Cry of the Stars

I. Princess In The Tower

You stand in the wings again, squinting.
It is not stage-light brilliance that blinds you
but the flash of her teeth,
and her quick glance your way as she flickers
across a wooden floor.
Here, in the wings, you could
open your mouth, you could open your arms,
you could open everything that is locked
behind your ribs and fidgeting
inside your stomach and poised
across your knuckles but
the one thing you cannot open

        Autumn in the bogs,
        wet feathered reeds
        bruised and yellow beneath
        cold stumbling fog.
        “Ho! Wanderer!”
        spoke the king.
        “I know what you need.
        Step here, fear not—
        the surface
        will hold.

        “Come, my daughter:
        You are mine. Make no
        mistake. Come,
        we will dine
        on jeweled snakes
        and frogs
        of gold.”

the curtain like a guillotine must drop
mercilessly to the wooden floor,
the curtain that walls you off
from your dreaming,
the curtain bending against
the sun at your bedroom window.

 
II. Lament

        Lo-Ruhamah, Lo-Ammi:
        Lama, lama sabachthani?

The girls in the dressing room sit side-by-side,
the last two left after midnight fled the blitzkrieg
of flurried kisses and rose trophies,
and the whitewashed cinder-block walls
let out a last sigh into the stillness.
Sophie closes her eyes, holds out her hand,
drops her pearl earrings, feels Madalena reach over,
smiles, looks at herself in the streaked mirror
ringed with harsh white lights, realizes
she’s alone, cannot find the earrings again,
spends the rest of the night
staring at her fingers.


III. Birth Of The Betrothed

That lagoon and its lavender houses at dusk,
soft gold light mirrored over the shoreline. We are
beyond it almost before we realize—probably
Tatiana is driving too fast—so you and I slip back later
to dangle our ankles in the water.
Who are you? I ask. Three years ago
you were the kindred soul I never thought I’d lose,
but who have you become?
Are you my brother? My father?
Answer me!

Hoshea the king of clean city streets
did not hesitate, splashed straight down into mud and
had his Oxfords swallowed off his feet;
the grass stank from its own rotting and
stuck to his cheeks, and he just kept going.
They say he climbed back out the other side
days later, holding a baby girl,
his tailored outfit good as new
and not a whiff of the swamp on him.
“A baby girl?”
        Maybe his wife, actually.
“Or his wife! Which is it?”
        Look, if I had all the details I wouldn’t be telling
        this story, would I?


IV. You Follow Me

                 if you saw him

The ocean’s pulse is endless here, Poseidon’s bitter wrath
relentless, thrashing at the stubborn sand—and I,
transfixed between—

                standing there, holding out his arms

Foolish daughter, who stole you from me?
Who gave you legs and set you on the land?

                standing there to welcome you to shore

You who were brought forth in iniquity,
your skin is new, soft, not meant
for stones and grass that cut like knives.
Now the saltwater at your ankles—ha!
I see it stings. I see you shrink from me.

                    you would wade
                    you would wade

You will not pass through unharmed. No daughter of mine

                    not only through a sea of wrongs,
                    but through hell itself

Who are you? I do not know you. No daughter of mine

                    if you saw him
                    you would wade

Out on Tiberias we threw our nets
    into dark waves, which crested with a whisper,
splashed cold starlight on our hands, and broke
    the image of the moon cast on the sea.

Maybe we have approached the sound
of an army erupting across a cloudless sky,
the clamoring victory cry from those whose
thousand hands drew back the firmament’s curtain
and watched their king go forth,

whose voices rose like daybreak
when they looked, and wondered,
and did not understand.
As for me, I could not speak when the golden dusk
had breathed out glory that gripped me tight

like a baby’s fist around my finger,
still streaked red from the womb but steady
as the ranks of time, strong as a mother’s heartbeat,
unseemly as arms that scatter the stars yet
lift my deadweight bones like something
precious to be held.

