Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing. Marianne Boruch

      There are angels, good

      and bad, right? And we all —

      Some of us fly. Fly!

      I’d climb into the drawing

      Leonardo made and be the figure

      bent to gears

      and levers and ropes pulling up wings

      of tanned hide sewn

      with raw silk. And fail. And never

      get anywhere for years

      and years. Talk to us,

      the dead say, our

      deep blues set the garden adrift,

      our leafy fronds do the shade right.

      Still one of the living, I walk there

      twice a day, early morning,

      evening. Because once

      you made me lie down

      in that dream, telling me

      it’s easy, it’s all

      in the small of the back, subtle,

      most delicate angle. And you lift

      like this, you said.

We’re Not Insects

      though we keep time, sort of.

      And make our own

      white noise. Ask the half-deaf who

      lean closer, every word

      bottom of a well, under rock and water

      and here comes the bucket on a rope,

      hitting the mossy sides

      the whole way up, here where

      cicadas begin in the body, all

      its pools and deeps

      and dusk. Insects that never

      entered the garden by

      invitation but their

      triumph, their pulse and

      their pulse —

Once Made of Feathers and an Ounce of Blood

      From then on Katrina

      fiercing up from the get-go

      any girly girl named that.

      Before too, whole phrases

      incisor-sharp: fuck you, you fucking fuck!

      all down the front. New Orleans,

      black T-shirt sold on the street for mischief and joy

      years back, pre-nightmare.

      One has to respect

      options, I said, three parts of speech

      pressed into service.

      Rage on fabric going, gone

      redundant. End of the World, take that! A thing

      to slip over your head.

      Surely piles of them mouthing off on carts

      to wild up later. Ever after. Day of days.

      Torn wounded muck of it twisting out to sea,

      great biblical sweeps: shipwrecked

      porches, car parts in flight, dogs every

      bent shape of

      howl and horrific, dresser drawers

      jet-streamed smithereens

      beside warblers battered ancient into

      once made of feathers and an ounce of blood.

      You. If you ever wore

      such a shirt, you’d hold it close,

      a live explosive

      under a milder, say, button-down.

      And pause. Oh yeah? whipping

      open, getting even.

      Like some

      Woden or Zeus seized. Grief

      on steroids, if that were a god.

Notation Gregorian

      after Kyriale seu Ordinarium Missae, author unknown

      To note the inevitable is a most steady terrible job.

      Diamonds pox the score, but the other puncta, little

      square notes for the chant, many have tails

      bedraggled kites can’t get rid of either, the day officially

      gloom now, treachery head-on in high wind.

      Wily punctum: called virga and often doubled

      thus the bivirga, two quavers united by a slur.

      It’s a quaver the throat knows, locked

      in middle earth and ice. Beware.

      But the apostropha is never found alone, e.g. —

      in woods, where night falls

      like a folktale. Not true! Famine is this

      very soundtrack, the least-loved child left there

      far from the river, a sacrifice, the yet-to-be bass clef

      of any desperate mind. I’d grant

      maybe a hungry second girl, both quavers

      tap tapping it out.

      If you think too hard down centuries about ways

      we got here, you can’t think at all.

      Don’t ask how an apostropha works finally.

      Except I found a stray root in Greek: to turn, to turn away.

      And a history of addressing

      an imaginary person. In regard to

      a repercussion is always to be made — agreed,

      off whatever hard-hit note you

      don’t see coming, that faint echo down after each

      keeps bruising. Minor —

      never minor. And beauty

      is blue black.

      I guess one hears or

      does not hear, an inborn thing like that dot to the right

      of the square means pause because

      I certainly understand hesitation, shame, embarrassment,

      the world-without-end medieval underneath

      brain, heart

      my heart, stop, breathe. Ditto the plain English of

       according to circumstances they may be sung

      lightly crescendo or decrescendo. That’s depending

      on the angle of the stake in the heart put there by

      god help us. And how huge

      dark trees when

      all is lost, those children dawned.

Song Again, in Spring

      The bird’s hunger, seeking shape: a worm shape, green