Only As the Day Is Long

by Dorianne Laux

but I recognized it.

  I knew I should make myself get up,

  write it down, but it was late,

  and I was exhausted from working

  all day in the garden, moving rocks.

  Now, I remember only the flavor—

  not like food, sweet or sharp.

  More like a fine powder, like dust.

  And I wasn’t elated or frightened,

  but simply rapt, aware.

  That’s how it is sometimes—

  God comes to your window,

  all bright light and black wings,

  and you’re just too tired to open it.

  Twelve

  Deep in the canyon, under the red branches

  of a manzanita, we turned the pages

  slowly, seriously, as if it were a holy text,

  just as the summer before we had turned

  the dark undersides of rocks to interrupt

  the lives of ants, or a black stink bug

  and her hard-backed brood.

  And because the boys always came,

  even though they weren’t invited, we never

  said anything, except Brenda who whispered

  Turn the page when she thought we’d seen enough.

  This went on for weeks one summer, a few of us

  meeting at the canyon rim at noon, the glossy

  magazine fluttering at the tips of our fingers.

  Brenda led the way down, and the others

  stumbled after blindly, Martin,

  always with his little brother

  hanging off the pocket of his jeans, a blue

  pacifier stuck like candy in his mouth.

  Every time he yawned, the wet nipple

  fell out into the dirt, and Martin, the good brother,

  would pick it up, dust it with the underside

  of his shirt, then slip it into his own mouth

  and suck it clean. And when the turning

  of the pages began, ceremoniously, exposing

  thigh after thigh, breast after beautiful, terrible

  breast, Martin leaned to one side,

  and slid the soft palm of his hand

  over his baby brother’s eyes.

  Each Sound

  Beginnings are brutal, like this accident

  of stars colliding, mute explosions

  of colorful gases, the mist and dust

  that would become our bodies

  hurling through black holes, rising,

  muck-ridden, from pits of tar and clay.

  Back then it was easy to have teeth,

  claw our way into the trees—it was

  accepted, the monkeys loved us, sat

  on their red asses clapping and laughing.

  We’ve forgotten the luxury of dumbness,

  how once we crouched naked on an outcrop

  of rock, the moon huge and untouched

  above us, speechless. Now we talk

  about everything, incessantly,

  our moans and grunts turned on a spit

  into warm vowels and elegant consonants.

  We say plethora, demitasse, ozone and love.

  We think we know what each sound means.

  There are times when something so joyous

  or so horrible happens our only response

  is an intake of breath, and then

  we’re back at the truth of it,

  that ball of life expanding

  and exploding on impact, our heads,

  our chests, filled with that first

  unspeakable light.

  Fast Gas

  for Richard

  Before the day of self service,

  when you never had to pump your own gas,

  I was the one who did it for you, the girl

  who stepped out at the sound of a bell

  with a blue rag in my hand, my hair pulled back

  in a straight, unlovely ponytail.

  This was before automatic shut-offs

  and vapor seals, and once, while filling a tank,

  I hit a bubble of trapped air and the gas

  backed up, came arcing out of the hole

  in a bright gold wave and soaked me—face, breasts,

  belly and legs. And I had to hurry

  back to the booth, the small employee bathroom

  with the broken lock, to change my uniform,

  peel the gas-soaked cloth from my skin

  and wash myself in the sink.

  Light-headed, scrubbed raw, I felt

  pure and amazed—the way the amber gas

  glazed my flesh, the searing,

  subterranean pain of it, how my skin

  shimmered and ached, glowed

  like rainbowed oil on the pavement.

  I was twenty. In a few weeks I would fall,

  for the first time, in love, that man waiting

  patiently in my future like a red leaf

  on the sidewalk, the kind of beauty

  that asks to be noticed. How was I to know

  it would begin this way: every cell of my body

  burning with a dangerous beauty, the air around me

  a nimbus of light that would carry me

  through the days, how when he found me

  weeks later, he would find me like that,

  an ordinary woman who could rise

  in flame, all he would have to do

  is come close and touch me.

  As It Is

  The man I love hates technology, hates

  that he’s forced to use it: telephones

  and microfilm, air conditioning,

  car radios and the occasional fax.

  He wishes he lived in the old world,

  sitting on a stump carving a clothespin

  or a spoon. He wants to go back, slip

  like lint into his great-great-grandfather’s

  pocket, reborn as a pilgrim, a peasant,

  a dirt farmer hoeing his uneven rows.

