Sonnets with Riff and Hook

Sonnet with Church and Osso Buco

The mystery of the Song of Songs: the priests’
rationalizations of how the Rose
of Sharon is the Church, the bride of Christ,
or Israel, or a barbecue joint
in Tennessee. Does He feedeth among
the lilies sound like that to you? Get real.
Solomon wants to be the Shulamite,
the Rose of Sharon, the Fuchsia of Jane,
to be the one who says come here, my nard
is fragrant as osso buco with thyme.
You know the way a mother’s milk lets down
when she hears a baby cry down the hall?
That’s how I love you. What it does to me
when I hear the click as you shut the door.

Sonnet with Broth and Tabernacle

When I hear the click as you shut the door, 
I don’t know if you’re locking yourself in 
with me or leaving for good. I was locked
in with God one night, the red oil lamp hung 
by the tabernacle. Creation is
a witness protection program for him. 
He blends in like red wine in beef stew.
No one can tell what’s alcohol and what blood,
what broth. You’d think God would be worth something, 
but has anyone ever stolen him,
like a baby, hidden the host in white 
cloth, taken it home to a cedar drawer 
redolent of ginger? God-smell would fill
the room, and no one could hurt him again.

Sonnet with Fence and Swan

Where no one could ever hurt us again, 
where all it takes to keep the world, or 
enough of it, out is a ramshackle fence 
lashed together by honeysuckle vines—
we would leave the garden without a thought 
if that’s what it took to evade God’s eye,
his loving searchlight. But is the garden
the one place God can’t see us and the things 
we do in the dirt? Things we’d never even 
think of if someone were watching us, 
putting our mouths on the hollow wing bone 
of a swan to play music, or sipping
our own spirits, savoring the finish: 
currant, tobacco, plum, and forest floor.

Sonnet with Cathedral and Sardines

Currant, tobacco, plum, and forest floor:
you get drunk on yourself, but you’re drinking 
alone. I don’t think there’s a word for it:
not synesthesia, but the thrill when one 
sense is found in an incongruous place—
the scent of grilled sardines in a Gothic 
cathedral, the softness of rabbit fur
in a bass riff, smoke from last night’s bonfire, 
when you burned your old wedding dress and veil, 
still in the collar of your flannel shirt
when you went to bed. You danced up a storm 
last night, literally. You did that slow dance 
with yourself, with the plane tree and the road, 
which doesn’t know where it’s going, either.

Sonnet with Obsidian and Sword

And I don’t know where I’m going, either, 
when I die. Maybe after a hundred 
incarnations I’ll get sick of it all.
I’ll just want to be a rhododendron
next time, blooming in the Blue Ridge Mountains, 
as beautiful in winter as in spring.
Or maybe a river—does a river
make a sound if no one hears it thunder 
down the boulders? Only a fool would say 
no. Or stone—stone may be the gable
of creation, not its mudsill. I would be 
obsidian for you. When you lie
on black glass, you’ll feel once-molten lava
cool now, smooth as the blood-groove of a sword.

Sonnet with Floe and Cairn

Cool now, smooth as the blood-groove of a sword, 
the highway through Bear Valley is almost
empty as it makes for the sea. The moon, 
not watching over us, couldn’t care less.
We’re lost, bears on an ice floe who can’t smell 
land anymore, the moss on the tundra,
and we don’t know where to turn: no polestar, 
just a cairn that’s a random rockpile, not
a sign or a shrine. We’re not going to see 
or be the light. All we can do is be 
gentle with each other as we feel
our way along the edge. If we just do that, 
when darkness falls, we won’t even notice 
the gold aspen become its silhouette.

Sonnet with X-ray and Lullaby

The gold aspen becomes its silhouette, 
as in a total eclipse, an X-ray
that shows our beauty isn’t what we are, 
but that we are. A ghost wouldn’t even 
whisper to us, as a mother wouldn’t
risk waking her child with a lullaby’s
breath purled into their ear. To watch someone
when they know they’re being watched and they look 
back at you and you see them as they are:
their grief, their power, their understanding 
what you never thought they knew, like the child 
who looks up at their mother and she sees
they know everything: that her heart’s desire 
and her body’s desire are not the same.

