. She's gone and I'm stepping on her privacy."

Afterwards I shower. The Brit is going to be hurt.
I walk by perfume sprayers and turn knobs.
I want to hit her with a stick.
I'm scared of how intense it is every time I move.

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PERSISTENT LOVER

I reach down and listen
to the wild place
I've been afraid to enter,
buried like Pluto's treasure
under raw and ragged truth.

This is a time for evolution.
The gods' tongues
are slipping, fracturing
cell and bone.

My skin is only
a covering. These hands hold
nothing. Oh, darkness, sing
my song to me. I am
too tired not to dance
into sunlight ribbed
by the filament of your wings.

Your wisdom rises
in inchoate speech whispering
until I've been whittled
and burned. Let me
fly to the life that your shadows
have cast for me.

Persistent lover, greedy
Hades, I eat these
pomegranate seeds
willingly. Hunger is
sweetness on my tongue.

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STARS FALLING IN AUGUST

Daddy, the stars fell when you died, skidding across the night
Like chips pealed from chrome, carried by burnished wind across the sky.
The creosote was drunk in the dry desert air.

And though I wasn't there, I've imagined how you flew from your soul,
Leaving your daughters like thistles blown over the chaparral,
Our breath thin as the stems of the palo verde that grew stunted in the
yard.

The house filled up with uncles. My boyfriend and I slept on a cot out
back,
As we made love, the stars became silver nighthawks,
Fish tails swimming through the blinding air.

I was numb like the space between stars that are too stable,
Refusing to stray from the safety of their paths. I didn't feel the
meteors
Of broken glass falling to earth in silent breaths.

Daddy, thousands of stars have tumbled since then,
Streaking through the heat of a hundred nights. Each second
They have been in the sky, these variegated strands of burning air

Have burned open the portion in me that closed
More than twenty years ago. Now nights stay sober
Save for the drink of starlight and the odor

Of yarrow and summer grass. But the sky will never be shorn
Of star flakes nor the earth of burning sand. The stars fell when you died.
You were carried by the wind luminous across the sky.

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WINTER ROSE

I am a rose opening blood red petals
that have gripped my small furled heart,
layered like lacquered nails over the nectar,
hiding my heart from the lips of the sun

the petals hold off the kiss,
but the breath of the blue day
tears open my flowering face,
petal after petal becoming ruby tongues

my heart wants to find shade in the night,
to hide in the slant light of winter's weak sun,
but the rose is blossoming red in the cold dry air

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TATTOOS

Some wise woman wants me to see the pictures on your skin,
beautiful white azaleas in a copper dish.
The deepest of all tattoos inscribed there,
a compass rose showing my direction.

SW toward a form of death the dark man holds,
plying me with spirits, tonic water, evil weed.
He's messed with datura, that white lily,
and has come back a changed man.

You stand happy above the ahnk
losing your baby vampire teeth.
Some wise woman told me your story,
beautiful tattoos that I'm supposed to see.

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ORACLE
TAROT
11-3-01

His golden hair is shining, the hangman's. The crone bends her ear.
Maybe she's listening to what he has to say.
The mermaid is their helper, translator of the language of sex.
She plays the harp and flirts with the sun.
The stars fill the mountain with light.
I remember I'm the crone and listen for my steps.

I don't want to whisper anymore.
Whisper life into the silence of this house.
The mermaid has been inside and is ready for her birth.
She is a shell in my hand, and I'm an old mermaid with a conch as a purse.

Behind me the women fight. Or practice with their sticks.
A volcano smokes behind them. Above me vines are pregnant
like a September moon. The woman in their midst listens for songs
and feels the downward tug towards earth.

Red shaman is waiting with his staff and basket. Peyote bud at his feet.
The thunderbird could be a scorpion, but chose not to be.
In the middle over the busy spheres, she stands
balanced on one foot. The heron by her side.
Infinity is swept with arrows and the moon is full behind.

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SLOW WINTER

I remember the year winter never seemed to end,
how it lasted through the end of May
when icy rain fell on the manzanitas, turning down
their leaves like capsized ships.
I remember how the cold
settled in the house.
The firewood had barely lasted through April,
how we watched our breath
form clouds above the coffee cups.
I remember the rudeness of morning
when we wanted to stay sleeping like bears in a cave
as we huddled beneath the blankets.
I remember the texture of your skin,
the wool of your beard, your legs
wrapped around mine.
I put my head on your chest.
Your heart beat against my ear.
I remember how you were always the first to sleep,
how darkness would flood over me. One of us
would be alone someday, leaving
The other and the bed half empty.
I remember the rain,
the sound of your breathing, a counterpoint against
the storm, how it calmed me,
my breath matching yours
as I finally joined you in sleep.
We are here.
We are here.
This is real.
I remember the rain in the outskirts of dreams.
I remember winter passing slowly.