  He walks when he can, through the hills

  behind his house, his dogs panting beside him

  like small steam engines. He’s delighted

  by the sun’s slow and simple

  descent, the complicated machinery

  of his own body. I would have loved him

  in any era, in any dark age, I would take him

  into the twilight and unwind him, slide

  my fingers through his hair and pull him

  to his knees. As it is, this afternoon, late

  in the twentieth century, I sit on a chair

  in the kitchen with my keys in my lap, pressing

  the black button on the answering machine

  over and over, listening to his message,

  his voice strung along the wires outside my window

  where the birds balance themselves

  and stare off into the trees, thinking

  even in the farthest future, in the most

  distant universe, I would have recognized

  this voice, refracted, as it would be, like light

  from some small, uncharted star.

  The Thief

  What is it when your man sits on the floor

  in sweatpants, his latest project

  set out in front of him like a small world, maps

  and photographs, diagrams and plans, everything

  he hopes to build, invent or create,

  and you believe in him as you always have,

  even after the failures, even more now

  as you set your coffee down

  and move toward him, to where he sits

  oblivious of you, concentrating

  in a square of sun—

  you step over the rulers and blue graph-paper

  to squat behind him, and he barely notices

  though you’re still in your robe

  which falls open a little as you reach

  around his chest, feel for the pink

  wheel of each nipple, the slow beat

  of
his heart, your ear pressed to his back

  to listen—and you are torn,

  not wanting to interrupt his work

  but unable to keep your fingers

  from dipping into the ditch in his pants,

  torn again with tenderness

  for the way his flesh grows unwillingly

  toward your curved palm, toward the light,

  as if you had planted it, this sweet root,

  your mouth already an echo of its shape—

  you slip your tongue into his ear

  and he hears you, calling him away

  from his work, the angled lines of his thoughts,

  into the shapeless place you are bound

  to take him, over bridges of bone, beyond

  borders of skin, climbing over him

  into the world of the body, its labyrinth

  of ladders and stairs—and you love him

  like the first time you loved him,

  with equal measures of expectancy

  and fear and awe, taking him with you

  into the soft geometry of the flesh, the earth

  before its sidewalks and cities,

  its glistening spires,

  stealing him back from the world he loves

  into this other world he cannot build without you.

  This Close

  In the room where we lie, light

  stains the drawn shades yellow.

  We sweat and pull at each other, climb

  with our fingers the slippery ladders of rib.

  Wherever our bodies touch, the flesh

  comes alive. Heat and need, like invisible

  animals, gnaw at my breasts, the soft

  insides of your thighs. What I want

  I simply reach out and take, no delicacy now,

  the dark human bread I eat handful

  by greedy handful. Eyes, fingers, mouths,

  sweet leeches of desire. Crazy woman,

  her brain full of bees, see how her palms curl

  into fists and beat the pillow senseless.

  And when my body finally gives in to it

  then pulls itself away, salt-laced

  and arched with its final ache, I am

  so grateful I would give you anything, anything.

  If I loved you, being this close would kill me.

  The Lovers

  She is about to come. This time,

  they are sitting up, joined below the belly,

  feet cupped like sleek hands praying

  at the base of each other’s spines.

  And when something lifts within her

  toward a light she’s sure, once again,

  she can’t bear, she opens her eyes

  and sees his face is turned away,

  one arm behind him, hand splayed

  palm down on the mattress, to brace himself

  so he can lever his hips, touch

  with the bright tip the innermost spot.

  And she finds she can’t bear it—

  not his beautiful neck, stretched and corded,

  not his hair fallen to one side like beach grass,

  not the curved wing of his ear, washed thin

  with daylight, deep pink of the inner body.

  What she can’t bear is that she can’t see his face,

  not that she thinks this exactly—she is rocking

  and breathing—it’s more her body’s thought,

  opening, as it is, into its own sheer truth.

  So that when her hand lifts of its own volition

  and slaps him, twice on the chest,

  on that pad of muscled flesh just above the nipple,

  slaps him twice, fast, like a nursing child

  trying to get a mother’s attention,

  she’s startled by the sound,

  though when he turns his face to hers—

  which is what her body wants, his eyes

  pulled open, as if she had bitten—

  she does reach out and bite him, on the shoulder,

  not hard, but with the power infants have

  over those who have borne them, tied as they are

  to the body, and so, tied to the pleasure,

  the exquisite pain of this world.