Sonnet with Dahlia and Knife

Her body’s desire is not the same
as the dahlia’s desire for sun, although 
she leans in a similar way. It’s more
like the desire of Shakespeare for a knife 
or of a knife for a loaf of warm bread.
Her teeth want to gnaw. Her feet want to stomp.
Her eyes want to see the sun as it splits 
the dawn like a redwood log, still ringing.
Desire has power when it does not depend 
on its fulfillment. They say white contains 
all colors, but she knows that black does, 
too, sees the rainbow in the raven’s wing 
and the Yucatán caves where the purest 
water on earth glows sapphire in the dark.

Sonnet with Hook and Ginger

The purest water glows sapphire in the dark. 
Your voice sounds different with the lights off, 
hard to read without the clue of your lips, 
how much do I imagine . . . Bring it here . . .
off-white . . . broken . . . that’s it . . . curious . . . hook. . . .
You can never know how something will taste, 
from how it looks, when you bite into it: 
ginger, plum, avocado, cantaloupe,
chestnut, chanterelle. The words coming out 
of your mouth: curses, blessings in unknown 
languages. Your raucous cry becomes hushed; 
your hush roars. Your arid prairie becomes
a lake, and the lake has an island where
you lie and become grass, and field, and earth.

Sonnet with Bicycle and Fuse

You lie and become grass, and field, and earth,
and light that binds them. What is empathy
but practicing for your life after death,
when you no longer exists, but I am
the maple on the corner, the yellow
bicycle leaning against it, I am
the striped garter snake on the dunes, I am
the lineman climbing the pole to replace
the fuse, I am the bolt of lightning and
the ten billion beads of rain barraging
Grant Park, and I am the woman walking
home from work across the plaza, slowly
because she’s tired and because she loves
the anarchy of rain on the fountain.

Sonnet with Radio and Noodles

The anarchy of rain on the fountain, 
the simplicity of sun on the bench. 
If no one ever writes another song,
it’s because it’s everywhere: magnolia
branches scrape the window so you can’t sleep, 
the mom-and-pop hot noodle shop (their son, 
sulky, working the counter) is open
late when across the street a front door slams, 
and then a car door, no engine, music
on the radio, “I’d Rather Go Blind,”
while the flak of stars crisscrosses above—
it’s all a love song, each bowl of ramen.
The engine starts, but the music’s turned up 
just enough to be heard over its din.

Sonnet with Talons and Moving Van

The music’s turned up enough to be heard 
over the barking dogs, over the wind
blowing like Rahsaan Roland Kirk through all 
its instruments (the huge firs, the city 
canyons, the filigree of the cherry),
over the chirping of the moving van 
backing in the cul-de-sac, and over 
the clashing cymbal of the rising sun.
But what of the other music—under
the breath of the child dreaming of the wilds 
they have never known, under the silent 
talons of the owl as it seeks its prey,
the music light makes as it leaves a star
on the long, lonely search for its true home.

Sonnet with Hummingbird and Mardi Gras

The long, lonely search for our true home: this 
is what’s left of it. No god to bow to,
just the pine trees bowing. And to what? Yes.
To what and when and why and where and who 
and which and whiskey. To the folderol
of the hoodoo, to the gold purple green 
Mardi Gras strumming of the hummingbird 
(who hovers, looks me in the eye, then darts 
back in its vortex) and to the night game 
pitcher who walks away from the diamond 
and off the field to look at the diamond 
stars. There is no joy like the joy of those
who don’t know the way home, but know where to 
look: the throat’s curve, the gray-green of an eye.

Sonnet with Junipers and Fire

Look: thy throat’s curve, the gray-green of thine eye. 
You see that you are seen. Your eyes look straight 
into mine and I see there is nothing
in me that is not in thee. Not one sin 
or ecstasy. Goldfish swim in the pond 
beneath the overhang of junipers
where they cannot be seen, but you can tell 
they are there by the shine of the silence.
By the shine of thy silence I know you 
love, although your love is intransitive: 
it hath no object. You love and that’s all.
You take it all in as fire consumes
the sky and leaves not one stray leaf behind. 
Still, whatever burneth in thee, burneth in me.

Read more from Issue 21.2.