Buried Rubies
It's a delicious rumor running
its thin band under the Evening News.
The Taliban has fled one city,
left its scar a cuticle
hanging from the battered ruins.
Defections beat the stinging sand.
Camel humps begin to smile.
Venders push a scrap of music --
buried brick of gold it was,
wasting years in closet dark,
the Hell of which I'll never know.
Several women lift their shrouds.
Burka, djellaba, sari, toga virilis --
oppression spelled so many ways,
woven in religion's cloth,
turned against identity.
Maybe we are hangers down
a rotting cast that would
have peeled its heaviness.
I have a dream of ears and necks
emancipated from a noose.
Of vinegar tongues tasting the moon,
deciphering bowls of sugarcane.
I have a dream of fleshy cheeks
turning rubies in the sun.
Skin no longer Jezebel.
Heart no longer withered prune.
Mandolins are humming up from secrecy.
Lids lift crust around a sore.
I pray a shining eye remains.
That peace is more than
hope's pastiche, threads of which
will ravel when our soldiers leave.
I've had such a Hallmark life
of sequined luck and fluff parades.
Closest thing I ever stitched for Barbie Dolls --
muumuus for Hawaiian luaus
staged on spotless carpet floors.
Siamese fur
will have to fill
the stretch of void.
Its lousy drape of decadence
with foreign curves
and nonchalance.
How can he eat, breathe, sleep,
sand himself so noiselessly
while I am teething
on, on, on the stone.
I'd sail my fist through a van Gogh,
burn the black bible lounging
on mahogany, if only you would
come back, rise up, do us --
but a candle in my den
vibrates its heat, tells
me I was blind in one eye;
the other I shut.
You are with her.
Petting a turtle before
you break the soft neck.
When there is little left
on our heads but gray lint
and sorrow wax,
when the fish tank
of carnal turns
and we find ourselves
old shoes, soles worn,
softer for wear,
stronger for rocks,
there will still be us,
the tested and enduring lace.
When greeting card
bodies are torn,
faded like old gingerbread,
potpourri with lifted scent,
our slanted lips
will still press hard.
Make butter molds
from melting things.
Constant fights inconstancy.
Wrinkles reminding
the scar of the rose.
Chest plumes are a silver stash.
I love sorting these memos of age,
these reeds of wise, this lint
in wet, warm cookie dough.
It's a little garden here,
a populace of soft gray spikes
striking back at rain swords
rusting the summer
on a tight schedule of death.
Your sigh in my ear --
jasmine and alyssum grain--
lick reply correcting the raven's teeth,
cushioning impossibles.
We are the chunnel beneath the moors
now stripped of birds.
You touch old bearings as they turn.
I sputter things.
Je t'aime. Je t'aime.
The raft appears.
The wave will win -- of course it will.
Eerie as a waiting teardrop
stewing right behind an eye.
I wiggle toes of consonants --
looking for twigs to buffet the fall.
Trees grow smooth as heavy scissors
pushed against the window pane.
I steal your pillow, prop my head,
graced with scents your hair has left--
peanut butter on a knife.
I want to stay where we've arrived,
two fence slats tied against the wind.
Deep black soy that
flavors sponges of tofu.
--Janet I. Buck
CONTENTS