by Sarah Arvio
O robin O rabbit O bat O tiny vole
all flyers and burrowers come to us now
through our heat ducts and tear ducts and chimneys
come to us with your small-world intentions
that place where only we know how to live
where no one else knows what we say and do
no one knows the crumbs or the flies we eat
or the silly songs we hum as we sleep
Aurora (or Ra)
Oh Aurora Do I live to be adored
or to be abhorred There’s the sun god Ra
who might have adored me God of the day
Adore adore and the word of gold: d’or
I opened a Door and you came in
one morning as a cold sun was rising
O Roarer I woke to your dawn my day
El Dorado my city in the south
Though I love your old gold I covet
some cold cash to warm me with
How close are the words warm and warn
And here is a warning Good morning
O my Aura Anything may come
O my dawn Am I a whore to fortune
I whored my joy for the harder days
but what I hoard is never joy enough
I saw the dawn rising so gold and so red
your golden wallet and how bright the light
Gold aurora that warmed me in your love
Cold aurora that warned me of your love
Puck
I said to my pontiff on the dark ice
wearing on his finger the jewel of ice
as I pondered the smoothness of the ice
I said to my grand high puckety-puck
pounding the ice on the dark pond
I said to my pal my pale fire my polestar
you tried to break me so you broke me
if you break me again I’ll break again
Is there a point you’re trying to make
as black as ice on the winter pond
I pander to your every pass and wish
You knocked my head off when I tried to speak
then knocked me again for being silent
I said to my pal look what you’ve done
you broke me once and you broke me again
Is there a point you’re trying to make
as bitter as winter and as ponderous
darling Puck you pushed me far too far
I slid and broke there on the other side
on my finger your jewel of white ice
the beauty of the darkness and the ice
Bodhisattva
The new news is I love you my nudist
The new news is I love you my buddhist
my naked body and budding pleasure
in the weather of your presence
Not whether your presence but how
Oh love a new nodule of neurosis
a posy of new roses proposing
a new era for us nobis pacem
O my bodhisattva of new roses
you’ve saved me from my no-love neurosis
You’ve saved my old body from the fatwa
Let’s lie down in a bed of roses
a pocketful that rings around the rosy
If this is the end of the world my love
let’s fall down in bed and die
Let’s give a new nod to nothing
Let’s give a rosebud to nothing at all
How I love the new roses of nothing
O my bodhisattva of nothing
boding I hope no news but this
For our bodies and souls I hope nothing
but the weather of us in our peace
Algarve
I won’t go with Jason for the fleece
for all the algae washing on the beach
gray and silver green and silver gray
all the plastic bottles and old twine
beaching up onto a bed of sand
But there’s something rhythmic in the art
an algorithm for an argonaut
an I’ll-go rhythm or I’ll-go-not
I said I’ll go with you anywhere
and I’ll come there too if you are there
for where is anywhere if you are there
the washing of the waves along the beach
all the plant life of the ancient sea
the dune flowers silver gray and blue
These are the ornaments of what I mean
the organza of a revelation
the orgasm of a something-rhythm
in the gauzy morning near the sea
Our good bad all garbled algebra
which is the “binding of the broken parts”
which was the offering of Al-Jabr
ergo I’ll go elsewhere if you are there
Sides (or Sidereal)
You decide please what side you’re on
the sidereal or the earthen side
or any other side that sounds like love
or sounds like a sound of turning in bed
toward your side or my side toward me as
I sleep or don’t sleep turning toward you
and touching the star side or earth side
along the slope of your shoulder or hip
sidling in and breathing through my nose
turning my face to the side inside your heat
sleeping like that beside your whole world
both sides the inner and the outer side
both sides the stellar and the earthy side
This is the insidious unreal thing
this is the side you really can’t decide
the stuff in your starstruck or dirty dream
speaking from the sidelines during the night
talking roughly to me during your dream
Oh dirt dirt Life turn back to my side
this is real the side of the real our bed
please turn toward me real in the night
Wreck
When life is a wreck
with reams of remorse
and thousands of replies
can all the roses and wintergreen and heart
Oh reckless heart
heartwrack
Is it realizable to start again
with our faces wearing their young green hope
A white rose on the bedstand
white curtains ruffling
and the riffling trees
I turn to you and say this: ruffle me
What is this ruffle? an inner stir
stirring through my life
as if it were
my life
It may be something else
for no one knows
where any stir comes from
or any riff
where any love comes from
or how it comes
Wrecked heart
wracked heart
All the roses and wintergreen and heart
Crow
My only hate my only love
you like
to chant
chant cant chant cant
Oh my clarion of a summer day
carrion squawk of your old heart
I never cared you carry on
under the blue sky of a summer day
A hell of a day a sigh for a day
halcyon cyanide day
lying in a field on a summer day
calamitous calm gaze
Your can’t do and nothing else can do
while I cavil I do I do
You collapse
in
my lap
Oh my lapsed love
you old cuckoo you
Rook me of my heart
oh crooked heart
Oh crackpot heart
oh my clochard my wanton clock
I do not want your do-not-care
I excoriate your do-not-care
I core out your heart
curse you old crow
I know that you care
Peas
I sat in a field full of peas and fed
once long ago
hulling the fresh green peas
and eating them raw
from the palm of my hand
Each a green
explosion
a kind of green dream
in the peaceful field before my life was lived
fielding the future
as I grazed the peas
I can hear myself saying
please oh please
pleading for something I didn’t yet know
Had I known
I might have said
Give me some fresh green peas
give me a handful of peace
Let me graze
in the grace of the field
Peace peace!
