As long as he sits beside her
holding a straw to her lips
his life has purpose:  provider
as long as he sits beside her.
And she is his provider
though most of the liquid drips
down her chin as he sits beside her
holding the straw to her lips.




My brother moves from room to room, pile to pile.
He’s kept everything—
sweater still wrapped in plastic,
chairs spilling sour laundry,
jumble of stretch pants, outsize tops
you could force over her head sunk on her breast.
Drip-dry flower prints—
cheap raiment of her end.
Moccasins curled to the shape of her feet.
Did she walk on her own
or was the social worker correct,
that he bore all her weight?
Bathroom tray of dusty costume jewelry:
she sat there twisting rings on and off.
Some, dropped into the bowl, were lost.
I should have taken the estate-sale bracelet he offered—
to take anything away.

I thought he might need it—





My arms and legs were dark as earth
from picking—small olives knocked
from the gnarled trees then pressed
into oil, then grapes, then pomegranates
till rain poured in torrents down the wadis.
Fifteen and pregnant, I left my mother’s house,
her row of jars, stone for grinding,
quick hands turning out loaves.
I rode behind him.  They were counting
us like sheep and cows to tax us.
The dust stung, but I felt my strength
rising—I could have harvested vineyards,
pressed the wine.  Then inside me a jar
broke and warm liquid drenched my thighs.
The innkeeper’s wife looked me over shrewdly
and pointed us to the mud-brick shed in back.
I lay on the threshing floor and waited between
the clenchings—dull cramps like menses.
I drank some barley water he brought me.  A girl
led in the cows and the shed breathed with their big bodies.
The girl gave me water to clean myself—that was when
I saw my arms dark against my belly.
The cramps came faster, the furrow was widening,
then the bursting pain of the baby’s head
as it tore the opening.  I squatted over strewn chaff,
tensed my thighs and pushed, waited and pushed,
and as I thrust him out in a rush of blood and water
I smelled the cattle and my own pungent smell
and felt the damp cold on my clotted
hair and shaking legs.  I was not
tired.  I had never felt such pleasure
in my house of flesh.  In that moment and in
the hours after, cord knotted and cut,
baby cleaned of blood and bound in cotton,
nothing they’d ever told me mattered.  His mouth
found my breast and pressed from it the first liquid
that comes before milk and I pressed him against me,
earth feeding earth.  Later I laid him to sleep in straw
in a feeding trough—they’d sold one of their cattle—
and lay down next to him as night streamed through
the open doorway.  There were no shepherds yet,
no magicians no gifts no ideas—only his body
and my body, flesh joyful and shivering.