The Mall
In the fierce barbaric stage of our dis-
integration Trace turns slim-blonde and ends
the rich age of ram’s horn curls with gold lights
and from behind is a different woman,
no longer mine. In tight jeans her ass cheeks
crowd every quick step away while I rub
my hands together like Grandfather did
when he’d forgotten who we were, his hands
squeezing his fingers, then hiding themselves
like small feral creatures, half-asked questions,
beneath the sheets before we had a chance
to respond. I observe her waist, thickened
slightly by years, suddenly narrow and
her neck go slender, hostile. Her hair is
a snow curtain, her shoulder blades ice picks
under the T-shirt. Tough nipples stencil
a crease in the sky-blue cotton. Something
is up in her life. Every single man
stares as she shops. Every man’s gaze shocked
at how clear the lips of her cunt are through
the old denim, the fabric so threadbare
both thighs hint at pale skin, the edges of
what I’m allowed to recall, that my great-
great-great-great-grandfather, cockstunned, strained to
see his niece’s arse as she bent over
the second floor railing. Knickers made him
lose where and who he was, negotiate
where and who he might be, sharp ferocious
nib part way down the page, all the way down,
loosing an avalanche, till I stand gob-
smacked at Tracy’s feet watching a stream surge
along a tiled trough. When she stops to check
herself at the window of a sporting
goods store, boys gather round the reflection
with a magnifying glass to study
the path light takes through cloth and how it treats
the weave and skin, each bump a planet, each
strand a rupture in time, each blue sheath, brown
indent. Before shopping, such cathedrals
inspired Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather,
hurt boy and murderer with most crimes un-
seen, to drop many in the village pond
to be nibbled by snakes and frogs whose stirred
world transformed to welcome each stage of life,
species, generation. Meanwhile, she’s smug.
She knows she looks good. Grins at her image
in the window, soft lips parted for when
she’ll drop to her knees, invite the boys to
rivers that overflow old boundary stones
she’s swallowed and swallowed, till they are in
ruins. We all want surprise. A quick chill.
A giggle. But not tears, not this crying.
I’m wet as a fish clothed in air, strangely
well and unafraid. Her safety is up
to mall security cops who step in,
three furies, Defeat, Revenge, Victory.
I know this official version and know
the sequence by heart and wash my hands of
the slow drama, my greyest ancestor,
the guards who lead her to the nearest wall.
She says to stop and wind sighs through the mall.
First guard arrests the boys. Second guard leans
into her. The third uncaps his ballpoint.
And again the years fill with sperm and spleen.
The first stage our eyes. The second our ears.
Third our heart. How easy she is to peel!
I push through the crowd and the guards and get
ready to tell the truth for once and hold
forth loud, for now she’s a girl I once loved,
too young to know what’s real, just like me, both
of us too young to squeeze meaning out of
our years, much less out of parents long dead.
Ghosts collapse like plastic bags while uncles
in uniform take the glossy floor and
shoppers’ voices almost drown the slap of
oars, the flop of landed trout. Death’s close. Lungs
fill with earth, my own breath close to drowning.
Glass
Outside the neighbour’s greenhouse brews a storm
lopsided with rain. I tell him about
Tracy and watch him pick a cucumber
and toss it in a swampy raised bed where
there’s thrashing and a plosive gasp, supple
slide of a long thick black body; he laughs.
“The eel is hungry.” Then silence, complete.
Humid. Intimate. We’re not who we were.
It’s evening, when malevolence lingers
in every bulbous and rotting green thing
and marsh lights flicker out across the fields.
I wade home through the stubble, press my face
to the ground-floor window to see a man
inside Tracy, the bed an unmade nest,
the air violet with flying splinters.
A sudden inhalation from the crowd.
Their bodies can’t figure what to protect,
who is dream, who is real, what here, what there.
As I climb through the bloody broken glass,
Uncles grab Tracy’s arms so I can tilt
my cock to her open mouth. Amazement.
We are all harmed by what we have made clear.
