The Hunger Moon Read online

  grow long as a banner of darkness, when you

  a proper flapper wore yours cropped.

  You pushed and you pulled on my rubbery

  flesh, you kneaded me like a ball of dough.

  Rise, rise, and then you pounded me flat.

  Secretly bones formed in the bread.

  I became willful, private as a cat.

  You never knew what alleys I had wandered.

  You called me bad and I posed like a gutter

  queen in a dress sewn of knives.

  All I feared was being stuck in a box

  with a lid. A good woman appeared to me

  indistinguishable from a dead one

  except that she worked all the time.

  Your payday never came. Your dreams ran

  with bright colors like Mexican cottons

  that bled onto the drab sheets of the day

  and would not bleach with scrubbing.

  My dear, what you said was one thing

  but what you sang was another, sweetly

  subversive and dark as blackberries

  and I became the daughter of your dream.

  This body is your body, ashes now

  and roses, but alive in my eyes, my breasts,

  my throat, my thighs. You run in me

  a tang of salt in the creek waters of my blood,

  you sing in my mind like wine. What you

  did not dare in your life you dare in mine.

  How grey, how wet, how cold

  They are bits of fog caught in armor.

  The outside pretends to the solidity of rocks

  and requires force and skill bearing in

  to cut the muscle, shatter the illusion.

  If you stare at them, your stomach

  curls, the grey eyes of Athena

  pried out, the texture of heavy phlegm,

  chill clots of mortality and come.

  They lie on the tongue, distillations

  of the sea. Fresh as the morning

  wind that tatters the mist.

  Sweet as cream but with that bottom

  of granite, the taste of deep well

  water drawn up on the hottest day,

  the vein of slate in true Chablis,

  the kiss of acid sharpening the tongue.

  They slip down quick as minnows

  darting to cover, and the mouth

  remembers sex. Both provide

  a meeting of the primitive

  and worldly, in that we do

  little more for oysters than the gull

  smashing the shells on the rocks

  or the crab wrestling them open,

  yet in subtle flavor and the choice

  to taste them raw comes a delicacy

  not of the brain but of the senses

  and the wit to leave perfection bare.

  Taking a hot bath

  Surely nobody has ever decided

  to go on a diet while in a tub.

  The body is beautiful stretched

  out under water wavering.

  It suggests a long island of pleasure

  whole seascapes of calm sensual

  response, the nerves as gentle fronds

  of waterweed swaying in warm currents.

  Then if ever we must love ourselves

  in the amniotic fluid floating

  a ship at anchor in a perfect

  protected blood-warm tropical bay.

  The water enters us and the minor

  pains depart, supplanted guests,

  the aches, the strains, the chills.

  Muscles open like hungry clams.

  Born again from my bath like a hot

  sweet tempered, sweet smelling baby,

  I am ready to seize sleep like a milky breast

  or start climbing my day hand over hand.

  Sleeping with cats

  I am at once source

  and sink of heat; giver

  and taker. I am a vast

  soft mountain of slow breathing.

  The smells I exude soothe them:

  the lingering odor of sex,

  of soap, even of perfume,

  its afteraroma sunk into skin

  mingling with sweat and the traces

  of food and drink.

  They are curled into flowers

  of fur, they are coiled

  hot seashells of flesh

  in my armpit, around my head

  a dark sighing halo.

  They are plastered to my side,

  a poultice fixing sore muscles

  better than a heating pad.

  They snuggle up to my sex

  purring. They embrace my feet.

  Some cats I place like a pillow.

  In the morning they rest where

  I arranged them, still sleeping.

  Some cats start at my head

  and end between my legs

  like a textbook lover. Some

  slip out to prowl the living room

  patrolling, restive, then

  leap back to fight about

  hegemony over my knees.

  Every one of them cares

  passionately where they sleep

  and with whom.

  Sleeping together is a euphemism

  for people but tantamount

  to marriage for cats.

  Mammals together we snuggle

  and snore through the cold nights

  while the stars swing round

  the pole and the great horned

  owl hunts for flesh like ours.

  The place where everything changed

  Great love is an abrupt switching

  in a life bearing along at express speeds

  expecting to reach the designated stations

  at the minute listed in the timetable.