Maybe we are approaching the sound
of true love: this low thrumming
moves the ground under me, rattles my skeleton,
shakes my soul awake and I
have glimpsed the land beyond the sun,

I have touched a face older than the ocean
that bent from light into black dust, that stooped
over my crumbling corpse and breathed—

When I heard your name, I wept
louder than the angels' shout.
They do not know the weight we carried on
our cracking necks, the long despair in heavy silence
that is splintering beneath your red-streaked feet,

which have walked from blood to blood across
the cemetery of our earth, and we,
the bones, sprang up with joy
to hear your steps at last.

I.
In the stillness between us, your eyes
had turned to dust bowls, fixed on me
with pleading heavier than a scream,

and my cottonball tongue,
four weeks dry and sitting on my teeth like
leaded sand, had no answer.

My hand pressing at the darkened window
like burnt wrinkled sackcloth, fingers
shriveled and ashen,
my eyelids leaking black mud
and silt.

My exhale—I have nothing, I have
nothing—leaving only dust,
ghost tracings falling silent from
the cold glass.

II.
For years I lived from one jar.
It wore lightning-bolt fractures all
over, uneven edges that caught
at my fingernails as I stretched out,

waited for mercy to pour its
measure down every seven days,
and drank sparingly.
I was a mess of cracks and caverns,

but it sewed me up so slowly
I didn’t notice, a stone ridge
laid down by patient rivers,
unaware of my own growing.

The years went by. It was
enough, I thought.

III.
Someone had torn down the wall
that kept me from knowing you:
suddenly I saw you, withering
silently there, and the gaps in my jar
had multiplied so it lay in pieces like
dead autumn leaves around us and

your little mouth was empty,
your tiny throat bone-dry.

Climbing over the rubble to you
I would have torn myself open,
crushed my own heart and wrung out
my lungs for a trace of water

if it meant that you could
drink—but I was parched as
dusty brick, sun-baked
to the core.

We sat in stillness, waiting.
Something pounded at the door.

IV.
That insistent drumming, getting
louder all the time, and the low growls
rattling the windowpane left me
shaking, both arms shivering

as I pushed the door wide and
fell headfirst into a thunderstorm.
The shock surged through me as surely
as if I'd been struck, rain and relief
streaming into my hair and down my neck

and I gasped and gasped until
water pulsed out with every breath
and life had filled me up and
overflowed,

dripping into my ears and out my mouth,
pulling me trembling to my feet,
yearning to give, to give,
to give—

and it turned my face, and I
caught the heavens in my hands,
and I came running
back to you.

I had peeked into your heart
and found the most curious hole
in plain, familiar outlines.

What could those long fissures mean,
I'd thought, if not my own
arms and legs—or those ten splayed gaps,
if not my outstretched fingers?

(You don't realize until you lie down,
how great an organ the heart is,
and how gigantic a cavity
your minuscule skeleton can't hope
to brace itself into—)

While falling, I looked up and saw
that the silhouette was still the same,
though somehow infinite,
an enormous void in your dark sky
waiting for the dawn's explosion, for

the arrival of morning fire and
its human-shaped sun.
You'd have lost yourself in me too,

just something we do:
shadows in the night unaware
of our own translucence,

of what it costs to leap, or
what it means to find ourselves
drowning, inert fixtures

dangling in each other's
stagnant blood. Waiting for the
surgeon hands and outstretched arms of
a human-shaped son.

When I was born into night's darkness,
I came with my own bucket
of tar, gleaming thickly black and
brimming full to the edges, all
for me, all my own.

The tar was smooth on my tiny fingers
and richly warm in my mouth, so
I loved it at the start, though it
dried heavy and permanently deep;
I decorated myself with layers of the stuff,
savoring the little thrill
of its slow trickling and subtle warmth
in the moments before it
sank into my skin and crusted over,
turning me into a shadow
among shadows.

The first time I saw the glow creeping
at the edges of the city
I screamed and coughed up terror
for days. I'd felt it then:
the spark's inevitability,
the readiness of the whole blackened mass
to ignite and burn itself—and me,
all painted over with death's
hot, grasping hands—into oblivion.
I huddled back into the dark,
choking on crusty sobs and hating light
with every dried-up, thirsty bone
in my body.