Overall
And so her face grows shy, her eyes drop mine.
Nipples finger the coarse denim. A white
half moon shines each side of the blue tunic.
She says, “Look at it this way.” Visible
waist a milk-curve down into the garment’s
dark scoop and deeper, sharp hips and deeper:
tide line on a still sea, a clean red row
of tiny rose buds, the tattoo artist
crouched intent over low-slung beads of blood.
Her belly. Her breath a rise and fall. “You
wouldn’t want me if you hadn’t lost me.”
When we met in philosophy she said
Ludwig Wittgenstein was sexy. I said
Herakleitos of Ephesos said war
was the father of all things. She said leave
that be. We hit my place because she was
living in her Volvo. Her dentist was,
she said, the image of Ludwig. I said
Herakleitos lived in the same city
all his life. Ephesos, she said, and whipped
out a brand new toothbrush. Bless you, I said.
After olives and beer we fucked six times.
The curtain rises and the room’s full of
long shadows rippling as she floats across
roofs and through windows to rooms where couples
lit by television come apart or
together and mean something. Her back wears
a cross: this is yours always: these wrists in
the circle of your fingers against wood –
trees or walls. This blood is yours and the quiet
of the city. A country’s thousand long
nights. Cock’s crow outside the house of ribbons
returned to after an absence of life.
Home
Again I knock at the door, lose myself
a moment in the storm. The house seems still,
a sombre pile of hollow rooms, while wind
behind me hurls debris against cars and
trees and amplifies the clatter and roar
of the mall. I knock again, everything
in turmoil – sticks, leaves, bags, cans, foil wrappers,
branches groaning huge in the tumbling dusk.
All Grandfather’s best friends died under fire
in the war. Long lines of cars undulate
as they skewer the mall. This is the gate
between two worlds. Icy fingers catch at
the roots of my hair. Then the door opens
with a click and I’m a child diminished
in the muted light that bathes and haloes
the calm silhouette in the hallway. “Yes?”
She will not recognize me so I kick
shut the door, pin her arms to the wall. “Stay.”
This is the atomic state of affairs.
Wittgenstein of the trenches come. Kneel at
her feet to pick each thread of each seam with
the sharp knife from the telephone table.
The cat pads through the hallway, purrs against
my thigh and Tracy does not stare at me,
transfixed, but looks down pityingly while
winter blows against the house and her legs
bloom goosebumps. I don’t know what to do so
rattle the door in its hinges and track
the fat snow along the concession road
to the men in town to exchange rounds of
whisky chased with beer, check out the barmaid,
fuck this and fuck that, cat got your tongue? If
you want pussy here’s what. Tracy always
wears overalls and nothing else when she’s
aiming to get laid, and if her hair’s in
a pony tail she’s into something quick
as frost, I mean, you can open her like
a ripe tomato, a fresh fig, a grape,
the way the dentist did her mouth to check
her bite, see what makes the enterprise tick,
belly, tits and. Lord save us. This forest
protect us, amen. Let rain follow sun.
Only words. Wittgenstein, Herakleitos,
come to the disco, come. She will dance like
a cat on hot coals. We will be uncles
who want more than skin, more than blood, who want
each rib snapped free, the cage open to see
what flies out and what’s sucked in, unlawful
lungs and heart, our own dark secrets. We’ll bare
muscle, sinew, our dry girl on the street
to flirt and flick her skirt, show her pelvis
and spine. But she’s gone. Puff! Gone for a smoke
between dances. Mountains hidden by night,
night by cloud. Adult by child. Villagers
shiver as they pass her by. Each time less,
she’s dressed in rags at the bottom of war.
Herakleitos of Ephesos come. Come.
Forget her hair, forget her face, forget
her tits and her waist. Every girl is young.
Uncles are famous and want her taken
until days flicker twenty-four flames
a second and wankers arrest themselves
in the act and hike down from the mountains.
Trees of this river valley protect us.
Remember the gentle spring, the hawthorn
leafing. The chorus of frogs in the pond.