  And when she lifts her face he sees

  where she’s gone, knows she can’t speak,

  is traveling toward something essential,

  toward the core of her need, so he simply

  watches, steadily, with an animal calm

  as she arches and screams, watches the face that,

  if she could see it, she would never let him see.

  Kissing

  They are kissing, on a park bench,

  on the edge of an old bed, in a doorway

  or on the floor of a church. Kissing

  as the streets fill with balloons

  or soldiers, locusts or confetti, water

  or fire or dust. Kissing down through

  the centuries under sun or stars, a dead tree,

  an umbrella, amid derelicts. Kissing

  as Christ carries his cross, as Gandhi

  sings his speeches, as a bullet

  careens through the air toward a child’s

  good heart. They are kissing,

  long, deep, spacious kisses, exploring

  the silence of the tongue, the mute

  rungs of the upper palate, hungry

  for the living flesh. They are still

  kissing when the cars crash and the bombs

  drop, when the babies are born crying

  into the white air, when Mozart bends

  to his bowl of soup and Stalin

  bends to his garden. They are kissing

  to begin the world again. Nothing

  can stop them. They kiss until their lips

  swell, their thick tongues quickening

  to the budded touch, licking up

  the sweet juices. I want to believe

  they are kissing to save the world,

  but they’re not. All they know

  is this press and need, these two-legged

  beasts, their faces like roses crushed

  together and opening, they are covering

  their teeth, they are doing what they have to do

  to survive the worst, they are sealing

  the hard words in, they are dying

  for our sins. In a broken world they are

  practicing this simple and singular act

  to perfection. They are holding

  onto each other. They are kissing.

  from

  SMOKE

  Death Comes to Me Again, a Girl

  Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip.

  Barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible, she tells me,

  not like you think: all darkness and silence.

  There are wind chimes and the scent of lemons.

  Some days it rains. But more often the air

  is dry and sweet. We sit beneath the staircase

  built from hair and bone and listen

  to the voices of the living.

  I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair.

  Especially when they fight, and when they sing.

  How It Will Happen, When

  There you are, exhausted from a night of crying, curled up on the couch,

  the floor, at the foot of the bed, anywhere you fall you fall down crying,

  half amazed at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry

  anymore. And there they are, his socks, his shirt, your underwear

  and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile next to the bathroom door,

  and you fall down again. Someday, years from now, things will be

  different, the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows

  shining, sun coming in easily now, sliding across the high shine of wax

  on the wood floor. You’ll be peeling an orange or watching a bird

  spring
from the edge of the rooftop next door, noticing how,

  for an instant, its body is stopped on the air, only a moment before

  gathering the will to fly into the ruff at its wings and then doing it:

  flying. You’ll be reading, and for a moment there will be a word

  you don’t understand, a simple word like now or what or is

  and you’ll ponder over it like a child discovering language.

  Is you’ll say over and over until it begins to make sense, and that’s

  when you’ll say it, for the first time, out loud: He’s dead. He’s not

  coming back. And it will be the first time you believe it.

  Fear

  We were afraid of everything: earthquakes,

  strangers, smoke above the canyon, the fire

  that would come running and eat up our house,

  the Claymore girls, big-boned, rough, razor blades

  tucked in their ratted hair. We were terrified

  of polio, tuberculosis, being found out, the tent

  full of boys two blocks over, the kick ball, the asphalt,

  the pain-filled rocks, the glass-littered canyon, the deep

  cave gouged in its side, the wheelbarrow crammed

  with dirty magazines, beer cans, spit-laced butts.

  We were afraid of hands, screen doors slammed

  by angry mothers, abandoned cars, their slumped

  back seats, the chain-link fence we couldn’t climb

  fast enough, electrical storms, blackouts, fistfights

  behind the pancake house, Original Sin, sidewalk

  cracks and the corner crematorium, loose brakes

  on the handlebars of our bikes. It came alive

  behind our eyes: ant mounds, wasp nests, the bird

  half-eaten on the scratchy grass, chained dogs,

  the boggy creek bed, the sewer main that fed it,

  the game where you had to hold your breath

  until you passed out. We were afraid of being

  poor, dumb, yelled at, ignored, invisible

  as the nuclear dust we were told to wipe

  from lids before we opened them in the kitchen,

  the fat roll of meat that slid into the pot, sleep,

  dreams, the soundless swing of the father’s ringed

  fist, the mother’s face turned away, the wet bed,

  anything red, wrenches left scattered in the dirt,

  the slow leak, the stain on the driveway, oily gears