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ABOVE BEAR VALLEY

I feel I don't inhabit the world, my body separate,
unreal. I drive toward the canyon. Rags of coyote body
drape fence post above the flowering fields,
above the orange poppy cups, and the cows stare
with sweet indifference to the arcs of the kingbird's belly.

Farther on, the trees are drowned by reservoir.
Bodies submerged. Top branches, stripped like the dead,
float above the water line. Farther still, toward ruins
of Bartlett Springs, charred sticks scatter across
burned hills, legs and arms without flesh.

Clouds, gray as ash, press down, their damp breath
hovering over holocaust. I reclaim tears.
The silence of cell and bone. My skin becomes grass,
sweeping like wildfire over scars.

I reclaim my blood in the flush of redbud,
my bones in the spines of yellow lupine. The road
climbs again, then drops toward the belly of the lake.
Spirit, supple as willow, as present as the buckeye
along the creek, tethers my flesh to earth.

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ALTER

There are fish and angels and seven hundred-year old men
carved in the wall behind the altar. There is a drug,
powdered like cocaine, sprinkled like a blessing.
I bend knees and raise eyes to the ancient stone structure,
history, glory and shame before me.

In the inner room the ancient mother appears
on a gurney ready to give birth. I touch her
wrinkled papyrus skin, a trace of cells burnt
by the pressure of the millenniums folding into gravity
cleave to my fingertips. Her breasts are massaged
for the afterbirth by the dutiful attendant.

For her daughter has been born a wise woman and saint,
and I fall in love with her grandmother's face
and I fall in love with beauty and am swept
by angels to the dance floor of heaven
to discover death is an all night party
with dervishes spinning in the ink black sea.

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BASTILLE DAY

Resist writing beautiful words if none are called for.
Admit that your knitting needles click at the bottom
of the guillotine. Freedom is formed from nightmares,
made from the messy soup of the chopping block,
in breech births, and in the haunted souls of the stillborn.
Liberty is written as the mad harlot's song, rising with the smells
of the boudoir as she gives birth to the blind child
who will one day cast silhouettes of hope.

Lies must be digested and shat in the gardens of darkness,
decomposition igniting light. Resist all beautiful words if none are called
for.
Do not trust overlays of light not yet explored.
Go free. Ring ounces of pretension from your nakedness.
Kill the aristocrats, and then have your enemies as dinner guests
in rooms purged, made spacious enough for light to filter
through high arched windows. Resist beauty if you can not find
it in despair, in the clenched fists clung to barbed wire, in walls
upon which the graffiti of limits are written.

Resist beauty if it is false. If it remains in palaces
instead of on the streets. If it exchanges terror for cosmetics
laced with lead. Your sole may leave a bloody footprint as the baskets
filled high with heads. Offer yours.

Resist.

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HERE TAKE MY EGGS

My eggs are gossamer pearls still waiting in a nearby stream.
Under the veil, my eggs would have held round pools of liquid
with protein and definitive galaxies all their own.

I open myself and dream the infinite night.
I've been waiting because mist and wind's home is the earth's.

Gulls break over the crest.
They are moving, wings up with raucous cries.
My eggs float in this mystery, each still aware.
Each with their neutral shine. Each a copper penny
floating to the perilous depths.

Death's at the door, and he's dressed to kill.
He's even brought the flowers I have been waiting for.
Here take my eggs. Each one that is left, and take dictation.
They all have stories of their journey. And maps of their history.

Marry my eggs as you would me in the dark grass,
with all the dangers of jungle growth. Find the pearly stream
hidden away and whisper your words there.

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LEAVING AETNA SPRINGS

A hundred years have gone by.
I don't pretend to hear the voices
of past guests, or see them dress
for dinner in Victorian elegance.
I'm simply here on a summer day
while the grass sucks in the heat
and the cottages slump to soil.

All morning we climb sagging steps,
into rooms where once people slept.
Acacia, Gassaway, the Winship House,
the Hartson place. Wallpaper and
plaster peeling, odor of decay and dust.
Two cabins have given up.
Their roofs caved in, berry vines
surrounding them.

