RIVER RIPE
For Linda Hogan, for Ai
I swim in a river ripe, a ringlet wheel though
It is a bad place after hours. Wild, unpredictable, yanked around.
I fell sleepy to traffic sounds, warm pangs for a car, not a river.
Like a barn sparrow after cream, not a bud.
To dream of not a wheel, but a chain
Dragging me out of the river.
ICONOGRAPHY: FASHION IN THE MILLENNIAL IMAGINATION
What kind of luck dangles from a chain?
Angles and four-leaf clovers, crosses, found coins.
A gold-patina prophet is $3 from SHEIN, and mass is held
at the Met, and who is the martyr now? Me or you?
Isn’t it holy to find yourself divine? To see your likeness
in the heavens, where everything is eternity and so soft —
lit with a camera flash, fluffy filter strobes, and a film that softens me
to you.
Was this chapel saved by donations
dropped in a clear Lucite box? Candles lit for a dollar a piece, long matches.
If mercy is a merchant, then I am not without
fountains, offerings, saints or symbols to purchase
or ancient superstitions, brooms and beads to inherit.
What fortune grows in a garden? Lavender,
red roses, mint, maybe. Where is grace
found there, or is the luck in these long
acrylics, magic in my fingertips? I choose
nude, now and forever. And the only garden
I know now is lucky desktop bamboo,
leaves tickling my screen.
Where is the water in little dishes?
Or golden kittens, waving me hello from a salon’s tiny temple.
We are golden kittens without milk,
orange peels and no monkeys,
chickens without heads,
temple steps and no traffic,
birds with no eaves to build within.
No harvest to burn, without smoke or grace or snakes
crackling, chanting, chirping prayers.
What comes of mass, messages, or missed trains
when I have no ticket to buy.