Female Deity                                   

All names and forms begin in her.
Gouged out of solid rock, her tomb
looms near sacred aviaries where
her favorite birds of prey still nest.
Depicted naked with a cape-like
mane of hair, she’s the soil we’ve
sprung from, whose voracious
graves will digest us again
and again. Reputed to smell 
virginal yet earthy—her scent
tinged with carnivorous whiffs of blood—
she’s said to have borne twenty odd
children, yet kept her figure boyish
and slim. The personification
of our fall, she is always near at hand:
when beseeching pleas receive
a slap, grunt or shove for reply,
where fresh wounds go uncleaned
and true love has worn thin. Her voice
is heard in graverobbers’ debates
about the rising prices of their wares.
Legend says a spurned lover 
murdered her—cut her up
and heaved her limb-less into the sea.
Her name means eternal swimmer,
she who takes revenge when the enemy’s
back is turned, though one young
scholar has translated it as goddess
most unerodable, who sprouts new
appendages endlessly and never truly dies.
All over the East one sees limestone
statues of her peacefully sleeping,
guarded by her little cat Giblet
baring his tiny stone fangs.

Tsunami                                                                  

What caused us to set a course for shore days ahead
of schedule? An abundance of strange things floating
in the water. Unopened packages of ground meat
and noodles. Fresh vegetables. A straw hat with “Relax,
It’s Simple!” stitched in loopy script on the brim.
Amber bottles of prescription pills and expensive
cosmetics. A laminated menu from a seaside resort,
its picture of shrimp and hot peppers en brochette
captioned in four languages. The text message our
diver received from his wife as we made our way back
simply read disaster. Or perhaps it was catastrophe
she keyed in, and after that the beautiful Japanese
word for tidal wave. The place we returned to is not
the island we left. The dock is gone. Villages
have disappeared. Dead tourists still wear bathing suits,
their bodies sunburnt the color of cooked
lobsters. I’m trying to remember the Greek term
for brotherly love. Is it philios? Please let it be philios.
I need a mantra to calm me each morning as I exit
my tent, a merciful word to repeat in my head.

Chanson/Elegy for Gina                                 

Seriously under-medicated I waltz
downstairs into the soaked street
during a short storm. No one but
the lone dog home to advise against
it, and he decides to come along.
Rain pelts us like pills spilling from
the pharmacist’s pockets as she does
a quick headstand to clear her mind
before another trying lunch with her
mother. The wet dog shakes himself
hard, license tags jingling like dimes
in a jar—a sound halfway between
maracas and breaking glass. I must
waltz carefully across sidewalks alive
with promenading snails, defenseless
and jellyish. Their motto: the wetter
the better. The dog licks a snail once,
unpersuaded by its flavor. I’m ruining
my boiled wool bedroom slippers
in multiple puddles. You loved puddles
and tide pools, dearest friend. Now
you are dead and I’m left not high
enough and not dry, wavering
in the rain, only snails and a spotted
dog urinating on geraniums for company.
I’d better not wander far in this drugged
weather, with the primitive cinema
in my head showing old cartoons
of pent up rapture and despair,
and the sky gone violet, and everybody’s
rain gutters continually drooling.