Ode to Rennes

Ode to Rennes

You of

twisted

roads,

secrets,

stone,

phone wires,

laundry lines,

statues

green and crumbling,

blue number signs,

old faded doorways,

metal balconies

and black aching trees.

How can I understand you,

the way you hold cities

and people,

in your delicate,

skeletal hands?

The way your monuments

rest in the hard,

ancient

hearts

of your people,

passing within each other

like shadows:

buses

and cigarettes at night.

The freedom of the dark cold sea,

filling them--

drinking to feel.

I cannot understand

these barren emotions,

the way the smoky clouds,

and desolate trees

blend days together,

people together,

into brown and black.

You,

who carves me at sleep

into solitude

and questions.

The Ghettos

The Ghettos

Paris is ruins here,

the houses

balancing on each other,

wires running to nowhere.

The Métro

stops

and goes

releasing the smoke

that they feed on,

watched by the city lights.

She traces her fingers on the windows

as she rides home

watching for the old man

on the corner

feeding the pigeons.

Her only solace

in this night city

full of fountains

with empty promises;

that he every morning,

trembling like a scarecrow,

crumbles the bread for the birds,

life knotted in his old hands.

Bordeaux to Biarritz

Bordeaux to Biarritz

I am chasing these trains and clouds

like little kids do,

the fright of loosing something in the distance,

bird tails,

sunlight,

traces of sky,

people.

Clouds are like the ghostly tails of gold fish

lingering-

caught fingerprints on the glass,

waving transparent

against the stillness of the sky,

and the carcasses of old citrons

lie abandoned like the husks

of cicadas in summer.

Roads meet and diverge

and tunnels give way to

scattering swallows,

as I continue chasing:

these woven phone lines,

these empty train stations,

until the train breaks off,

and I stare out the back door

at the passing tracks.

Train to Paris

Train to Paris

It was winter before I found you-

the shadows of white sky, sleeping fields,

and the phantoms of trees:

a passing train

of tired people,

two little boys sharing a seat

while their parents cling to the bars

and each others eyes,

with a loneliness.

The way the mother looks at her two sons

and up to greet her husband,

as if all this was worth it,

that they have given it all up.

Sculpture

A selection of Black and White

People Watching

Road Trips

Road Trips

I believe that we were moving too fast. I believe that on those road trips, across aching desserts, endless rain, and into the heart of the mountains, my mother was trying to escape.

We drove until we fell asleep. My sister and I curled around each other in the back seat, the fort of towels we had made pulled down, our boundary lines lost to nodding heads. My mother would still drive for an hour or so, into the quiet of a city, and I remember waking up, to see the skylight full of stars and streetlamps, and the hotel humming in the dark.

We listened to books on tape, and got lost. My mother driving past road signs, and runoffs; just feeling the car beneath her feet, the soft ease of being in control. My sister told me stories on these trips, behind the towels, and the sun, we scrunched down beneath the seats of our bug, and played thumb wars, and felt the road beneath us, moving, unsteady, as if we were floating on it. My sister had an imagination like my fathers, and she would tell me tales of first grade, teachers with tarantulas, and dragons. 100 word stories and adventures to protect me from the truth.

She let me play with Barbie’s on the nights they fought, as she crawled beneath the bed, because she couldn’t block it out. This was her exchange for my blissful memories, of sunflowers, and tree houses, and worlds we found in the backyards, like broken doorways.

My mom had a way of running away, leaving my father to sift through the dust of the house, as we traced the coast, and old country highways, the sky like a mouth swallowing us whole.

Belly of the Whale

Belly of the Whale

There was no escape; there had been no escape for weeks, months. She can understand him now, huddled like a moth attracted to the city lights, the lamps, the deep numb of night. How can you bear the world when you know you will always have to surrender? Knowing it will never work out-- it will be the way it is forever. We were born not knowing that we were stupid, but knowing we were not good enough.

Yet, there are times when she is freed: in a car, it is night, no one is out, stoplights feel comforting somehow, no need for time or impatience. The car slows down for the wind to seep in, moisten their skin, as if they were finally a part of something-- the night. Not needing to bear anything, pushing through gravity (it felt as if for once it was lifting). Going faster, and faster, until finally a home, some recognizable place, they would stop.

They would sit for an hour longer in the car, lying down, fingers reaching up through the sunroof, to the air dancing limitless. Talking and listening and then curled up against each other, knowing one of them would be leaving, feeling that reality, the break of morning on the edge of their lips.

She can feel him, the man in the street, a man unknown to her anymore, when she is in the deep creaking house, somewhere upstairs. Everyone has been sleeping for decades it seems like now. She is up, in the moonlight, it is loving her for all her inadequacies: her bitten nails,

her splotchy skin, and her static hair. She is made whole again; but the world still is scratching at the door: the sounds of cars, and ambulances, of life. She wants to numb like him, find escape, he does not remember anything (or does he) but he has a way to become a part, to be as singular and insignificant as a molecule. If only nothing had any meaning to her, maybe she too could be saved.

The Evolution of Churches

The Evolution of Churches

Before,

le plein cintre

half formed of clay

and stone,

like the opening of hands to sky,

churches made of rocks

impossibly placed

in alignment with the stars.

Now churches growing towards god,

the gallery of kings

rebuilt higher

and higher,

carved and beaten stone

statues reining,

as if birth rights

gave them the power

of divinity.

And these have diminished:

facades full of poles, and ladders,

and the crumbled forms

of these immortals,

while rocks

learned to hold sky.

This is the place unknown to anyone

“This is the place unknown to anyone, where the names of ships and stars drift out of reach” –W.S Merwin

your shoulders protrude

like the bow of a ship

calling me home

to you,

the avocado butter

of your skin

and the freckle just below

your right eye.

i can never contain you

you and the easiness,

the way you have with me is like

the ocean of wind

on a summer night,

the way you enter

like moonlight

seeping in

and creeping up from my toes,

so intimate

as if we were born knowing.

we sit

in that heavy darkness,

entangled in each others blood

and dreams

searching our ribcages

and crooks of moons

for poetry.

i am falling with you

into the depths,

that space

without language,

our eyes wide and silent

sitting under the sky of our hearts

threading

the stars together.

i love you--

breathlessly,

and we are made whole

again.

le jardin