Rain fell every now and then
and dripped off me, clear,
inking the tar with midnight blossoms
but slipping straight across the thick shell.
Nothing could wash me.
I broke my wrists trying
to crack them open against the cement step
of an abandoned building,
felt wet blood slippery on my skin
—for one merciful second it seemed almost
to melt the tar from within—
until it dried, too, more
stinking fuel waiting to burn.

As I grew taller, I shook to realize
my everlasting night was one immense
shadow, cast by an immeasurable
and swift-advancing morning.
Already half the city's streets were lit,
stripped naked in the harsh glare
of the imminent sunrise and
its inexorable draw.

Now, perhaps, you know
the rest of the story. Perhaps you, yourself,
have seen exactly how much blood
it takes to dissolve tar,
and can tell me how he silently took
the bucket from your heavy hands
on his way to the city square.
Perhaps you will always remember
the blazing cobblestones and
the shape of his blackened silhouette
as he met the fire:

knees bowed low and face set forward,
while the flames leaped into the sky,
licking up every trace
of tar they found, and leaving you
untouched, trembling,
whole.

Years ago, it was warm and raining in the orchard
when we met. Children who didn't yet know what loneliness
meant, we were sown next to the river by the young hands
of our parents, setting us in the earth with love
and prayers. (Back then, none of us understood eternity
but we raced towards it anyway, our tangled

hair flying wild.) We're tall trees now, unfolding, entangling
where our sapling selves least expected to, an orchard
binding itself together in preparation for eternity's
storms of sorrow, of joy, of loneliness,
teetering on the invisible threshold of maturity—and love's
in the twining of our roots underground, our hands

held tight against the coming wind. The weather hands
us these moments every now and then, these exuberant tangles
of teenage happiness and the bold scent of a wide love
following you home on a cold rainy night, when orchards
seem invincible, when we have rejected loneliness
like children still blindfolded against eternity.

Once, ten days of moments turned my hours into eternity,
made solitude suddenly sharp and cold in my hands,
and silence unbearable. Was this true loneliness
at last? The heart's refusal, long after separation, to untangle
itself from phantom branches still twining in the orchard,
the mind's reluctance to pause in anything that it loves,

the soul's aching at absence, having learned so well to love?
Oh, bring me back to the river that wells up from eternity,
and twine my roots into the pattern of my father's orchard
where I am meant to stand forever, while we join hands
and hold each other tight. I think our parents meant to tangle
us together when they set us down, praying we'd never be lonely,

and here we are, the answer. We're a hedge against loneliness,
yours and mine and everyone else whose love
is blooming into breathtaking flowers, all joyfully tangled
through our branches. I must be tasting what sweet eternity
has to offer, more happiness than I can hold, so cup your hands
and drink the overflowing with me: it's raining in the orchard.

Years from now, even the loneliness of a withering orchard
will still know these promises. Held inside our tangled hands
and older than our souls, this love of ours outlives eternity.

The sorrow you leave behind
is that of a body missing its arm.
It is the disbelief of sudden absence,
the clumsiness of a crippling,
and the tormented yearning for lost wholeness.

If anyone asks where I've been,
I'll tell them I'm a swamp dweller
learning to live in a palace;
that I was floundering nose-deep
and breathing sludge when he pulled me out;
that the touch of clean air
still chafes at my waterlogged skin but
I'm getting better at standing
on solid ground with my own two feet.

I'll mention that there are times
I feel the old swampweed crawling
at my throat, and though it promises
comforts of what I once called home,
it can't embrace me anymore.
On the days I let it spread and
tangle with the gold he put around
my neck, I am choking by nightfall,
crying for him until he comes to
tear the dripping vines away
and show me that they were broken
all along, ghosts who only
grew because I called them to.

If anyone asks what I've done,
I'll tell them I once killed the man
who rescued me and left me his
inheritance. I watched him
drown where I had stood, watched
the swampweed crawl into his
mouth and fill his lungs
while he looked straight at me
and forgave and
forgave.

