writing

Be Mine, Whomever You May Be + Letter to The Neverseen (poem)

kisses and sweet affection to all on this rainy Valentine’s Day

know that you are loved in some way
by someone, somewhere and count
yourself rich if you know love in many
ways and know it by many people

and now – a poem about love whether it exists
or whether you are still seeking it out there
amongst the parading faces of strangers . . .

Letter to The Neverseen

He says he translates me like medieval
pomegranate print nightgowns . . .
and I turn to him and mumble
hmmmm — let me taste that for a while,
let me run in that fantastic white frock
in dark and distant fields once dreamt
when i know only you are watching.
let me laugh under crystalline moonlight
let it cast the shape of my body
like a silver sword,
and let me wear the dew like earring cusps
and kelly green smoke perfume.

ok — you don’t have to touch . . .
you are the ineffable —
(but promise me you’ll watch)
as there is something i wish for you to see,
you may be
a seahorse, a starfish —
if it suits you,
if you wish.

And promise you’ll pay attention
when i turn from a saucer
to a dish,
and if i became a cup
would you rather me be a bowl?
would you find yourself drinking more?

i miss you in many ways,
i need you still more in others,
i learn you further, deeper every time
sometimes – i liken it to being . . .

lovers
looking out
over plankboard streets and cabinets,
castanets,
sunlit holes in the concrete
trying to be windows,
vines and flowers spurting from crevasses
where water runs down into rusty red-orange lines
to meet the dirt
that is the road.
Hoops and barrels of silver day-water
and the dust tarnishes everything
even the day itself
cannot touch.

Baskets and tarps,
passage and carry,
cloth covered fruit in flesh-hued skin
and me in the window ledge with
the only foreign tongue
in a land, a time, sometimes foreign to me.

And you —
you walk down the dirtroadstreetconcrete
window light field
and speak my language
soft from the path below like a surprise
like a magic-hat rabbit boy-child
in dark good fur to curl upon for sleep.
And in the sun bath,
and under your leather shoes,
the stones talk about your approach
and i steel myself,
and the words are like lovemaking
and your voice resonates firm
in my sex and circling outward into
the shafts of my hair and fingernails.

And i find in the lightest, strangest
parts of my psyche,
of this world,
that i understand words,
that i am able to sew them finely together
and make beautiful shawls
and bedsheets.

I go here whenever I hear from you:
I compose the sugar and the sass
The Litany and profanity.

This connection:
2 birds
2 bellies
2 eternal voices
meant to find solace
and unity in creation —

2 pear halves passed
from deity to deity
on blue gilded plates.

you and i are these.

writing

Circling Hunger

Hawks are circling in Springtime skies
looking below, angling prey.
the boy in the magenta t-shirt passes by
it reads “Real Men Wear Pink.”
Gentle hunter for a modern age.

Something golden, small, successful
clutches the side of tall, bare tree
from its talons hangs a whip-thin rope
snake and hawk, one for the other
one sounds as it moves
one sounds as it calls.

The boy smiles at me.
i nod appreciatively.
i move.
he calls.

Turkey Vultures greedily amble
a black parade at the side of the road
wings spread like dark-toothed combs
the torn edges of overlapping parachutes
crowding in, crowding out the landing space
near their carrion comfort.

The screech owl wakes me,
it’s time to hunt, pretty, open your eyes . . .
we used to keep those same hours he and i
and just now, i am an indigo mouse
small, blue, running in moonlit fields
squealing with fright, but quick, clever.

He clutches my hand, i slither
but allow myself to be carried.
He tugs at my velvet ear, i twitch
but allow myself only to listen.

The hunt grows tiring, a body grows slack
wings fold in to rest awhile, and a jaundiced eye
watches the world grow old around it
but cannot bear to turn the eye inside.

Not yet.
Not now.

The shadow of wings play against the wall
a cloudless nite so opportune,
gathering strength, garnering sleep
he calls, I move.

~ Andrea E. Janda