would you hold yours please
Did I say peace and grace
I ask is the peaceable possible
Fey
I’m fey
no one says this anymore
or this feckless
falling into a faint
phantom
my phantom life
the rag of fantasy
the drag
as I feinted
not meaning to lie
I feel the lure of failure
the feeling
that all has failed or will fail
not the allure
maiden fair maiden
no one says this
when the word
won’t come through
not the word
or the hope
and no one says why
fie! No one says this
fo-fum
or this
my life is fallow
that feeling
do you have it sometimes
my life has fallen
fallow
it doesn’t follow
that the next phase is up
I fell into a foul temper
no one says this
a sick faint
sycophantic
the figment not the allure
Rimbaud (or Desert Love)
you must walk your thousand miles
Rimbaud walked till his eyes turned white
his mother was a wretch
therefore he walked his thousand miles
boys with wretch mothers must walk their miles
oh love you need your desert eyes
white searing desert eyes
served but not deserved
through the white desert for many days
in a white sandstorm
watching the sand bodies roll and turn
in the white desertifying desert wind
desertification occurs
after the dereliction after the derision
dear love your derelict desire
corpus delicti
you must walk your white miles
carrying the body of your offense
Silk Road
May I relax
from the long longing
I have long had
in the seat of myself
now late in my life
in the seat of my love
sagging there
in the soft couch of himself
late late at night
lipping lisped kisses
into his cheeks and his neck
and saying
whatever silliness
sallies from myself
as long as it is soft
and silly and silky
Far down the Silk Road
we have come and gone
across the Bering Strait
and through the unbearable
sailing on the couchboats
with their square sails
on round pegs
across all the continents
of fury and drink
and sickness and dismay
gusting on and on
in the cheeks of our need
with the wind slacking
and our faces slack
sagging there
in the couch of ourselves
a whisker in a kiss
a kisser in a wish
where all that we say
is couched in a whimsy
snapping our fingers
to the sound of a gust
Shah
Pasha pasha you came into my life
and I painted you with my passion
I couldn’t make the passion go away
though I wanted to Oh shah my hummingbird
humming something a human wants to hear
something like those words that have no sound
pushing through the passion with a shout
Push push here you are doing it again
some color in the pit of it
something sham in the pith of it
something like shame in the myth of it
or a puzzle deep in the paint of it
Something pithy and pained in the human bird
as though the words weren’t made to say aloud
You paint me with pain this is what I know
and the shame is where it’s pushing from
Pshaw let the bird hum and the hum hum
some human and humiliating thing
Oh passion have patience—do a pas de chat—
tell me your story shah show me your heart
Ether
In the ethereal fields
the real other realms
where what is real is air
where air is what we are
your elbows my elbows
the four humors
the four funny bones
where what we are we are
a rumor of humors
bodily or bellylaugh
where we laugh and laugh
at what we always are
down on all fours
laughing in our hats
your more and my more
all that we were and are
calisthenics of the heart
athletics of the soul
aesthete of ether
either or the other
of what we were and are
Kissing Her (or Morning Glory)
You’re angry as a dog
or an angora cat
An anguilla with gills
all eels do have gills
You’re angry as an eel
you do not feel your heart
you only pump your gills
I’m surprised that eels bark
sometimes mew like cats
right before the hiss
And hiss rhymes with kiss
short for Kissinger
who was instrumental
in the making of a war
the history and hisses
of a gala glorious war
While you were kissing me
the day was such a glory
Trinkets
First you gave me the jewels
and then you gave me the scars
Why did you want to twist my wrist
right where the bracelet turns
Why did you want to wring my finger
where the ring might have fit
All I have now are the jewels and scars
on the scarp of my life
I’m up or down though I don’t know which
I know that I’m injured and scared
I’ve got them now in a burnished heap
gaudy old glamorous trinkets
with stones and gems from inside the rock
and an old glug of memory to drink
And will there be more glamor
and will there be more drink
in my brace of garments
as I scuff up and downtown
carping and glowing
There’s not much to give or say
I’ll have some glug and get some sleep
and some life love as deep as a drink
not my life’s love but love for my life
I will drink it even if you can’t
Sinbad (or Symbiotic)
I’m agog in the synagogue of love
and the sin is I don’t know my Sinbad
Is he Gog or Bes or the seven dwarves
He has been an assault on my senses
a leap and a slam and a somersault
It was in summer that we fell in love
Love and hate he can’t get them straight
we should be sailing home in a schooner
He needs some synergy between his selves
instead there’s ergonomic confusion
He was erotic and he was erratic
he was scintillating and then savage
It’s a symbiotic thing my bio and his
I’ll need an antibiotic to fight him
That’s a symbol for a powerful drug
No I think I’ll need a synecdoche
I’ll need a singer in my synagogue
The sin is I’ve already left the dock
and I think I’ll need the seven voyages
Szymborska could write this better than me
I’m banging on my cymbals and crying out
Saudade saudade is what’s coming for me
I have to go now—though how I don’t know
Body
part bone &
part bomb
yours is all sore
& ready
not a tin can
or a cocktail
yours is atomic