He gave me his clothes, his
name, his father, his house—
then, like morning incarnate,
he climbed out of the swamp
and gave me himself,
absolutely alive and
glowing with more love
than I ever deserved to behold,

so if anyone asks who I am,
I'll tell them, simply,
I am his.

Well, all the other kids have got
their pencils out. They've marked the spots
where iron crowbars, hammer swings,
spikes, and other pointy things
might best bring down this monolith.
Not me. No, I am numbered with
those who have lost their precious tools--
the clueless ones, the fools.

This bleak expanse wears little, just
the remnants of our feeble thrusts:
a crimson drip, a rusty scar
from shoulders torn and raw. We are
the prisoners of endless youth,
who rest our heads on kneecaps, soothe
our bloody hands with bitter tears,
and count the fading years.

Oh, I would sit and sleep away
my days. I'd catch the dreams that stray
from me like threaded mist between
my fingers, bind them till they're clean
as mountain springs and buttercups,
spin them gold and drink them up
till they are cold and real as rain,
and never rise again . . .

Yet something murmurs discontent,
a fervent voice that takes offense
at idle limbs and slumbering mind.
It cries: awake, oh sleeper! Find
your sight once more and look beyond
your dreams, see how the ancient bonds
have fallen from your wrists. You're free,
it calls, reminding me

that there is work still incomplete--
so pull me back onto my feet
and put your chisel in my hand.
A fool I am, but I will stand
and hammer at this wall with you,
if you will show me what to do.
If you, who brought down Jericho,
would teach me where to place each blow,

I know that I could tear it down.
Then at the broadness of new ground
perhaps I'll hesitate in fear,
but let me not forget you're near
and that I'll never walk alone
until I reach our glorious home--
so let my sleeping spirit wake,
and guide my hands till this wall breaks.

You're a stranger, but I think
I've carried your crystal air
deep in my bones for
a long while.

I've glimpsed you
in childhood dreams and books
that never spoke of you
by name, but caught
the colors of your sky
and snagged a bit of
your life's vibrance.

Something in me knows that
my feet are made to learn
your wide roads,
my hands to build your cities,
my frame to fit
in the crooked branches
of your strong trees.

Wait for me, wait for me,
beloved stranger land.
There's a ship in your harbor
with my name on the bow,

and when I arrive
under the bright cloak
of a near-setting sun,
any unfamiliarity will bend
from forbidding to beautiful
to this deep sense of
belonging: I was born
for you.

Black are these drowning days; fierce,
the water's hands that claw my face;
cold, the accusing daggers
twisting in my ears.
Choking, bitter ashes fill my mouth
when I am hurled ashore.
Is this the place where Job once
mourned before?

and I ran to the whirlwind, shouted at
a father I could barely see.
        do you hear me?
        are you there?

Oh, my fingers and my feet grow weak;
my weary limbs could drop
away from me. But no, not yet.
These jagged stones may drink my blood,
but I am told
your voice lies at the top
of Zion's noble peak.
   
so I came up the mountain, waited there--
but only silence answered me.
        is this all?
        must I despair?
   
Here I cry, my feeble eyes
at war against the night,
my palms spread throbbing on the ground.
I shake and tremble, and I cannot rise;
here I lie, blind in the dark; quiet
I shall stay

                 until the sunlight
breaks open the day
and I can feel your hands around
my own, then: where have you been?
why did you hide?

You're crouching by my side.
I'm here, is all you say.

and I stood by Golgotha, listened close,
and there, again, I heard mercy--
    the sound more beautiful
    than I could bear.

Every year - silent and
with little ceremony - my heart molts.
On my birthday, I line them up,

the fragile exoskeletons left over
from the years since I drew breath with new lungs,
and the first tiny shell split
down the middle and fell off, sighing.

I can see the contours of that old granite,
the outline of that first paper-thin membrane
reflected in the shapes of all the bigger skins
that follow, and echoing in me
to the smallest curves of my hands and feet:

sometimes, when the edges have grown too sharp
and someone's dark blood pools on the tabletop,
for a moment I wish I could crawl back
into my mother's womb and
start over, try again with a different mold,

praying that this time the stone
will come out smooth and white
and harmless in its reverberations -
but you and I both know what futility
we entertain, however briefly.