  Great love can cause derailment,

  coaches upended, people screaming,

  luggage strewn over the mountainside,

  blood and paper on the grass.

  It’s months before the repairs are done,

  everyone discharged from the hospital,

  all the lawsuits settled, damage

  paid for, the scandal subsided.

  Then we get on with the journey

  in some new direction, hiking overland

  with camels, mules, via helicopter

  by barge through canals.

  The maps are all redrawn and what

  was north is east of south

  and there be dragons in those mountains

  and the sun shines warmer and hairier

  and the moon has a cat’s face.

  There is more sunshine. More rain.

  The seasons are marked and intense.

  We seldom catch colds.

  There is always you at my back

  ready to fight when I must fight;

  there is always you at my side

  the words flashing light and shadow.

  What was grey ripples scarlet and golden;

  what was bland reeks of ginger and brandy;

  what was empty roars like a packed stadium;

  what slept gallops for miles.

  Even our bones are reformed in the close

  night when we hold each other’s dreams.

  Memories uncoil backward and are remade.

  Now the first egg itself is freshly twinned.

  We build daily houses brick by brick.

  We put each other up at night like tents.

  This story tells itself as it grows.

  Each morning we give birth to one another.

  The chuppah

  The chuppah stands on four poles.

  The home has its four corners.

  The chuppah stands on four poles.

  The marriage stands on four legs.

  Four points loose the winds

  that blow on the walls of the house,

  the south wind that brings the warm rain,

  the east wind that brings the cold rain,

/>   the north wind that brings the cold sun

  and the snow, the long west wind

  bringing weather off the far plains.

  Here we live open to the seasons.

  Here the winds caress and cuff us

  contrary and fierce as bears.

  Here the winds are caught and snarling

  in the pines, a cat in a net clawing

  breaking twigs to fight loose.

  Here the winds brush your face

  soft in the morning as feathers

  that float down from a dove’s breast.

  Here the moon sails up out of the ocean

  dripping like a just washed apple.

  Here the sun wakes us like a baby.

  Therefore the chuppah has no sides.

  It is not a box.

  It is not a coffin.

  It is not a dead end.

  Therefore the chuppah has no walls.

  We have made a home together

  open to the weather of our time

  We are mills that turn in the winds of struggle

  converting fierce energy into bread.

  The canopy is the cloth of our table

  where we share fruit and vegetables

  of our labor, where our care for the earth

  comes back and we take its body in ours.

  The canopy is the cover of our bed

  where our bodies open their portals wide,

  where we eat and drink the blood

  of our love, where the skin shines red

  as a swallowed sunrise and we burn

  in one furnace of joy molten as steel

  and the dream is flesh and flower.

  O my love O my love we dance

  under the chuppah standing over us

  like an animal on its four legs,

  like a table on which we set our love

  as a feast, like a tent

  under which we work

  not safe but no longer solitary

  in the searing heat of our time.

  House built of breath

  Words plain as pancakes syruped with endearment.

  Simple as potatoes, homely as cottage cheese.

  Wet as onions, dry as salt.

  Slow as honey, fast as seltzer,

  my raisin, my sultana, my apricot love

  my artichoke, furry one, my pineapple

  I love you daily as milk,

  I love you nightly as aromatic port.

  The words trail a bitter slime like slugs,

  then in the belly warm like cabbage borscht.

  The words are hung out on the line,

  sheets for the wind to bleach.

  The words are simmering slowly

  on the back burner like a good stew.

  Words are the kindling in the woodstove.

  Even the quilt at night is stuffed with word down.

  When we are alone the walls sing

  and even the cats talk but only in Yiddish.

  When we are alone we make love in deeds.

  And then in words. And then in food.

  Nailing up the mezuzah

  A friend from Greece

  brought a tin house

  on a plaque, designed

  to protect our abode,

  as in Greek churches

  embossed legs or hearts

  on display entreat aid.

  I hung it but now

  nail my own proper charm.

  I refuse no offers of help,

  at least from friends,

  yet this presence

  is long overdue. Mostly

  we nurture our own

  blessings or spoil them,

  build firmly or undermine

  our walls. Who are termites

  but our obsessions gnawing?

  Still the winds blow hard

  from the cave of the sea

  carrying off what they will.

