from The Water that Broke You, forthcoming this month from Finishing Line Press:
And Us Inside
Suppose it's not birth—our universe contracts,
expands instead in a slow
peristalsis. What creature do we nourish,
going back and forth
for coffee, extending, withdrawing
our hands? What can feed
on our love? A love, for example,
of steam, belly dancing off black coffee—
where does that slip off to, decades
from now, when the world takes
back our eyes? Quiet
stars. Dead or not, they shine.
The trees just stand there and breathe.
God, suspecting the burden
of brain, eyes, chose to be mist
pressed against a lake.
We take our next burning breath.
The moon flowers, half rock, half light.
Aubade
night when the roof lifts off
and the walls fall away
and only the stars contain us
and dark threads beneath the eyelids
and pulls the cover shut
and crickets sing to themselves
and wear out their wings in the grass
all that has ended
each instant the mountains
are more themselves
roosters call to each other
like crippled songbirds
each second the stars
sink farther and the moon brays
in its barn made of light
One Sun, One Moon
Tell me what your foot is for
if it is not infinite . . . .
—
Francisco de Oraa
I.
Bougainvillea blossoms
on the street,
on the sidewalk,
in a sheaf
of dark hair.
The shadow
of the wrought-iron
chair on the patio tiles
makes a labyrinth.
Ants, each with
a tiny shadow,
crawl in and out of its
false walls.
All day etchings
of night are before
us in the shape of
what we love.
As for my foot—
its utility, yes, is limited.
But I see the sun
splatter its script
on the sidewalk,
watch a bird
scrawl its flight
in shadow on the page.
II.
The sun writes
of what it can't touch,
the side it hasn’t
managed to stroke,
of what
it held and let go.
Words, like
shadows, indicate
the outlines. We speak
in silhouettes, make
spider silk
of a bird call.
If the skin
could speak it would
choose the sun's
tongue—its flask
of light,
its stealthy
blundering love.
I once was wrapped
in loss. Grief
was my shoe,
my sidewalk.
Blossoms
purple the dirt,
glow from a crack
in the asphalt.
The sun makes silver
fruit of a leaf.
I don't know
who is speaking.
III.
My eyes—
one sun, one moon—
make a womb now,
a cradle of thread.
The world turns in it
gently. My foot—
who knows?
Patricia
Davis' poetry has appeared in Poet Lore,
The Atlanta Review, Smartish Pace, and other journals. Her translations of
Cuban poetry have been published in Spoon
River Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, and The New Laurel Review. Her chapbook of poems, The Water that Broke You, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
She is the author of several plays and co-author of an award-winning nonfiction book, The Blindfold's Eyes.
