WONDERBENDER
this one’s too pale
that’s too dark
we are discussing
shades of yellow when you say please
stop saying you’re sorry all the time and i say i’m
sorry i don’t usually
do that at all with other people but you you take
things so hard and you say
if that’s true it’s my problem
if that’s true
i have a strange
antipathy to chlorinated smells
circumference
means you must go all the way around
tuesday morning for the first time we saw the foxes
two of them trotting like tiny thoroughbred horses
around the garden in the small snow
then fading back into the woods
we watched from your study—i with a mouthful of
mouthwash waiting
to spit into the sink before i could say thank you
thank you
for calling me
we had never seen the
foxes before
not in this yard
the woodchucks are
common, coyotes sometimes always the raccoons
and lots and lots of birds even wood-ducks
but never the foxes before tuesday no never
this will not mean
much to you if you cannot put yourself in my shoes
or in my place with the mouthwash i should say
this will not mean much if you cannot understand
fox-beauty or fox-light
or the secondary but also sharp joy later on in the
day
of seeing their perfect pawprints near the newly
transplanted star magnolia
something will grow
in those pawprints in the spring
i have just read for
the second time (though the first time i was small)
black
beauty and
would like to write such a book
i write in first
person because i am in first person
just like black
beauty
in your voice on the
recorded message there was a pale green jacket with
a black lapel
in some senses it was
a little off-the-shoulder
proving that you could change
i had not heard it
the first time
but now it is a comfort
a tall man told my
husband that he had called and checked out my story
with a psychic
about his cat and it was true
in fact so many of my comments had been validated he
could not remember all the details just then
the cat did not want to be just a tenant any more
she wanted to be part of the family
my husband forgot to tell me this right away
but when he did i was overjoyed
last night at the
restaurant there were four of us and shiraz and
lebanese food
delicious lentils
artichokes in tutus
and we had a nice time and then afterwards three of
us went to the restroom
and i stayed behind to put on my coat
a man called my name from another table as i was
walking out DIANE he said in a loud voice
i turned around
it was someone i’d known years ago in fact someone
i’d championed in a way and he’d
always been grateful
he was all smiley he had grown a beard
and a large stomach
we shook hands
he was sitting at a large round table with perhaps
eight other people and he began to introduce me
around
his wife acknowledged me but the others did not seem
interested
and yet this man was very happy to see me and it was
a small but confusing boost
in an evening of sometimes confusing blackened
lentils
the lentils weren’t
confusing exactly it was the conversation
but only at times
only in ways i can trace back to my childhood
when i began to hone an impending sense of something
about to go wrong
with the air between parents
or not between parents exactly but between one of
them at least
and the world
so i carry this
seventh sense
in my bookbag
i carry this sense even without a bookbag it is
tattooed on me
in the shape of a crocodile
right between my breasts
sometimes i put makeup over it
or hang a cloisonne pendant with a crocodile on it
just there
your desperation is
kingpin
has gotten you nowhere
is the reason for oil-soaked shirts that will not
wash clean
specks of white calcite on the green back stairs
it’s still dark so
you can still speak
the dark soft light has crept into the garage
the car is waiting in its innocent darkness
to carry you anywhere anywhere
this is the
circumference not the diameter
i could explain it to you pretty well if you like by
demonstrating with my hat
i am starting this
month a day early
february
this is necessary because in january
i fell asleep at the most important part
i needed to go all
the way the long way around
i tried to buy
something made of titanium
but the mines were out of stock
i bought something made of organza
and watched a movie about asteroids which destroyed
the earth by virtue
of their superior speed and beauty
organza
dental x-rays showing
fields of swollen
wildflowers blue
chicory cornflower
in my mouth
much to the dentist’s surprise
or at least he pretended
wonder is bent at
various times
quickly
and often invisibly
you don’t realize till later
it has hurt you
it has hurt you by
omission by blocking out
the wonder the laughter the
amaze
over something so
tiny it can hardly be real
like the miniature monkeys so small when they are
born
they’re smaller than your thumb
i have seen pictures!
speaking of monkeys
the one in the beginning of
the lady from shanghai
somehow
saddened me
leaping about on a string
love perhaps but a bound love
a little grey shirt and a teacup thimble-sized
and overall in any case i have to say i did not like
that lady from shanghai
wonder when you lay
there in that bed
all but dying
it was as if something else possessed you—it wasn’t
not-you
but you made sounds as if you had to go on
there was nothing i hadn’t told you—it wasn’t that
kind of sad
it was as if something that tied my arm to my body
was thinning to a thread
and i knew i would soon be a one-armed woman
for the rest of my life
the miracles of
wonder in that long-ago yard with no foxes but deer
small rabbits under the lawnchairs
bright orange and yellow nasturtium complete with
ants
thick pears white dogwood johnny-jump-ups in the
grass
a few stars replicated in birdsong dogbark
kittensigh
your face as a child and wrapping your bee-stung
neck in a white t-shirt
drenched in the dragonfly stream
did it help you?
i am sure now that
there is no shame in being this way and that no one
should deny it
and yet there were many moments even with wonder
when i was ashamed
i ate white crackers
with no nutrition whatsoever
perhaps like communion wafers
i offered white wonder in the cup of my two small
hands
right up to the stars
i wrote about your headband of pain the stars like a
hairnet around your suffering
blue all blue
and as crystalline as the night the wonder kissed me
please love me i knew
you would come along
sometime
it just took me a long time to find you i thought
you were someone else
but you look just
like me
you look just like me
you look just like me