We discover a creek cascading
over rocks, framed by flowering vetch
and shadows, smell sulfur fumes,
and come upon a jade green pool,
its water lukewarm and murky.

All morning woodpeckers have followed us,
tossing staccato signatures in the air.
Now a single white tail flickers
on a bare snag of oak. Orange butterflies
skirt the star thistles as we sit beneath
the shade the veranda casts.

Long ago this lawn was filled
with cartwheeling children, their mothers
mummering rumors, men clearing their throats.
But now the sun scrapes the top
of the sky, and we are alone. Silence
has settled upon the yellow grass.
We pull stickers from our socks,
are thirsty, ready to go home,
to leave Aetna Springs through
the archway of stone.

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THE SCENT OF VIOLETS

My palms form a tent
over distant cities as I pray
and I want violets to rain down,
and to smell healing oils
instead of sulfur,

and to see angels pour the waters of peace
from their place of mythic origin,

no angels on backs of apocalyptic horses,
no plagues nor rumors of war,
no masquerades of death,

to hear that myths of sacrifice
are no longer allowed by the laws of Heaven,
the testing of Abraham eased from human memory,
of Isaac in peaceful slumber, no vengeful Lord
waiting to see how far a father will go,

no knife raised above any altar.
no offering of children to slaughter,
no cruel jokes of a jealous god,
not even a scapegoat desired,

and for prayers to rise to Heaven
on the scents of violets and answers given
as rain falls silently to a quiet Earth

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PRINCESS OF THE POSSE
-for Amy Trussell

A painting by Chris Ofili
MOMA, San Francisco, July 12, 2001

if Amy's spirit could explode and run
from her caverned body, she might be
this black witch, the red sparks on elephant dung
holding her aloft, alive in this midst of paint and sequins,
African vines growing across her breasts

she'd be the exuberance of the red jungle,
the orb of power at her throat, snake venom
swirling around her, transforming poison for life,
while she sings of crimson fire burning
deeply behind the vines

her spirits are released from their dark shells,
dancing around her, these blue beads
are shining above her eyes, this green glitter
on her dress sending her into passion

her secrets wait under turtle backs,
let her be this fullness now, her body this wise,
possessing this ecstasy of light

for she is Queen of Velvet Night,
of the jungle she can not suppress,
her starlight feet wise in the mud and grass

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WHAT THE HELL WITH MY TRINITY?
-To Donna Kuhn

Okay, so my heart does need to be sliced open.
It¹s in an Aztec Frieze much of the time and need to bleed.

Remember, when you¹re there at the edge of the moon,
and fishing the fish sea, my trinity wants to shine.

There¹s got to be a spitting sister myth, but before
I open this mystery, I need to straighten my room.

Maybe the myth¹s in hell where poetry birds
and horses rise from the flames of our faces.

You are the true daughter of Deborah.
Your hook pulled all of this up for me more than once

You¹re a can opener blasting paradigms to Egypt or Venus,
You can read the flames just as they¹re spreading across water.

I like to look at the face of the sea, undisturbed,
and then dive down to the sludge to hear the translation.

Can¹t you see us missing each other in the fog?
But the patterns around our nucleus won¹t let us.

Remember, you how found divinity at the laundromat?
I wash my clothes there too.

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HEAVEN
-For Gwyn

Madonna is all dolled up. Her glittery eyes look down at the baby
resting in her henna h ands. The Queen of Heaven's ready
for Mardi Gras. Instead, the graveyard stones slant below
her sparkling gaze, too quiet for a party, too white, too gray.

În the other picture, four dancing girls do what they can
to divert barbarian hoards on horseback, spears full tilt
as they rush in for attack. The girls dream of feet free
on desert sand, far from the soft red carpet of the harem's floor,
far from the bad manners of these sweaty men.

In the morning, I look through my scratched lens
and sit with Andrew as he drinks chocolate milk.
Must I meditate on death with this child at my desk?
On the decal of the shuffle skeleton on the car we passed?
The white rose so quietly growing on the vine?

My sister drowns in a hospital room. In her morphine dreams,
divas dance on the walls. From chairs by her bed, little black boys
speak to her of heaven. I pray her rose unfurling. Her petals.
Her wings ribbed with glittery adornments.

I think of deserts carpeted with red flowers, the mosaic spots
on butterflies, girls with bare feat spinning, All things transforming
and unfolding. I write HEAVEN in my book and underline it twice.

m.a.g.