WORK AND PRAY
“None of us is leading quite the life we were at all prepared for.” -Renata Adler, Speedboat
1.
people are starting to come back but they are not the right people people are moving away but they are not the right people I have said terrible things and I have meant them
2.
you say tell him I sent you tell him rust is seeping in through the dents don’t you see it it is starting already look closely when it rains
don’t you see it
3.
we ate and drank in our work clothes and we laughed
we were canaries in coal mines and birds in the hand
anyway my point was anyway this was my point
we grew up poor we spent our days on beach chairs lined up on the blacktop we were thirsty we thumbed through
drugstore magazines
4.
now in your city light slices across the damp grass in the late afternoon now
in your city you offer your white belly to the sun dog city
all your dogs
5.
female fig wasps lay eggs in figs you tell me but if she enters the wrong kind of fig she will die trapped inside and
so hungry we were riding the escalator down to the train platform and you turned to me don’t you see it
it is starting already
the brush of your hand on my knee as we rode the train in silence facing forward barely breathing don’t you see it
IN APPROXIMATION
I tell you that I am afraid of dying and you shrug it off you say
age is just a number like the price of beef or of real estate
nearly two thousand square feet but the neighborhood
is in transition and by that she means she is afraid
to walk at night after you left for the last time it rained
for days it rained and water collected at the entrance to the
tunnel your hands still imprinted on my
shoulders from when you flattened me against the tunnel wall
you weren’t listening you were watching for children to run
past us chasing a stray ball or collecting sticks it rains
and then it doesn’t real estate is bought and sold
you pressed so hard against me you left bruises later
I undressed slipped rainwater from my shoulders
let it fall to the floor and left it there like my sweater still
buttoned in approximation of this fragile human form
WATERSPOUT LANDSPOUT TORNADO
what set off the smoke alarm this morning you know I would watch all the buildings of this city burn down to the ground if I could
do you remember the days we floated past the grand fazioni in the lagoon
how I wanted more how I wanted all the men who grinning beneath
the wide brims of their straw hats licked their lips their trousers creased
all the women draped in sundresses soaked through to their rosebud nipples
let us praise all the books of maps we drew with our fingers while we floated on our backs drifting dissolving the funnel clouds that swallowed up
all the smaller acts of weather waterspout landspout tornado
they called our tornado a rare occurrence
as if that were enough to explain us as if that were enough to explain my preoccupation with the birthmark
on your left ear I have sketched all the embattled plazas in the dirt
have given names to all the sacred places called them st cecilia’s lantern and
st. lucie’s wishing well and st. sebastian’s balustrade and turret write this down
down at the piazza we will dance our fingers interlaced is this all that you
had hoped for alone backlit here are the hours I have fathered up for you
in my cupped hands here are the maps I have drawn here is the nape of my
neck take it in your mouth I predict another tornado will upend us
as for you you have made yourself a landing place for birds
all the tourists throw bread at your feet
Mary-Kim Arnold's writing has appeared at Tin House (online), The Rumpus, Wigleaf, HTML Giant, and Sundog Lit. Her poetry collection, Awake, Location was a finalist for the 2013 Kundiman Prize. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Brown University.