Our mothers and fathers cannot give us marble;
they know too much of cold blood, spilt and stale.

No, this was never what he meant. But if you
count the shells from all my heart's growing,
you'll find one more than there should be,
and hope (for me, for you) is in the reality of that
last cracked, broken rock. Some years ago

it fell from me, sighing, split
in two because I drew breath with new lungs
and opened new eyes to a dazzling glory,
and the new heart was strong flesh and
bright, living blood in a perfect frame that

echoes stronger in my body every day.
My hands and feet still follow
the old patterns sometimes, but it's
life and love that wins in the end, and I know

the matter of my birth
is settled.

This is the earnest melody
that I will never swallow:
I have a savior dressed in scars,
a father lighting up new stars,
and a heart no longer hollow.

I tried to find him in the woods and in the desert,
in the sky and in the ocean,
in the cave and on the mountain.
The wind and water hummed with echoes of his voice.
His bright shadow stretched beneath the earth and sparkled on the sea.
The ghosts of his fingers whispered in the dust and sand.

But though you are crooked and his frame is straight,
you still match best of all things here.
Though you are broken, as we all must be,
if I squint against the cracks, I see:
my father's face still smiles, reflected bright in yours.

--
A/N: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).

In the time it takes from mountain's top
to beaten sand, to dust thrown by the wind,
a hundred thousand generations rise,
each defined by 'done' or 'not done',
by revolutions and silence alike,
all, in some way, pleading for the future's eyes:
remember us, for heaven's sake don't forget.
All fall.

A man finds his way to the mountain top.
His flesh is long strands of dry meadow grass,
wrapped tight around his brittle bones of wood.
The wind laughs through the holes in his chest,
but he straightens tattered shoulders and climbs to the peak,
raising a withering hand to the sky.
While the sun breathes deep in its time,
the yellowing strips unwind and turn to smoke,
drifting away on the mountain's long exhale.
Remember us, cry the burning twigs,
and ashes scatter invisible on the stones.

Forever's longer than
a thousand mountain's deaths.
A promise that wide won't fit in
human's tiny leaf-thin skull
or blackened grain-shell heart--
but stands alone on steady feet
and gently stretches cradles 
for our feeble wicker frames to rest.

you are scraping at the ground
with bloodied bare fingers,
eyelids nailed shut
and a staggering weight on your shoulders,
your ankles chewed raw from every time
you stood, raised a hand to your shredded neck,
and Master pulled
so the shackles bit deep and you fell again.
the rusty iron bands
are too big and chafe at you,
but never slip off.
you're trying to find something you
once lost, you think,
you know. you hope it's still there
but when you reach too far,
Master--Monster--leaps onto you,
tears at your flesh with jagged claws and teeth
till you can't even scream, though
your jaw still stretches open,
wide in anguish.
sometimes you collapse, sobbing for
your cracking spine and useless eyes
and bloody hands

and
"i'm a good person," you say,
calmly sipping coffee in the dark,
leaning back in your chair.
you smile hollowly
and turn from the light
i'm holding out to you.

stubborn,
It glows brighter at your back.

Daughter of wrath, wait
for your father to return.
Point no finger
at your mother's unclothed back,
for you deserve the same;

you've grown into your own name
        and so have we
                --have I.

Stranger-son, watch
your father working in his fields.
His blood could not
run through your veins without
burning you now;

you've exchanged it for old ashes
        and so have we
                --have I.

*

Take someone else’s name, children,
and someone else’s blood:

join your mother in her sanctuary,
where Lo-ruhama is given mercy--
               Lo-ammi is called “my own”--
                    Gomer is betrothed again, forever.

*

The farmer strides into the wilderness,
        clears the land and sows it generously.
Unfaithful runaway hides herself
        beneath his cloak and follows him home.
The field slowly grows tall,
        waiting for the harvest.