  Our smaller luck abides

  like a worm snug in an apple

  who does not comprehend

  the shivering of the leaves

  as the ax bites hard

  in the smooth trunk.

  We need all help proffered

  by benign forces. Outside

  we commit our beans to the earth,

  the tomato plants started

  in February to the care

  of the rain. My little

  pregnant grey cat offers

  the taut bow of her belly

  to the sun’s hot tongue.

  Saturday I watched alewives

  swarm in their thousands

  waiting in queues quivering

  pointed against the white

  rush of the torrents

  to try their leaps upstream.

  The gulls bald as coffin

  nails stabbed them casually

  conversing in shrieks, picnicking.

  On its earth, this house

  is oriented. We grow

  from our bed rooted firmly

  as an old willow into the water

  of our dreams flowing deep

  in the hillside. This hill

  is my temple, my soul.

  Malach hamoves, angel of death

  pass over, pass on.

  The faithless

  Sleep, you jade smooth liar,

  you promised to come

  to me, come to me

  waiting here like a cut

  open melon ripe as summer.

  Sleep, you black velvet

  tomcat, where are you prowling?

  I set a trap of sheets

  clean and fresh as daisies,

  pillows like cloudy sighs.

  Sleep, you soft-bellied

  angel with feathered thighs,

  you tease my cheek with the brush

  of your wings. I reach

  for you but clutch air.

  Sleep, you fur-bottomed tramp,

  when I want you, you’re in

  everybody’s bed but my own.

  Take you for granted and you stalk

  me from the low point of every hour.

  Sleep, omnivorous billy goat,

  you gobble the kittens, the crows,

  the cop on duty, the fast horse,

  but me you leave on the plate

  like a cold shore dinner.

  Is this divorce permanent?

  Runneled with hope I lie down

  nightly longing to pass

  again under the fresh blessing

  of your weight and broad wings.

  And whose creature am I?

  At times characters from my novels swarm through me,

  children of my mind, and possess me as dybbuks.

  My own shabby memories they have plucked and eaten

  till sometimes I cannot remember my own sorrows.

  In all that I value there is a core of mystery,

  in the seed that wriggles its new roots into the soil

  and whose pale head bursts the surface,

  in the dance where our bodies merge and reassemble,

  in the starving baby whose huge glazing eyes

  burned into my bones, in the look that passes

  between predator and prey before the death blow.

  I know of what rags and bones and clippings

  from frothing newsprint and poisonous glue

  my structures are built. Yet these creatures

  I have improvised like golem walk off and thrive.

  Between one and two thirds of our lives we spend

  in darkness, and the little lights we turn on

  make little holes in that great thick rich void.

  We are never done with knowing or with gnawing,

  but under the saying is whispering, touching

  and silence. Out of a given set of atoms

  we cast and recast the holy patterns new.

  Magic mama

  The woman who shines with a dull comfortable glow.

  The woman who sweats honey, an aphid

>   enrolled to sweeten the lives of others.

  The woman who puts down her work like knitting

  the moment you speak, but somehow it gets done

  secretly in the night while everyone sleeps.

  The woman whose lap is wide as the Nile

  delta, whose voice is a lullaby

  whose flesh is stuffed with goosedown.

  Whose eyes are soft-focus mirrors.

  Whose arms are bolsters. Whose love

  is laid on like the municipal water.

  She is not the mother goddess, vortex

  of dark and light powers with her consorts,

  her hungers, her favorites, her temper

  blasting the corn so it withers in its ear,

  her bloody humor that sends the hunter fleeing

  to be tracked and torn by his hounds,

  the great door into the earth’s darkness

  where bones are rewoven into wheat,

  who loves the hawk as she loves the rabbit.

  Big mama has no power, not even over herself.

  The taxpayer of guilt, whatever she gives

  you both agree is never enough.

  She is a one-way street down which pour

  parades of opulent gifts and admiration

  from a three-shift factory of love.

  Magic mama has to make it right, straighten

  the crooked, ease pain, raise the darkness,

  feed the hungry and matchmake for the lonesome

  and ask nothing in return. If you win

  you no longer know her, and if you lose

  it is because her goodness failed you.

  Whenever you create big mama from another

  woman’s smile, a generosity of spirit working

  like yeast in the inert matter of the day,